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

Nhavin Purushothaman 6 Reputation points
2021-10-26T15:15:42.197+00:00

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 Management
Office Management
Office: A suite of Microsoft productivity software that supports common business tasks, including word processing, email, presentations, and data management and analysis.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
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  1. Emily Hua-MSFT 27,546 Reputation points
    2021-10-27T02:36:27.417+00:00

    @Nhavin Purushothaman

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

    Do you find the Activation wizard when you open Office apps?
    144041-capture65.jpg
    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.


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  2. José Ignacio Díaz González 0 Reputation points
    2023-04-29T17:51:18.6833333+00:00

    I'm having exactly the same problem. Already tried the steps suggested in last post, but didn't work.

    Any other suggestion?

    Thanks in advance

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