Office 2010 Professional. I have 2 Retail boxes that alloow 3 installs each but I can't install any more.

Office 2010 Pro only allows install on 2 machines at the same time.  If you read the case closely you'll see that 3 installs is specific for 2010 Home and Student ONLY.

I will give your suggestions a try sometime this month as I first need to prep a primary drive then try and do a clean re-install on the desktop that got destroyed last year with updates.

By the way, maybe I have an earlier boxed Office 2010 directly from MS, but my box actually says "Licensed for noncommercial use on up to 3 home PCs" AND there is no limiting clause for it being Win 7 Home or Student - it is for Win 7 Ultra on mine.

Whenever you have time.

The "Home" is in Office 2010 Home and Student. The Windows version is irrelevant to number of Office installs allowed by the license terms. Of course, there still is the reminder that Win7 is end of life, end of support in January.  If you google, there still appear to be ways of getting the free "upgrade" to Win 10 you might want to take advantage of before MS closes them ...

On the 2007 box (I expect 2010 will be much the same), on the back they have a grid comparing the applications included in each bundle. Home and Student is the only one with a tiny * beside the name in the grid. That * refers to a comment at the bottom of the grid saying "licensed for 3 PC's ...".  That 3 PC's is EXPLICIT to Home and Student ONLY. All others are only licensed for 2 computers, a PC and a "Laptop", although MS doesn't do anything to explicitly ID a laptop. Trust me, I know that qualification very well, especially since MS (dis)"improved" in 2013 to allow ALL one-time payment licenses to install on only 1 computer.  The "laptop" qualification goes back to the early 1990's when laptops were priced so high that only businesses could afford them.

Office 2010 Pro only allows install on 2 machines at the same time.  If you read the case closely you'll see that 3 installs is specific for 2010 Home and Student ONLY.

Before Office 2016 users have no direct control over their license count. You just install, and hope the internet activation works.

The license terms allow you to "transfer" the installation to other computers. The requirement is that you uninstall or otherwise make it unusable (ie dead computer, new Windows install etc).  Then you can install and activate on a new computer.  MS has been doing everything it can to "encourage" people to spend money on new, preferably 365 ("$$$cash-cow$$$") subscriptions.  That includes making it harder to internet activate older one-time payment licenses by displaying the "too many activations" type error message.

There is another error they throw up saying Phone activation is no longer supported. That is a flat out lie that they have not bothered to correct ... <sigh>

Since internet-activation does not work, you have to do a phone activation.  There are 2 types of phone activations, one is the "automated" type, and the other is "manual" via a "service rep". Tell them what you have done to free up the activation count and they should allow the activation to happen.

“Too Many Activations

https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/4924c7f6-beef-4dc2-8c01-4134538c745f?platform=QnA"https://support.office.com/en-us/article/-Telephone-activation-is-no-longer-supported-for-your-product-error-when-activating-Office-9b016cd2-0811-4cb3-b896-5a6a13177713" rel="ugc nofollow">https://support.office.com/en-us/article/-Telephone-activation-is-no-longer-supported-for-your-product-error-when-activating-Office-9b016cd2-0811-4cb3-b896-5a6a13177713  >

Michelle V [MSFT]

We apologize for this inconvenience. We are currently fixing this bug in our Office products. In the meantime, you can call the numbers for your specific country/region listed in thisarticle :

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/-Telephone-activation-is-no-longer-supported-for-your-product-error-when-activating-Office-9b016cd2-0811-4cb3-b896-5a6a13177713?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US.

Please also note that this issue impacts Office non-subscribers only—those who purchased the product as a one-time purchase. For more information, see What’s the difference between Office 365 and Office 2016?

If this doesn’t solve the issue, please contact our support agents linked from the bottom of the same article.

Again, we apologize for this issue. We are working to get this resolved quickly and will update this thread once the fix is available.

Thanks,

Michelle V.

Office Team

</snip>

Office Activation Wizard: get the “Installation ID” **/ "Product ID"**required by Phone and Chat Help lines

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_install-mso_winother-mso_archive/office-2013-one-time-payment-offline-phone/b4017b26-e5b1-4355-8174-398a69935210

do the activation method below:

·      Open Word 2013 application.

·      Click File menu

·      Account command

·              Click About button

·              Record the “Product ID” (you will need it in a minute), aka “Installation ID”

·      OK to close the “About … “dialog

z- 2013 Office Product ID.jpg

·      Click “Activate” button

·      Select “I want to activate the software over the Internet” and click “Next”. This will usually complete successfully and activate the software.

·      If you were unable to automatically activate over the Internet, you may select “I want to activate the software by telephone”

·      “Next.”

z- 2013 Office Phone Activation Wizard.jpg

The Microsoft Office Activation Wizard will show you three steps:

Step 1: Select your location, this will display the appropriate phone numbers

Step 2: Installation ID (This will be required by the chat/phone support team from you for activation. Please provide it to them immediately)

Step 3: Confirmation ID (This will be provided by support to you.  You need to enter from boxes A to H to proceed with the activation. You may click on Next after entering the ID to complete the activation.

I will give your suggestions a try sometime this month as I first need to prep a primary drive then try and do a clean re-install on the desktop that got destroyed last year with updates.

By the way, maybe I have an earlier boxed Office 2010 directly from MS, but my box actually says "Licensed for noncommercial use on up to 3 home PCs" AND there is no limiting clause for it being Win 7 Home or Student - it is for Win 7 Ultra on mine.

Office 2010 Pro only allows install on 2 machines at the same time.  If you read the case closely you'll see that 3 installs is specific for 2010 Home and Student ONLY.

Before Office 2016 users have no direct control over their license count. You just install, and hope the internet activation works.

The license terms allow you to "transfer" the installation to other computers. The requirement is that you uninstall or otherwise make it unusable (ie dead computer, new Windows install etc).  Then you can install and activate on a new computer.  MS has been doing everything it can to "encourage" people to spend money on new, preferably 365 ("$$$cash-cow$$$") subscriptions.  That includes making it harder to internet activate older one-time payment licenses by displaying the "too many activations" type error message.

There is another error they throw up saying Phone activation is no longer supported. That is a flat out lie that they have not bothered to correct ... <sigh>

Since internet-activation does not work, you have to do a phone activation.  There are 2 types of phone activations, one is the "automated" type, and the other is "manual" via a "service rep". Tell them what you have done to free up the activation count and they should allow the activation to happen.

“Too Many Activations

https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/4924c7f6-beef-4dc2-8c01-4134538c745f?platform=QnA"https://support.office.com/en-us/article/-Telephone-activation-is-no-longer-supported-for-your-product-error-when-activating-Office-9b016cd2-0811-4cb3-b896-5a6a13177713" rel="ugc nofollow">https://support.office.com/en-us/article/-Telephone-activation-is-no-longer-supported-for-your-product-error-when-activating-Office-9b016cd2-0811-4cb3-b896-5a6a13177713  >

Michelle V [MSFT]

We apologize for this inconvenience. We are currently fixing this bug in our Office products. In the meantime, you can call the numbers for your specific country/region listed in thisarticle :

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/-Telephone-activation-is-no-longer-supported-for-your-product-error-when-activating-Office-9b016cd2-0811-4cb3-b896-5a6a13177713?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US.

Please also note that this issue impacts Office non-subscribers only—those who purchased the product as a one-time purchase. For more information, see What’s the difference between Office 365 and Office 2016?

If this doesn’t solve the issue, please contact our support agents linked from the bottom of the same article.

Again, we apologize for this issue. We are working to get this resolved quickly and will update this thread once the fix is available.

Thanks,

Michelle V.

Office Team

</snip>

Office Activation Wizard: get the “Installation ID” **/ "Product ID"**required by Phone and Chat Help lines

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_install-mso_winother-mso_archive/office-2013-one-time-payment-offline-phone/b4017b26-e5b1-4355-8174-398a69935210

do the activation method below:

·      Open Word 2013 application.

·      Click File menu

·      Account command

·              Click About button

·              Record the “Product ID” (you will need it in a minute), aka “Installation ID”

·      OK to close the “About … “dialog

z- 2013 Office Product ID.jpg

·      Click “Activate” button

·      Select “I want to activate the software over the Internet” and click “Next”. This will usually complete successfully and activate the software.

·      If you were unable to automatically activate over the Internet, you may select “I want to activate the software by telephone”

·      “Next.”

z- 2013 Office Phone Activation Wizard.jpg

The Microsoft Office Activation Wizard will show you three steps:

Step 1: Select your location, this will display the appropriate phone numbers

Step 2: Installation ID (This will be required by the chat/phone support team from you for activation. Please provide it to them immediately)

Step 3: Confirmation ID (This will be provided by support to you.  You need to enter from boxes A to H to proceed with the activation. You may click on Next after entering the ID to complete the activation.