Office 365 Pro Plus (C2R) to Apps for Buinses Migration

Jason G 26 Reputation points
2021-04-13T02:47:20.197+00:00

We have ~100 PC's with the Click to Run edition of Office 365 Pro Plus installed (licensed per user).

We're about to transition all staff to Microsoft 365 Business Premium Edition.

While testing the first few users (with a new Business Premium license attached), even though the Office Pro Plus installation doesn't complain via the GUI, if I check the Office license status using "cscript ospp.vbs /dstatus" (as per the attached screen shot), it states it is in a 'Grace Period'.

While I understand the user can change the applied license manually using the "change license" button in Office (see attached), what happens if they fail to initiate this? What happens when the grace period expires?

What's the easiest way to transition from one CLick to Run (C2R) edition of office, to another edition of click to run that doesn't rely on the user?

At the moment, my R&D suggests the only way is to uninstall the old C2R installation and deploy the new C2R installation, using a GPO startup script.

The reason I need to force this change is so the Microsoft 365 Business Premium edition will apply, so the PC can be adopted into Intune/Endpoint Portal etc...87186-office-lic-status.png87187-manual-change.png

Am I missing something?

Thank you in advance for your help,
Jason.

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 27,526 Reputation points
    2021-04-13T09:05:26.15+00:00

    @Jason G

    If the grace period expires, it may cause Office apps go into reduced functionality mode.

    I suggest you try to reset Office activation state on test computers, the detailed information, you may refer to "Reset Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise activation state".
    There is an OLicenseCleanup.vbs for the four steps mentioned on this article to be auomated.
    After resetting, please log the licensed account into Office apps to check this issue.

    If this information does not work, I also suggest you uninstall previous Microsoft 365 apps first, then install the new licensed Office.

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  2. Jason G 26 Reputation points
    2021-04-19T07:17:59.543+00:00

    Hi @Emily Hua-MSFT

    Thank you for this information.

    I've experimented with the OLicenseCleanup.vbs script you suggested, however I'm seeing a peculiar problem where the 'Active Setup' registry entries to remove the license cache registry keys (and folders) are not working.

    It seems that the Active Setup delete registry keys are being written to the WOW6432Node, which results in them not being deleted from the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\~ location. Instead, it's trying to delete it from the Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wow6432Node\ equivilent.

    We are using Windows 10 x64 1909 (18363.1139), and Office C2R 32bit installer.

    Can you tell me what I'm doing wrong? I've attached the output of the OLicenseCleanup.vbs script.88986-olicenseclean-results.txt

  3. Jason G 26 Reputation points
    2021-04-21T00:43:24.13+00:00

    Hi @Emily Hua-MSFT

    Thank you for your response.

    For the record, we're migrating >100 user PCs from O365ProPlusRetail to O365BusinessRetail, so we need an automated process to achieve what we're talking about above.

    My attempt so far has been to use the Office Deployment Tool called from a PC start up script to a small batch of PCs, using a GPO (see attached example).

    This batch file is intended to:

    1. Uninstall Office 365 E3 Pro Plus
    2. Install Microsoft 365 Business Premium
    3. Call OLicenseCleanup.vbs to clear out license cache on all user profiles on the PC, in an attempt to force the user to reactivate Office

    While steps 1 and 2 works fine, step 3 (calling OLicenseCleanup.vbs) produces unexpected results, in that it isn't properly clearing the licensing remnants of the O365ProPlusRetail installation for each user profile on the PC, as per my post above.

    Users are able to sign in to the freshly installed version of Office Business Premium, and Office states that it is licenses and owned by them in the GUI, the command line cscript ospp.vbs /dstatus produces a "No installed product keys detected" message (see attached).

    Are you able to confirm if OLicenseCleanup.vbs is supposed to do this, or what I may be doing wrong?

    These PC's have been freshly Azure-Hybrid joined, so I even ran signoutofwamaccounts.ps1 as per this in case Azure Hybrid joined was causing complications, but it seemed to have no affect.

    In summary though - I'm looking for the official Microsoft best practise, or recommended method to reliably (and automatically) transition hundred's of user PCs from one edition of Office "click to run", to another edition of Office click to run...

    Changing user licenses in the Office 365 portal is not enough to achieve this, because we're seeing a large percentage of Office click to run installations on user PCs produce the licensing errors sighted above.

    Thanks in advance for your help,
    Jason.

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