License transfer

Question

I have Product Key for my Microsoft Office, it was given by the vendor while purchased my old laptop. They told me it is lifetime license.

While i tried to activate on the new laptop, the activation failed, as it says it is illegitimate product, does this mean the old vendor actually gave me a pirated version????

Answer 1

Dear feisan pua,

Thank you for sharing your question with the Microsoft community.

I understand that you seem to have previously given away pre-installed Office with the purchase of your old laptop, but you are having problems reactivating it on your new computer.

If you had previously purchased your computer from a regular offline shop and were gifted your pre-installed Office (which was already installed in your computer and may have prompted you to activate it when you switched on your computer), you can trust that the Office is correct.

• However, I noticed that you were prompted for an illegal product when you activated it, and I would like to confirm with you that the Office subscription came from there?

Usually the activation key for Office can only be used once, you can see the relevant product information in the subscription screen of your Microsoft account: Microsoft account | Subscriptions

 

If you can see it here, it means your Office is genuine. And you can click Product -> Click Install on the subscription screen on your new computer.

You can refer to the description in this article to reactivate Office: Activate Office after reinstalling or installing on a different device - Microsoft Support

If you can't get enough help through Microsoft's regular self-help methods (e.g. involving account access), since community support must now adhere to the following two privacy guidelines:

1. Privacy and Security: Public sharing of financial and subscription issues involving personal information is not appropriate on the forums.
2. Access to account information: Community Support cannot directly view a user's subscription details or billing information. Therefore, we cannot process payments or make changes to your account. This information should be handled by the chat support staff in a separate window.

You can try to create a new Microsoft account to access the online chat service to help you try to activate it and provide the relevant account and proof of identity, such as email address/bank card number information/address details within the account, and so on. Here are some steps you can follow:

Contact Microsoft Support.

1. Visit this website: Contact - Microsoft Support
2. Enter your question in the search box there. For example, subscription/tax invoice/refund etc.

3. Now click on Get Help and select Contact Support below.
4. Go to the Products and Services tab and select the Microsoft 365 and Office category or Other Products.
5. On the Category tab, select Manage Subscriptions or Other Alternative.
6. Go to Confirmation.
7. You can now select the option to chat with a support specialist on your web browser.

Tip: The chat support team has limited working hours, so if you see the last window indicating that you cannot be contacted, we recommend that you try again the next day. If you prefer phone support, you can leave your phone number. In this way, they will be able to contact you and help you with your problem.

Thank you for your understanding and support and we wish you all the best.

Best regards

Isabella-MSFT | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

Answer 2

Hi, you can only use the Product Key once to redeem perpetual versions of Office. Thereafter, you can reinstall Office from Services & Subscriptions of the Microsoft Account that you used to setup your Office. Here is a direct link: https://account.microsoft.com/services  If you can see an install link for your Office you can install from there, BUT you must uninstall Office from the old computer before installing on the new one. You should the install link as per the below: