Office Vanished

Question

Office Vanished

RT-7367 20

I own an HP laptop with MS Office Home and Student 2019 perpetual license, pre-installed. I have been using it to create, edit and save files since 2020. Now it has disappeared from the one account I have ever used for Microsoft office. It is no longer listed under Services and subscriptions account. /dstatusall command says I have an office perpetual license which is now in grace period.
I've already spoken with microsoft, and they ask for proof that I had office on my laptop. It was a requirement I had when buying the laptop and there was nothing other than a sticker that says office included. So far HP has not been able to help me with this. Their specifications page for the laptop does not list office with the product.
Recently Microsoft sent me a "welcome to windows 11" mail, which is uncanny because I upgraded to windows 11 back in 2021.

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Answer 1

This is a known headache with pre-installed OEM Office licenses, and it usually comes down to how those licenses get activated in the background. A few things worth digging into:

Check the activation type: Run cscript ospp.vbs /dstatus from the Office install folder (usually C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16) instead of just /dstatusall — it'll tell you whether the license was a Retail, OEM:NONSLP, or OEM:PERPETUAL channel. OEM pre-installs are often tied to the device's motherboard/firmware license (via an embedded product key in the BIOS/UEFI, similar to how Windows OEM licenses work), not to your Microsoft account directly — so "grace period" suggests it's lost contact with whatever was validating it, which could genuinely be account-related, or could be a separate activation service issue unrelated to your account at all.

The "Welcome to Windows 11" email is a red flag worth pursuing separately: if you upgraded in 2021, Microsoft sending that now suggests something odd happened on their end with your account or device record recently — possibly your device got re-registered, deduplicated, or merged with another record during a backend migration, and Office licensing tied to that device entitlement could have been dropped as a side effect. I'd mention this email specifically to Microsoft support as a timeline anchor — it's a concrete, dated event that lines up suspiciously with your Office disappearing.

For "proof of purchase": Since it was pre-installed rather than purchased separately, look for the original order confirmation/invoice from HP (or wherever you bought the laptop) — some retailers list "Microsoft Office Home & Student 2019" as a line item or bundled SKU even when it's not on the general spec sheet. Check your email from the purchase date, not HP's current spec page (spec pages get updated/changed after the fact and aren't reliable evidence). Also check if the laptop's original packaging or a Certificate of Authenticity sticker (separate from a basic "Office" logo sticker) exists — that's often what activation support actually wants.

Escalate past first-line support: General Microsoft support often can't resolve OEM entitlement issues. Ask specifically to be escalated to the Microsoft 365 activation/licensing team, and reference your ospp.vbs /dstatus output and the Windows 11 email timing — that combination of technical detail plus a dated anomaly tends to get taken more seriously than a general "it disappeared" ticket.

RT-7367 20 Reputation points

2026-09-13T06:27:38.67+00:00

Thank you for saying its a known issue.
I've already shared this /dstatus screenshot with them with all the details. They said they can't help because it says "grace period"
Invoice from my retailer doesn't list anything other than the price and some other details like serial number. I've spoken with them and they don't have anything about a laptop from 2020.
As for authenticity sticker, I've the hologram one for Microsoft, but not office. The license was digital. I just had to sign in with my microsoft account.