There is no limit in the license terms on the number of times you can activate, or transfer the license.
That is MS's not so subtle way to "encourage" you to spend more money.
You have to do a phone activation to get around the first erroneous error message
That message that you can't use phone activation is MS's second shot at conning you into spending more money ... <sigh>
When you phone in, wait until you get the option to talk to a live "service" rep.
2017 01 20- “TELEPHONE ACTIVATION IS NO LONGER SUPPORTED FOR YOUR PRODUCT” ERROR WHEN ACTIVATING OFFICE
The problem started in the fall of 2016. In Jan 2017 a MS staffer provided the following excuse. But the problem still exists! MS oops’d, and just hasn’t bothered to fix the problem for much too long. Go to green link below to get the correct phone number for your specific geographic location
<snip
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/fo... >
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 this article (
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/-Telep... ).
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>
