In this tech tip, we’re going to cover how to deal with the “Unlicensed Product” error / red title bar that you might occasionally see in Office 2010 or Office 2013 when you are licensing against an Office 365 subscription.
One of the things to remember is that when you leverage an Office 365 software-eligible subscription, it does not license your local copy of Office with a product key. It uses a software liaison that will frequently reach out to Microsoft’s servers to validate that your copy of Office is legitimate for use. Often times, this piece of software gets confused and “breaks” Office, leaving you with a program that’s stuck in reduced functionality mode – indicated by a red bar across the top of the app.
The easiest way to fix this is to simply “remind” Office which user is licensed to use it.
For Office 2010:
.: Open a Command Prompt as an administrator, and then copy/paste or type in one of the following commands below – quotations included – for whatever your corresponding versions of Windows and Office are, and then press enter.
32-bit Office and 32-bit Windows 64-bit Office and 64-bit Windows |
32-bit Office and 64-bit Windows |
"C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE14\OSAUI.exe /K" |
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE14\OSAUI.exe /K" |
This will bring up the Office Sign-In Assistant dialog box; you’ll want to type in the credentials for the user that you’re trying to license Office for. (These are the creds that you would log into Office 365 with.)
For Office 2013:
.: Open a Command Prompt as an administrator, and then navigate to one of the paths below by copy/pasting the first area of code – quotations included – for whatever your corresponding versions of Windows and Office are and press enter. Once you’re in the appropriate folder, you can then copy/paste or type in: cscript ospp.vbs /act
and press enter.
32-bit Office and 32-bit Windows 64-bit Office and 64-bit Windows |
32-bit Office and 64-bit Windows |
cd "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\" |
cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office15\" |
cscript ospp.vbs /act |
cscript ospp.vbs /act |
That’s it!