Licenses and serial numbers

[Noel Bailey]

My wife and I have just got a couple of new iMacs and given our old iMac to
our son. That makes three Macs. We've got Office 2004 Student edition which
has three licenses.

Trouble is, I've not kept a record of which serial numbers I've used on
which Macs and I'm getting error messages when all three Macs are running,
telling me I'm out of licenses. So it seems that two of our Macs have Office
installed with the same serial number.

Does anyone know if there's a way of changing the serial numbers without
re-installing Office? It's no big deal re-installing, but the 11.3.5
download takes for ever. Or is there a way of finding out which Macs have
got the same Office serial number so I can at least just re-install once?

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Noel -

The following is "borrowed" from a recent post by Daiya Mitchell in reply to
a similar post:

Only trial and error will let you sort out which key belongs to which
computer. You can change the licenses without removing and reinstalling
however. Easiest method: Launch the Remove Office tool (apps/ms
office/additional tools/) and hold down Option at the first dialog, and
the "remove office" option will change to "remove licensing information".

If it helps, a single key will always produce an About number that is
the same except for the last five digits--so if you have two About
numbers that are identical until the last block of numbers, that's a
duplicate key.

To which I would add a Russian Roulette style of trial & error:

If you have the 3 systems connected, start one of the Office apps on the
oldest of the bunch (IIRC the product keys are in a list so you probably
used the top one on that system.). Then launch the same app on one of the
other two. If there is a conflict modify the second one's product key. If
not the 3rd one must be the odd man out - although you may still have to get
2 & 3 to bump heads in order to be certain.

 

[Noel Bailey]

Hi Noel -

The following is "borrowed" from a recent post by Daiya Mitchell in reply to
a similar post:

Only trial and error will let you sort out which key belongs to which
computer. You can change the licenses without removing and reinstalling
however. Easiest method: Launch the Remove Office tool (apps/ms
office/additional tools/) and hold down Option at the first dialog, and
the "remove office" option will change to "remove licensing information".

If it helps, a single key will always produce an About number that is
the same except for the last five digits--so if you have two About
numbers that are identical until the last block of numbers, that's a
duplicate key.

To which I would add a Russian Roulette style of trial & error:

If you have the 3 systems connected, start one of the Office apps on the
oldest of the bunch (IIRC the product keys are in a list so you probably
used the top one on that system.). Then launch the same app on one of the
other two. If there is a conflict modify the second one's product key. If
not the 3rd one must be the odd man out - although you may still have to get
2 & 3 to bump heads in order to be certain.

Thanks for that. I did the Russian roulette thing and I've been lucky! I've
just had to reinstall Office, following upgrade to Leopard (I know I could
have just migrated the apps across from my old Mac, but my old Mac's still
going to be using Office (for my son), so I reckoned I'd have to re-install
to get the product keys sorted.)

I'll file your tips away for future reference, as I'm still not sure which
product keys are on which of my other two Macs!


Cheers!

 

[Roulette]

Yeah, I had a similar problem... accidentally typed my name incorrectly and when I tried to delete/re-install, it kept showing up funny. Totaly eye-sore.

Anyway, there's a file called "Microsoft Office 2008 Settings.plist" which can be found in "/Users/<name>/Preferences/Microsoft/Microsoft Office 2008". Delete that file, and on start-up, you should be required to re-enter the license key and name.