MS Office Professional Plus 2021 - Reinstall after System Factory Reset, Activation Fail mentioning maximum installation count reached.

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nhavin asked Oct 26, '21 emilyhua-msft rolled back Oct 29, '21

MS Office Professional Plus 2021 - Reinstall after System Factory Reset, Activation Fail mentioning maximum installation count reached.

In my HP Spectre x360, after installation of Windows 11, my system had problem with all inbuilt interfaces. Therefore, I had to factory reset my notebook.

Now in Windows 10, I am reinstalling Office Professional Plus 2021, but the activation fails mentioning maximum installation count exceeded. I never installed / activated this license associated with my Microsoft account in any other systems. I try requesting transfer license to this computer option, that ends with Virtual Agent unable to get Call back service.

My Office Product is named as 'Office Professional Plus 2021'.

I access Activation from MS Word - Account section, where it says 'This Product is already installed on another device'.

There is a option for 'Contact support to transfer your license to this device', which takes me to Virtual Agent.

After failing to activate, it offers to 'Talk to a person' - 'Call me back'.

But, once I give my contact number, it says 'Something went wrong on our end. We're working on it.' - 'Try Again'.

Before selecting my country, it shows some minutes waiting time for US. May be non-US numbers are not supported.

Moreover, I don't see any link for 'Activate Office by telephone'. But still I call local support number twice, after brief discussions with primary support executives, I have been transferred to technical support team, who didn't answer even after ten minutes waiting. I am not sure, where to reach next.

Any Help here is highly appreciated. Thanks!

office-itpro

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Answer 1 · 2021-10-27T02:36:27.417Z

emilyhua-msft answered Oct 27, '21 emilyhua-msft rolled back Oct 29, '21

@nhavin

Moreover, I don't see any link for 'Activate Office by telephone'.

Do you find the Activation wizard when you open Office apps?

If yes, then you could find the way that "Activate by telephone".
For more, you could checkout "Activate Office using the Activation wizard".

I never installed / activated this license associated with my Microsoft account in any other systems.

You have volume licensed versions of Office Professional Plus 2021, am I right?
If so, how do you activate these Office? Such as via Multiple Activation Key (MAK), Key Management Service (KMS), or Active Directory-based.
Or do you have retail versions of Office that login the associated Microsoft account for activation?
If the Office Professional Plus 2021 still on your machines, please choose one to run commands to have a check.
Search CMD, right-click the Command Prompt and run as administrator. Then copy and paste the command in it, click Enter at last:
cscript.exe "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office\Office16\ospp.vbs" /dstatus
(If you are running 32-bit Office on a 64-bit operating system)
cscript.exe "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Office\Office16\ospp.vbs" /dstatus
Then please share a screenshot of your results.

Any updates, you could post back.

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".
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nhavin · Oct 28, 2021 at 07:47 PM

Hi Emilyhua,

Many thanks for your response.
I use Office Professional Plus 2021 - Retail Version.
I have downloaded from my account.microsoft.com.
I don't find any option for "Activation by Telephone".

cscript.exe "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office\Office16\ospp.vbs" /dstatus
this command fetch the following response:

---Processing--------------------------

PRODUCT ID: 00469-80000-00000-AA030
SKU ID: cd18ecc0-466a-45d4-8d2e-8c4fa48ae591
LICENSE NAME: Office 21, Office21ProPlus2021R_Grace edition
LICENSE DESCRIPTION: Office 21, RETAIL(Grace) channel
BETA EXPIRATION: 01-01-1601
LICENSE STATUS: ---OOB_GRACE---
ERROR CODE: 0x4004F00C
ERROR DESCRIPTION: The Software Licensing Service reported that the application is running within the valid grace period.
REMAINING GRACE: 4 days (7198 minute(s) before expiring)
Last 5 characters of installed product key: PG343

---Exiting-----------------------------

Hope this will clarify the situation.

Looking forward to your valuable support in resolving this issue.

Kind Regards!

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emilyhua-msft nhavin · Oct 29, 2021 at 09:18 AM

@nhavin

Thanks for your quick reply.

I would suggest you continue to do following steps for a test.

Enter the command below to uninstall Office activation information in Command Prompt which is run as administrator.
cscript.exe "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office\Office16\ospp.vbs" /unpkey:PG343
Locate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Identity\Identities in Registry Editor, remove all identities under the "Identities" registry entry.
(It is recommended to back up registry keys before modification, just in case. You can refer to: How to back up and restore the registry in Windows.)
Open Control Panel > Credential Manager > Remove all Windows credentials listed for Office by selecting the drop-down arrow and Remove.

Then please reboot your machine, open Office apps for a check.

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