Discounted Office Professional Plus for sale online

MisterEd · 20 Feb 2021

Eight years ago I obtained a copy of Office Professional Plus 2010 for a non-profit organization I work with. I bought it from a company this is authorized by Microsoft to distriubte volume license software. When I logged onto the Microsoft Volume Licensing Service Center I was given the following:

Link to download Office Professional Plus 2010 installation file
MAK Product Key for volume license

Types of product keys

MAK Product Key - Allows one time activation with a Microsoft activation server
KMS Product Key - Allows multiple activations through a companies own activation servers

Note when you buy Office through the volume license channel you are actually buying activations. No matter how many activations you buy you only get one Product Key for all of them. You get to use the same Product Key to install Office until you exceed the number of activations purchased.

I see a number of online websites that offer Office Professional Plus 2016 and 2019 for sale at a greatly discounted price. Since these products are only normally supposed to be available through the volume license channel where are these products coming from?

Suggested scenario:

These keys may have been bought originally through the volume license channel but are being resold online. For example suppose an online seller obtained 100 activations from some company. They then sell the same MAK Product Key up to 100 times to different buyers.

Does this scenario make sense? Would that explain how these copies of Office are being sold?

pparks1 · 20 Feb 2021

Yea, most of these keys are sold non legally. For offices I get mine via Office 365. The cloud storage alone for me is woth the cost. Getting to install office anywhere I want, is just an added bonus.

MisterEd · 20 Feb 2021

pparks1 said:

Yea, most of these keys are sold non legally. For offices I get mine via Office 365. The cloud storage alone for me is woth the cost. Getting to install office anywhere I want, is just an added bonus.

Some of these places seem iffy while some have customers who say they have good luck with the keys purchased.

I looked at the installation instructions one of these sites has provided. Here is a summary:

Go to website: "https://setup.office.com/"
Log onto your Microsoft account
Enter product key provided by seller
If key verified you are given download link for Office

If you look at Microsoft's own information for installing Office these appear to be the same as theirs.

What i can't figure out is how are people buying keys from these sellers that the Microsoft office download servers say are valid? Some of these sellers for Office keys have been around for several years now. Apparently these are for the most part good valid keys. You would think that if Microsoft thought they were illegal then they would shut down these sellers. Like I said in my first post maybe these keys were originally bought legally through volume license distributors. They then for whatever reason ended up being resold retail online. I know that technically that is not legal to do but as long as these are valid keys then maybe Microsoft has decided to not crack down on this practice.

I can see that anyone that wants to buy Office for business use would want to stay totally legal and buy Office through official channels. They want to continue to get support from Microsoft and stay in good graces with them.

As long as Microsoft turns a blind eye to the unofficial sellers of their products then they will be continue to be sold.

Bree · 20 Feb 2021

MisterEd said:

...suppose an online seller obtained 100 activations from some company. They then sell the same MAK Product Key up to 100 times to different buyers.
Does this scenario make sense? Would that explain how these copies of Office are being sold?

Sadly the 'eBay fly-by-night seller' scenario is more like: beg borrow or steal a MAK Product Key with 1 or more activations then sell the same MAK as many times as possible before the ~~buyers~~ suckers cotton on to the scam.

idgat · 20 Feb 2021

Depending on how old the version of Office is, I sometimes think Microsoft's attitude to pirate keys is .... "Meh!"

I currently volunteer for a not-for-profit organisation who previously had a VLK (volume licensing key) for installation of up to 50 copies of MS Office 2010. At that stage, the license key was required for activation.

A couple of years ago, the whole system was updated (new hardware and Windows 10), Office 2010 was dropped and the organisation went to LibreOffice .... a bit of a sharp learning curve for many non-intuitive computer users ("Where's the new Save as button ... ?") but it is now embedded into our organisation.

However, there was still a need to access some old MS Access databases, and an alternative freeware publishing program Scribus didn't go over too well. So, I recently re-installed MS Access 2010 and MS Publisher 2010 from the vlk disc.

Surprise. Surprise. No license key was required during installation, and all activated immediately.

I s'pose only time will tell ...

Try3 · 21 Feb 2021

idgat said:

Surprise. Surprise. No license key was required during installation, and all activated immediately.
I s'pose only time will tell ...

You should be alright. You re-installed onto a computer that had previously had an activated copy of Office 2010 on it.

Denis

idgat · 21 Feb 2021

Try3 said:

You should be alright. You re-installed onto a computer that had previously had an activated copy of Office 2010 on it.
Denis

Nope, 3 of 4 of them are new devices. Off.2010 was installed on the earlier (subsequently relaced) devices. And the (re-built) network domain has a different name.

All I can think of was that the license was for 50 installations, and at most, it would only have been used on 20. The leftover licenses are still good ?

Try3 · 21 Feb 2021

Interesting. Thanks for replying.

I recently did a new installation of Office 2007 [normal licence not VLK] and it still demanded a product key.

Oh, and I am not looking over your shoulder - my last post was supposed to be a question not a statement.

All the best,
Denis

MisterEd · 21 Feb 2021

idgat said:

Surprise. Surprise. No license key was required during installation, and all activated immediately.
I s'pose only time will tell ...

The Product Key is not require to install Office. However, it will not be activated until you enter the Product Key. To enter the Product Key:

Select the FILE tab
Select Account
To the right select "Change Product Key"

Back in 2013 I bought the following for our non-profit from Techoup*:

Windows 8 Pro Upgrade 32-Bit (Includes Software Assurance) $12.00
Office Professional Plus 2010 (Includes Software Assurance) $32.00

*TechSoup is an authorized distributor for software donated by companies like MicroSoft. Only 501(C)(3) non-profit organizations can buy from TechSoup.

After the purchase I logged onto the Microsoft Volume License Service Center website and downloaded the software installation files and got the MAK Product Keys. I forgot about getting Software Assurance. I just downloaded the install file for Office Professional Plus 2013 and its MAK Product Key today from the VLSC website. I upgraded Office Pro Plus 2010 to Office Pro Plus 2013 for free. I feel kind of dumb because I could have done that seven years ago.

I upgraded Windows 8 Pro to Windows 8.1 Pro for free. Even though Windows 8.1 is volume license version I upgraded it to Windows 10 Pro for free when it came out.

idgat · 21 Feb 2021

MisterEd said:

However, it will not be activated until you enter the Product Key. To enter the Product Key .....

Nope, activated immediately on first use, no product key required at any stage, anywhere. Checked/tested/confirmed all components - Word, Excel, etc etc.