Purchased MS Office 2010 Activation Key Invalid

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/836178 2010 - has a “wizard” that steps through possibilities, many links

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2549291 2007/2003 - links to possible solutions

More details please.

Which Office bundle did you buy: Home and Student, Home and Business, Office Pro?

About the computer itself:

·         Is this a new (from the manufacturer) computer

·         Are you re-installing Office on the same computer

·         Are you trying to transfer the license to another computer

What form of license did you buy?

·         a Retail Boxed CD that allows 2 or 3 concurrent activations  (how many do you have)

·         a Product Key Card that allows 1-user / computer activation

·         Factory installed and activated (mostly for 2007 and earlier)

Where did you buy it from?

·         retail electronics store

·         online electronics store

·         an individual online (ebay, kijiji etc)

·         online download

·         installed at the computer factory

Did you get it as part of a special discount program?

·         Home Use Program, HUP

·         Academic / University discount

·         Military discount

·         other?

Exactly where did you get the Product Key you used?

·         Inside the big-ugly-yellow-plastic-CD Box

·         a Product Key Card

·         online purchase confirmation email 

·         sticker on the computer

·         Certificate of Authenticity or other MS Paperwork

EXACTLY what steps are you taking to install and activate Office.

·         Did you activate the factory installed trial

·         Did you install a trial then use a purchased product key to activate it

·         Did you uninstall the factory trial

·         Did you install from CD

·         Did you download from internet and install in 1 step

·         Did you download from internet, saving to HD. Then run the downloaded file to do the installation

There are a few possible causes. They boil down to:

·         simple typo or misreading of Product key

·         other simple user mistakes / misunderstandings

·         technical problems like incorrect Windows Access Rights

·         conflicts with other software

The tool in KB 836178 walks you through a trouble shooting procedure for Office 2010 Product Keys

This behaviour may occur for one or more of the following reasons.:

·         You have a Trial Version of Office installed that is “intercepting” the activation attempt, uninstall it first

·         Check the numbers and letters on the product key:

§  the number eight (8) can resemble a capitalized B,

§  the number zero (0) can resemble a capitalized O or Q

§  the number six (6) and letter G

§  the letters V V and letter W

·         Office 2010 Product Keys do not Contain following Characters:

·         Numbers: 0 1 5

·         Letters: A E I L N O S U Z

·         Copy the product key from an email message to avoid typing errors.

·         Make sure that you are not using a product key from an older version of Office. These product keys will not work with Office 2010.

·         If you are using a product key from a sticker attached to the bottom of your laptop, or on the back of your desktop computer, look VERY CAREFULLY at the sticker. They are usually the stickers for Microsoft Windows Product Key and will NOT  work with Office 2010.

·         If a Product Key Card was purchased at a retail store and activated at the register, do not use the key that is inside the card to unlock Office 2010. You must logon to the website listed on the card and follow the instructions to obtain the actual product key for the version of Office that you purchased.

·         A product key for an Office 2010 stand-alone product (such as Microsoft Visio Professional 2010) will not be accepted as a product key for an Office 2010 suite. It is important to match the product key to the product for which it is specified.

·         Volume License product keys will not be accepted for a retail Office 2010 product.

·         Product Keys that start with “FC7HF” can only be used on Office Web Apps running on SharePoint

·         Check your Windows Product ID in the Help about screen. Ie PID 00426-068-0288566-86858 Focus on the 3 digit part of the ID if it matches or is within one or two digits of the examples below

·         065, 066, 067, 068 for Ultimate,

·         220, 221 are for Pro

·         230, 231, 221, 232 are for Premium,

·         you probably have an MSDN or Technet key.  There are probably others but they should be close to these posted

·         If none of the above conditions apply, before, or after trying the following procedures you may want to do a Phone Activation and ask the service rep to explain what the specific problem is.

·            

About MSDN or TechNet Product Keys

They are genuine Microsoft product keys for retail licenses, but not for Retail sale. They are intended for a particular product channel either the Microsoft Software Developer Network (MSDN) or TechNet for IT Professionals who pay a subscription fee. The main purpose is for evaluation purposes. It is for one person only to use and no one else. Unfortunately, regardless of the licensing terms, persons still abuse the program, either giveaway product keys or resell it on auction sites. 

What probably happened is, you bought an MSDN licensed key, which carries up to 10 activations unlike full packaged retail licenses which only carry 1 activation. The person who sold it to you probably sold it to 10 other persons. Somewhere along the way, one of those persons might have installed it on a second system, activated it, because it went past 10 activation threshold, Microsoft detected it that it was being abused and blocked the key from further use.

Validate Now:

You can confirm that your software is genuine now. It’s quick and easy: http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/validate/ Click the 'Validate Windows' button. If the validation check fails, then you are going to have to buy your product again. You should contact the vendor for a refund. Depending on where they are in the scam cycle they may give you the refund or they will string you along with delays. You should also contact your credit card company to cancel the transaction or to at the very least give them a heads up on the scam so that they can deny the scammer any further sales.  You may also want to report the vendor to www.microsoft.com/piracy .

If it is a legitimate purchase, then you are possibly having a known problem with Windows 7.  There are 3 possible causes, 4 possible fixes:

First confirm that you are not making a simple typing error.

Second, it may be an access rights problem. There are 2 possible fixes for it. Either activate using "Run As Admin" or "Take Ownership" of the problem drive folders and registry entries. I have provided links to several articles for these types of fixes. Pick one that you can follow and try it.

Third do a phone activation

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/828958

http://support.microsoft.com/common/survey.aspx?scid=sw;en;1844&showpage=1

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/836178

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/903275

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/916180

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2002262

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2549291

http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/Why-Applications-Dont-work-standard-users.html

Sometimes the problem has been that Windows has had problems granting the right access to files, folders and the registry. The following tips provide some workarounds.

As you go from XP to Vista to Win7 certain operations require higher access rights to perform. These access rights are “higher” than even those granted to the Administrator ID by default. These “elevated” rights are accessed by way of the UAC confirmation dialog which is invoked when you select to “Run As Administrator”.

In theory, any one of the following tips should work.  The process is: run one of the fixes, run each affected Office app, reboot TWICE (sorry, I don’t know why, but there appears to be some “Voodoo” at play here. We do it because it works!) TWICE (sorry, I don’t know why, but there appears to be some “Voodoo” at play here. We do it because it works!), try the office apps again to confirm the fix worked.

http://4sysops.com/archives/free-ntfs-permissions-reporter-what-are-the-ntfs-permissions/

This is a good tool for reporting on file access rights