We’ve seen offers for Microsoft 365 that work by sharing a single Microsoft account! You login to Office using a given email/password (not yours) which means you’re sharing the same OneDrive storage and seeing other people’s documents in the Recent Documents list. There are many suppliers in this area of wildly varying legitimacy, so be careful.

But there are also plenty of consumer bundles available like Home and Student which aren’t normally bought by organizations in bulk. That explains some Office bundles, especially ‘Professional Plus’ which is only available to volume license customers, not retail. It seems more likely this is an under-the-table deal, perhaps by staff in the organizations? Sometimes companies buy more licenses/keys than they need and you’re buying one of the extras.īut are these excess licenses being sold by the original purchaser? It’s hard to understand why a company would sell off licenses for a pittance, assuming they are allowed to resell them at all. The best we can tell is that you’re buying a legitimate product key sold by Microsoft to some large organization. Somehow the seller is getting their licenses very cheaply to sell for such low prices and still make money. After all, that’s way under either the wholesale or high-volume license cost. If someone is selling $400 software for $60 or less, there’s something strange happening.

It’s accepted by Microsoft as legitimate (due to activation) but the path that the product key reaches you might not be entirely ‘kosher’. A cheap price and you get the software activated, albeit by some less common method. Let’s assume we’re talking about a deal like what we’ve described above. There’s no clear answer to that question because the sourcing isn’t known. That simple web page lets you type in the product key or Installation ID and, hopefully, get back an activation code you can put into Office. Use a smartphone because Microsoft will offer to send a text link to a special web page. Now it’s easier calling for phone activation. You had to type into your phone a 63 digit long Installation ID then write down a long Confirmation ID. This has been available since the start of Office software activation but is now much easier. You call a special Microsoft number to get an activation code.

Just one example of the extra steps that might be needed for Office software activation.Ī common requirement is telephone activation.

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