Friday 23 November 2018

Microsoft Office 2010 De-Activates

First of all, I must stress that this article refers to Microsoft Office 2010 with a LEGAL license or key ONLY.

We have recently been getting reports of legal versions of Microsoft Office 2010 suddenly de-activating after having worked for long periods of time. Sometimes after a Windows Update. Do you get these screens after trying to re-activate over the internet:-




Sadly, the news is not particularly good. For the following reasons:-

1) You will not be able to use customer telephone support to report the fault as it has been withdrawn by Microsoft.

2) Microsoft have tightened up security on this particular product. This means that a key designed for ONE computer cannot be used for multiple pc's. Attempts to do so can de-activate Office 2010 on all installations!
So, sharing a single-use key with family and friends can lead to all installations being deactivated by Microsoft.

3) Once the key has been de-activated by Microsoft, you will mot likely never be able to use that particular key again.

PART RESOLUTIONS

1) You could try buying a new fresh key over the internet (Ebay, etc) but these are very scarce, often do not work and are quite expensive. As far as we know, Microsoft do not sell fresh keys for this version of Office, as they would much rather you bought one of their current products.

2) If you are not using Outlook, then there are FREE alternative office versions such as LibreOffice, Apache OpenOffice, WPS Office, etc.

3) A temporary solution to enable you access to Outlook emails and Data in particular can be found in our next blog - 'Temporary Access to a De-Activated Office 2010'