activation of licensed office 2010 on new windows 10 computer

hello

i have an older legal version of office 2010 home/student which i purchased years back.
i have the "disc" and the 25 character product key

i recently purchased a new windows 10 desktop and tried to install the program via the disc, i thought all went well until i tried to open Excel and received the prompt to activate on line or via telephone. (never had this issue before)
when i chose "activate on line" i received a message stating that it could not be activated due to "maximum usage" type issues and that in 29 days it will become unlicensed?

this older version is still good for my basic limited needs and i do not like the idea of being "forced" to sign into a Microsoft account just to keep using a version i already paid for.

is there any way i can keep using this 2010 version stand alone without being bullied and pestered by Microsoft?
would having disconnected from the internet prior to installation have helped?
would having deleted the "preinstalled" new version of office that ships with new windows computers have helped?

thank you for any assistance

So give them a call. When you do, have the activation screen open. There several blocks of numbers that you will have to read to the system and it will give you a new set of numbers that you will have to input and you are good to go

posting a followup, hopefully this will help others

i did uninstall the preloaded 365 office stuff that came with the new desktop and the 2010 version i tried to install prior

did a restart

disconnected from the internet and tried to reinstall 2010 off the disc i have again

went through the process all over and got the same message to "activate on line or over the telephone" but this time i chose activate over the telephone.


i received a message stating that phone activation is no longer supported for this product

rather than give up i did a search on the topic and found some information on this issue which gave an alternate number to try
(866)421-7141

followed all the prompts which basically asks you to regurgitate the code displayed when you try to install and than they give you a huge 48 character code to enter on the screen
they also ask how many computers you currently have this installed on (i chose 0)

ultimately this worked but the entire process was long and cumbersome.
i guess Microsoft does not want to make it easy for anybody to use an older disc even though they paid for the product and it still suits their needs.

just curious?
would it be possible to block this office product either in the firewall or by modification of the host file?
i know that this can be done for certain programs/websites but don't know how it would work in this case being its a Microsoft product and it is essential for windows 10 to communicate with Microsoft servers for operating system updates??

hope this info helps

Try3 said:

Get all the updates, make a new system image. - After that, you will won't care if it contacts MS or not.

FWIW, I had to resort to phone activation for my install of Office 2010 back in 2018 on a new PC (automatic failed), and whilst it is still working, event viewer shows that "The Software Protection service has completed licensing status check" several times a day since. Of course, I don't know who/what it is contacting to do this, if anything.

mngerhold said:

Of course, I don't know who/what it is contacting to do this, if anything.

Perhaps use Process Monitor and CurrPorts (with logging enabled) to monitor/filter when Software Protection service (sppsvc.exe) fires?

This will show you the remote endpoint.