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Question
Wednesday, October 29, 2014 1:42 PM
This is less of a question and more of a simple complaint. I work at a company where we buy our versions of office with our Dell computers, usually. This is cheaper for us and helps make it easy to set up a new machine with everything on it. We also, actively recycle computers, as in when the machine is no longer fit for an engineering machine, due to advances in software and hardware, we then upgrade the engineer and trickle down the computers. From what I've seen, this is a very good way to save us money and seems to be working rather well. The only problem is, once we switched over to Office 2013 we have a problem.
Office 2013 doesn't seem to have ANY way to find the product key for itself. This presents a problem as we have hundreds of machines, all with their own personal copy of Office but when we want to trickle it down and have to do a factory reset there is no way to find the product key that was used to install that copy. I understand Microsoft is just trying to be secure with their product keys, but it is honestly a bit ridiculous. If every single time I have to reset a computer I have to search through our hundreds of product keys to find the one with the proper service tag, that's ridiculous and there has to be a better way of doing it.
Simply put, all I ask is that Microsoft find some way to get the installed product key off of 2013. It can't be that hard. You encrypted it, write something to decrypt it and then I will have no complaints. Don't get me wrong, I love Microsoft and I think they are one of the best companies around when it comes to OS/software, but this one flaw is really annoying when you're in my situation. Thanks for listening to my rant and have a good day.
All replies (7)
Thursday, October 30, 2014 9:07 AM ✅Answered | 1 vote
Hi,
I have definitely heard your frustration, and I’ll try my best to help you.
We can try these steps to find the last five digits of the product key associated with your computer.
1. Right click the Windows icon and select Command Prompt.
2. Enter the appropriate command:
For 32 bit Windows:
cscript “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\OSPP.VBS” /dstatus
For 64 bit Windows:
cscript “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office15\OSPP.VBS” /dstatus
3. The command prompt box will show you the last five digits of the product key associated with the installation on that PC.
For more detail information:
If there is anything else that I can do for you regarding this issue, feel free to post back.
Best regards,
Greta Ge
TechNet Community Support
It's recommended to download and install Configuration Analyzer Tool (OffCAT), which is developed by Microsoft Support teams. Once the tool is installed, you can run it at any time to scan for hundreds of known issues in Office programs.
Thursday, October 30, 2014 1:18 PM
Thank you for replying. I will let you know that I had already heard of that method to find it, but as you said... it only returns the last 5 digits of the key. When installed on hundreds of computers, I still have to search through all of our product keys to find which one corresponds with those last 5 digits. The problem is not that there isn't a way to get the product key, it's that when I can get it, it takes a ridiculous amount of searching and sifting through junk to find it. All I want is that with the next version of Office, they include a way to find the product key, the whole thing, whether it be through command line or some program. Anything would be better than what we currently have... nothing.
Friday, November 7, 2014 6:52 AM
Hi,
According to your description, I suppose that are they retail versions of Office? Is it right?
If it’s retail version, we can only see the last five digits of the product key.
Best regards,
Greta Ge
TechNet Community Support
It's recommended to download and install Configuration Analyzer Tool (OffCAT), which is developed by Microsoft Support teams. Once the tool is installed, you can run it at any time to scan for hundreds of known issues in Office programs.
Friday, November 7, 2014 1:48 PM
If you read my above reply, I know this. I'm saying that that's not a very good method in my personal opinion. If you can only find out the last 5 digits, but you have hundreds of copies, you have to search through EACH and EVERY one of them, looking at the last 5 digits until you find the right copy. There needs to be a utility or something of that sort that can find the whole product key, even if its a separate install that we must get from the website it would help TREMENDOUSLY
Sunday, April 1, 2018 10:01 AM
If you read my above reply, I know this. I'm saying that that's not a very good method in my personal opinion. If you can only find out the last 5 digits, but you have hundreds of copies, you have to search through EACH and EVERY one of them, looking at the last 5 digits until you find the right copy. There needs to be a utility or something of that sort that can find the whole product key, even if its a separate install that we must get from the website it would help TREMENDOUSLY
I agree with MichaelV ..
for office 2013 and office 2016 - as we are able to only get the 5 digit product key after installation.
When the harddisk goes corrupted and need a reinstallation , do u mean that we have to PAY microsoft again to get a new KEY ? MICROSOFT can surely improve their customer service by having a site to request for this full product key after we fills in a form with the last 5 digit that we can obtain from our PC ?
Microsoft shud think for their customers and help rather than make Microsoft customers pay more
Please help.
Deresky CJ
Sunday, April 1, 2018 11:08 AM
Hi Michael.
You could try using ProduKey to get the product ID and the product key of Microsoft Office.
Bye.
Luigi Bruno
MCP, MCTS, MOS, MTA
Thursday, July 26, 2018 7:53 PM
ProduKey is for 2003 and 2007 not even close to what he was asking