Microsoft home and business issues.

[tinfoilhat 11]

Simple problem for those in the know I hope. We’ve got two copies of office on two separate machines. Both legal, both have product keys etc. Hard drive went pop on one of them and now I need to reinstall office. But I can’t remember which product key goes with which PC. I had a similar issue a couple of years back - that I clearly didn’t learn from - and putting a pre registered key with the wrong account caused all sorts of problems. 

 

So how can I find out which is which?

[the_bloke 17]

If it's up to Office 2010 the key is in the registry on the machine that still works. There are a few utils to save you the time of looking for it. Anything after that and it's all encrypted.

 

Basically, get the key from the active install and you know to use the other key on the re-install.

 

https://www.wikihow.tech/Find-an-Office-Product-Key

[tinfoilhat 11]

It’s 2016, but that’s a really good shout and worth investigating. I’ll have a look!

[tinfoilhat 11]

EdIT. Wont work on 2016. I'll just have to take my best guess. What a crap system!

[alchresearch 214]

This command worked for me, it tells me the last five letters of the key:

Quote

For 32-bit Office and 32-bit Windows: cscript "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16\OSPP.VBS" /dstatus

For 32-bit Office and 64-bit Windows: cscript "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16\OSPP.VBS" /dstatus

For 64-bit Office and 64-bit Windows: cscript "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16\OSPP.VBS" /dstatus

 

[tinfoilhat 11]

Apologies, I missed this I just picked one and went for it and judging by the lack of conflict or anything else nasty everything is running nicely.

 

But I did try the last one. It worked, sort of, and by sort of I used it to the best of my knowledge. I ran the vbs(?) script by finding it in s explorer and it ran and really only gave me further instructions that I didn’t understand.  I could have dug deeper but as I had everything running I didn’t want to balls it up. 

 

Worth leaving for posterity because cause I won’t be the last one in 5is situation I’m sure.