What are ways to track Office 2013 Home & Business licenses?
Suppose you are an IT manager at a small to medium sized business, and you have 40 or so license for Office 2013. It's not volume licensing, and it's not OEM - these are retail licenses.
In the past (Office 2010 and older), you could install the product with the appropriate product key, and keep track of it afterwards. In Office 2013, office.com keeps track of the keys, except they aren't the same keys you were given by Microsoft. Several people were involved in the install process, and as a result the licenses are associated with different Microsoft accounts.
How would one even begin to go about matching the blue cards I have with "product key" on them with the actual key Microsoft has on its website?
I can enter all my product keys into a spreadsheet, but they are useless because they don't match the products I have installed.
Answers (2)
Have a look at this, might give you an idea. It scans the computer/network for MS software.
http://www.microsoft.com/sam/en/ca/msia.aspx
You can use something like this for that number of machines and keep a spread sheet
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html
Comments:
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According to Nirsoft's website, Produkey doesn't support 2013 (at least not yet...) - twalkey 10 years ago
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Yeah something is different a bout 2013 licensing. The best I've been able to come up with is obtaining the last 5 digits of the key... which still doesn't correspond to the product keys on the business-sized cards they ship to you when you get Home & Business licenses.
See: http://www.itninja.com/blog/view/tracking-oem-retail-and-volume-licensing-for-windows-and-office - Ultimation 10 years ago
The best answer I can suggest to anyone else is: A) Buy volume licensing or insist that whoever buys software buys volume licensing, and B) Write down the "new" product key Microsoft provides on office.microsoft.com (choose "Install from a disc") on the card so you can match the key required to INSTALL with the license key Microsoft uses later. - Ultimation 10 years ago