Unable to Activate Office 365 License Included with a New HP

[Tomy50]

I recently bought an HP Desktop and paid extra for a 15-month subscription for Office 365 Personal. Prior to the purchase I tried out Office 365 on my old PC under the 30-day free trial arrangement. After I received my new PC, I started Word and it recognized a license for Office 365; however, it would not activate it since it the Trial version was active in my MS Account. The message essentially said to re-activate after the trial was over. So, I waited until after the Trial version expired. At that point none of the Office apps worked of course but instead of recognizing the license that came with the PC I only got prompts to buy a new subscription. I confirmed that my Microsoft Account had no record of the license. Tried uninstalling Office 365, but still no recognition of the license that came with the PC.

I initially contacted HP, but after being shuffled through 3 departments I was told that I needed to contact Microsoft. For the next two days I went through MS’s Get Help option at least 7 times requesting a call back. (The Chat option always reverts to the call back option for unknown reasons.) Most of the time I got an automated call back within a minute but have never been connected to an agent – just an open line after the bot asks a couple of questions.

Being in desperate need to get my Office apps back, I finally subscribed to Office 365 Personal on a monthly basis (which I’m sure will complicate the resolution of this problem).  That was easy and worked fine.

Can anyone give me guidance on how to activate the Office 365 license I paid for?

Thanks – Tom Yingling

[Irwin6]

Hi @Tomy50,

Welcome to HP Support Community.

Thank you for posting your query, I will be glad to assist you.

I'm sorry to hear about the challenges you're facing with activating the Office 365 Personal license that came with your new HP desktop

I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused, I'm here to help you today.

Please follow the below steps to activate it.

With the pre-installed Office licence, you should just need to log into Office with your Microsoft Account details.

To activate the licence and associate the licence to your Microsoft Account use the same email which was used while purchasing the Laptop.

Click on the link to login to login to the MS account.

Please mark this post as “Accepted Solution” if the issue is resolved and if you feel this reply was helpful click “Yes”.

I hope this helps.

Take care and have a great day ahead!

Irwin6

HP Support

[Tomy50]

Hi Irwin6, thanks for taking the time to address my problem. I provide pro bono tech support for friends and family (retirement hobby) and bought this PC for a friend. I included my personal e-mail on the PC order, but set my friend up with his own MS Account. When I did the initial install, I used his MS Account and when I accessed Word for the first time, it recognized there was an Office 365 license associated with the purchase, but declined to install it since there was a Trial version of Office 365 running (in my friend’s MS Account). So, I’m surprised that the license is associated with my MS Account since I didn’t use it during the setup. But if I can get the license activated in my MS Account, I can live with that. (I have MS Basic licensed in my account, plus a standalone version of Office 19, but have been planning to move to MS 365 anyway).

To test your recommendation, I created a new account on my friend’s PC, logged in to my MS account and started Word. Got an offer to accept a one-day license for Office 365, which I declined. I then ran SaRA to try and reset the activation, and this appeared to fail (“problem running MS Activation diagnostic”). However, several minutes later I got a notice in my System Tray that I (the PC) had a subscription at the Microsoft Store for MS 365 Personal for a 12-month subscription. Clicked on that link, saw the offer with a “Claim” button, clicked on the Claim … and it brought up Word with an offer to accept a license for Office 2019 (one of the licenses in my MS Account), which I declined. So the Claim offer is still out there in the MS Store and the question now is how to redeem it (if I can even figure out how to get back to that place).

Hope you can follow this and possibly offer me some more advice on how to proceed. I feel like I’m almost at the finish line …

Tom Yingling

[Tomy50]

Just to let you know, my issue has been resolved. I received an unexpected call yesterday from a MS Technical Support Rep. This was six days after I first tried to contact them - I didn’t even know that my case was still open with them! The MS Rep worked on the PC for about two hours. At the end, she could not get the license that came with the PC associated with my Microsoft Account. She said that I should go back to the manufacturer (HP in this case), explain that the license included with the PC could not be activated, and request a Product Key, which Microsoft could then help activate. Before doing that I went back and retried some of the things I saw her try and eventually I got the license activated.

I learned a couple of things during this process that may help others with a similar problem. The most important thing was that the license appeared in the Microsoft Store with an option to “Claim” the license. To get there you need to click on the Microsoft Store icon in the Taskbar and then click on Library at the bottom left. At the Library screen, click on the “Included with device” menu option If you have a license associated with your PC it will appear there and you can try to activate it my clicking the Claim button (see below). This eventually worked for me but it took several tries along with cleaning up my MS Account. As long as you see that message in the Store you know that your license is still waiting to be activated in your Microsoft Account.

I also learned that the license does not need to be activated in the MS Account of the person who bought the PC. In my case, while I used my e-mail address on the original order with HP, the subscription was eventually activated in the MS Account of my friend who was the recipient of the PC.

Thanks for your help Irwin6 – and good luck to any of you who may experience this problem.

Tom

[Irwin6]

Hi @Tomy50,

That's great! Happy to hear that the issue has been resolved. I appreciate your efforts in performing the steps to fix it and contacting HP community support. If you need any assistance in the future, feel free to reach out to us.

Take care and have a great day ahead!

Irwin6

HP Support