Purchased Microsoft Office 365 opens as Office 2019 Prof Plus with "GET GENUINE OFFICE" warning

Michelle Minette 1 Reputation point
2021-09-30T18:56:51.717+00:00

I have a personal Outlook profile with a purchase of Office 365 for family with 2 of 5 downloads for Office 365. I also have a work email with a university that provides Office Prof Plus 2019 as part of my job. I prefer Office 365 and on prior computers have had no difficulty downloading 365 and having it work. With this new Acer Aspire 5 that was refurbished (not sure if that's the problem at all, though), I have uninstalled and reinstalled Office 365 multiple times, multiple ways (using the control panel, settings, safe mode, and the Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant. I have signed out and signed back in with my Outlook email. I have "changed license" with my Outlook profile and restarted the apps and the computer. EVERY TIME the apps open with 2019 and the "GET GENUINE OFFICE" banner across the top of the app. I am unable to find the Admin App under my Outlook profile on the Office website, which is the one suggested solution to the issue. Why is that? What else can I do?

ALSO, let me just put this out there---it's extremely frustrating to purchase an item that malfunctions and not have a direct way to contact help from the company that sells it.

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. Emi Zhang-MSFT 21,626 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor
    2021-10-01T02:42:01.93+00:00

    Hi @Michelle Minette ,
    There are 2 ways you can try:

    1. Run the uninstall Office tool to help you uninstall all versions of Office from PC completely and re-install Office 365: https://aka.ms/SaRA-officeUninstallFromPC
    2. Uninstall Office product key, please follow these steps:
      Search CMD, right-click the Command Prompt and run as administrator. Then copy and paste the command, 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  
    

    136842-493.png

    If you can find the Office product key in list, try to remove it by typing the following command with the Last 5 characters of installed product key (I replace it with XXXXX, but what you type in is what you see on your computer) in this interface:

    cscript.exe "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office\Office16\ospp.vbs" /unpkey:XXXXX  
    

    If the 32bit version of Office installed on a 64bit operation, run the following command:

    cscript.exe "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Office\Office16\ospp.vbs" /unpkey:XXXXX  
    

    136843-494.png

    Just checking in to see if the information was helpful. Please let us know if you would like further assistance.


    If the response is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.
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  2. Michelle Minette 1 Reputation point
    2021-10-01T16:00:56.593+00:00

    Thanks! I tried the first solution several times and it didn't change. I began the second version, but because Office 2019 is interfering (not Office 2016) I don't have the right text to identify the product key I want to remove. When I replaced "Office16" with "Office19" in the phrasing it did not work. Is there phrasing specific for my version?