How to find Office 2016 serial key

Cliff S · 11 Oct 2019

Can I view my product key online?

If you bought Office 365 or Office Home & Student

Your product key isn't displayed online. If Office is prompting you for a product key, you can sign in using the Microsoft account that you used to buy and download Office.

If you bought Office Home & Business, Office Professional, and individual Office apps

Product keys for one-time purchases of Office Home & Business, Office Professional, and individual Office apps are available at the Microsoft account, Services & subscriptions page. However, you don't need a product key to reinstall or activate these products. If these products are prompting you for a product key, you can sign in using the Microsoft account that you used to buy and download Office.

If you still want to view your product key, here's how:

Go to the Microsoft account, Services & subscriptions page and sign in, if prompted.

Select View product key. Note that this product key won't match the product key shown on an Office product key card or in the Microsoft Store for the same purchase. This is normal.

Using product keys with Office - Office Support

sean5302 · 12 Oct 2019

I do appreciate that people are trying to help me.
I opened Outlook 2016.
On the Account page I see nothing about ownership other than my email address.
If I use that to try and activate the larger HDD Office settings, it's not accepted.
The script says the product is activated, asks me whether I want to change the product key and tells me I'm connected to One Drive- personal.

That's it.
I'm stuck.

Cliff S · 12 Oct 2019

I have O365 home and not Office 2016, but does 2016 have a sign in/out under accounts?

How to find Office 2016 serial key-image-001.png

sean5302 · 12 Oct 2019

No, it doesn't.
The function allows me to add or remove an Office account, but there is no sign-in.

Cliff S · 12 Oct 2019

I'm stumped now.
Maybe @Kari or @Wynona two of the forums Office experts can help, after they see the notification that I tagged them.

sean5302 · 12 Oct 2019

Thank you.

simrick · 15 Oct 2019

Maybe, go back to your old disk, install Macrium Free, "Image" the drive to an external one, then install the new disk and restore the Macrium image to it.

I just did this today on one of my systems (upgrading from a 240GB SSD to a 500GB SSD) using Macrium, and Office is still activated. So are all my other paid programs - even the ones I got "free" for a limited time.

I have looked in the https://account.microsoft.com/services/ page for my account, and I see a link there for my Office 2013 Pro to "view product key and install". If you don't have that, perhaps you originally activated the Office software using a different Microsoft account?

sean5302 · 08 Nov 2019

What a flipping job this has been.
I've had several emails to and from Microsoft. Every reply they gave me has been vacuous, as if delivered by a non-human and not addressing anything I asked. Horrible company.
I eventually phoned them and they wanted details of the credit card I paid with when I bought Office 2016.
Long wait while the bank responded, but it transpires I'd used my BTinternet account to pay whereas my registered Microsoft account is at Outlook.com
As soon as I gave the bank's payment reference, Microsoft sent something that just activated everything online. I didn't need to enter any details, numbers or anything.
I wish I hadn't paid Microsoft for anything. They're probably the worst company I've ever dealt with.

simrick · 08 Nov 2019

sean5302 said:

What a flipping job this has been.
I've had several emails to and from Microsoft. Every reply they gave me has been vacuous, as if delivered by a non-human and not addressing anything I asked. Horrible company.
I eventually phoned them and they wanted details of the credit card I paid with when I bought Office 2016.
Long wait while the bank responded, but it transpires I'd used my BTinternet account to pay whereas my registered Microsoft account is at Outlook.com
As soon as I gave the bank's payment reference, Microsoft sent something that just activated everything online. I didn't need to enter any details, numbers or anything.
I wish I hadn't paid Microsoft for anything. They're probably the worst company I've ever dealt with.

Wow, what a lot of trouble! You might want to start making Macrium Reflect images of your OS drive, so if anything happens you can restore an older image and be back to normal in a few minutes.

sean5302 · 08 Nov 2019

simrick said:

Wow, what a lot of trouble! You might want to start making Macrium Reflect images of your OS drive, so if anything happens you can restore an older image and be back to normal in a few minutes.

Well, I paid my money for Acronis Disk Director and Acronis True Image. They weren't cheap.
I read your comment about this before and was grateful for it, thanks.
After now getting my larger hdd active, it has downloaded updates and done quite a bit of disk checking.
I'm just so unhappy with Microsoft. Apologies if this sort of language isn't allowed here, but they really are a shower of *******s.
I still don't know what my licence key is. From memory, Office 2016 cost me around £330 and I wish I'd bought it in a box, from PC World or some other shed. I could have turned my very large house upside down and found the box, label and serial and it wouldn't have taken months to sort something I legitimately paid for.
Thank God for this forum, and people like you, to help us. Very grateful.