How to Fix Microsoft Office Activation Errors – 10 Tips

If your Microsoft Office product activation failed or you meet some activation errors in Office, most Office features may be disabled. You need to fix the Office activation errors to successfully activate Office so that you can enjoy all the Office features again. You can check the possible solutions below to fix Microsoft Office activation errors.

10 Tips to Fix Microsoft Office Activation Errors

Tip 1. Make Sure You Sign in with the Correct Account

If Microsoft Office asks you to sign in to activate the products, you need to enter the account that you used to buy Office. If you sign in with the wrong email address, you may see a message “We couldn’t find any Office products”. You can try all possible email addresses that you may use to buy Microsoft Office.

To check if your Microsoft account is associated with Office, you can sign in to your Microsoft account to check if your Office product or Microsoft 365 subscription is listed. If it is listed, then it means you can use this Microsoft account to sign in to your Office.

Microsoft 365 Family Review, Price, Buy, and Download

Here’s a review of Microsoft 365 Family subscription/plan. Learn how to download Microsoft 365 Family with desktop Office apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint.

Read More

Tip 2. Check If You Have Installed Multiple Office Copies

If you have installed more than one copy of Microsoft Office, it may cause activation conflicts and errors. You can choose to uninstall the version of Office that you don’t use. Check how to uninstall Office below.

• Press Windows + S, type control panel, and press Enter to open Control Panel on Windows 10/11.
• Select Uninstall a program under Programs to access the “Uninstall or change a program” window.
• Check if you have installed multiple versions of Microsoft Office, if so, you can right-click the unused version and select Uninstall to remove it from your computer. After that, you can restart your computer and check if it fixes the activation errors in Microsoft Office.

Tip 3. Check If Your Microsoft 365 Subscription Is Expired

If you bought a Microsoft 365 subscription and your Microsoft Office is suddenly not activated, you can check if your Microsoft 365 subscription is expired.

• Sign in to your Microsoft account that you used to buy your Microsoft 365 subscription. And go to the Services & subscriptions page.
• Under Subscriptions or Cancelled Subscriptions, you can check the detailed information of your Microsoft 365 subscription. Check if your subscription has expired, if so, you can renew your subscription and your Office apps should be activated again.

Tip 4. Run Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant

Microsoft provides a free tool named Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant to help users fix Microsoft Office activation errors.

• You can go to Microsoft’s official website to download Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant on your computer.
• Click the downloaded SetupProd_Act.exe file to open the installation window of Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant.
• Follow the instructions to troubleshoot your Microsoft Office activation errors.

Google Photos Download: App & Photos Download to PC/Mobile

Learn how to download Google Photos app for PC/Android/iPhone/iPad and how to download photos from Google Photos to your PC, Mac, or mobile device.

Read More

Tip 5. Try to Run Office as Administrator

You can also try to run Microsoft Office as administrator on Windows 11/10 to see if it can fix the Microsoft product activation failed issue.

• Close all Office applications.
• Press Windows + S, type an Office application name like Word in the search box. Right-click the Office application and select Run as administrator.
• Click Yes in the pop-up window to run the Office program as administrator. Check if your Office programs are successfully activated.

Tip 6. Update Microsoft Office

You can update your Microsoft Office to see if it helps fix the Office activation errors and bugs.

For Office 2016 and higher, you can open any Office app like Word and click File -> Account. Click Update Options -> Update Now to update your Office products. You may need to click Enable Updates first if you don’t see the Update Now option. If the Update Options is missing and you only see the About option, then you may have a volume licensing of a group or company.

If you bought Office from Microsoft Store, you can open the Microsoft Store app and sign in to your Microsoft account. Click the three-dot icon at the top-right corner and choose Downloads and Updates -> Get Updates.

Tip 7. Temporarily Disable Antivirus Software

If the Office activation error is caused by antivirus applications, you can temporarily disable your antivirus software. To temporarily disable third-party antivirus software, you can check your antivirus manufacturer’s website. Alternatively, you can go to Control Panel to uninstall the antivirus program.

To temporarily turn off the Windows firewall, you can check: How to Disable and Enable Windows Defender Firewall?

Remember to enable your antivirus program after Office is successfully activated.

Tip 8. Use Office Repair Tool

Microsoft provides a free Office Repair Tool to help users fix various Microsoft Office activation issues. You can use the Office Repair Tool to repair various Office activation problems and fix various Office activation error codes. Check the list of error codes that the Office Repair Tool can fix.

Tip 9. Reset Microsoft Office Settings

You can also follow the operation below to reset Microsoft Office settings to see if it helps fix Microsoft Office activation errors.

• Open File Explorer and open C drive on your PC.
• Next, navigate to the path: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16.
• Find the OSPPREARM.exe file. You can also type OSPPREARM.exe in the search box to quickly search for the file.
• Right-click the OSPPREARM.exe file and select Run as administrator. Click Yes in the UAC window. It will run this program to reset Microsoft Office apps settings.

Tip 10. Uninstall and Reinstall Office

You can also uninstall your Microsoft Office and try to reinstall it again to see if it works well.

To uninstall Office, you can follow the guide above to remove it via Control Panel. Or you can download and use the Office Uninstall Tool provided by Microsoft to automatically uninstall Office. You can download the Office Uninstall Tool from this page: Uninstall Office from a PC.

If nothing helps you fix the activation error in Microsoft office, then you can contact Microsoft Support for help.

Click to Tweet

Free Way to Recover Office Files

If some files are unexpectedly lost or you deleted some files by mistake and emptied the Recycle Bin, you can use a professional file recovery program to easily recover deleted/lost files like Word/Excel/PPT files, etc.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery is a top free data recovery program that helps you recover any deleted or lost files. You can use this tool to recover any deleted/lost files, photos, videos, etc. from a Windows PC or laptop, USB flash drive, SD/memory card, external hard drive, SSD, etc.

This program can tackle various data loss situations. You can even use it to recover data from a corrupted/formatted hard drive, recover data when the PC won’t boot, etc.

Download and install MiniTool Power Data Recovery on your PC or laptop, and check how to recover data below.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

• Launch MiniTool Power Data Recovery to access its main UI.
• Under Logical Drives, you can click the target drive and click Scan. Alternatively, you can also click the Devices tab and choose the whole disk/device and click Scan.
• Let the scan process finish. Then you can check the scan result to find wanted files, check them and click the Save Choose a new destination to store the recovered files.

Tip: If you only want to scan and recover several kinds of files, you can click the Scan Settings icon in the left panel and choose the file types you want to scan.

Professional Free File Backup Software for PC

For Windows users, you might find a professional PC backup program is very useful. You can use a PC backup program to make a backup of your computer OS and important data with ease.

MiniTool ShadowMaker, also developed by MiniTool, is a popular free PC backup tool. You can use it to back up any data on your PC.

You can use it to select any files and folders to back up them to another place on your computer or back up them to another device like a USB flash drive or external hard drive. You can also select a whole partition or several partitions to back up or select the whole disk content to back up.

MiniTool ShadowMaker also lets you create a backup of your Windows OS and lets you restore your OS from the backup if your computer has problems.

You may also use the File Sync feature to sync data to another location or device.

To automatically back up the selected data, you can the Automatic Backup feature.

To only keep the latest backup copy, you can use the Incremental Backup feature.

Download and use this program to back up your PC data for free now.

MiniTool ShadowMaker TrialClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Conclusion

This post introduces some tips to help fix Microsoft Office activation errors. A free file recovery guide is also offered to help you recover deleted or lost files.

You may also find some other useful products from MiniTool Software website like MiniTool Partition Wizard, MiniTool Video Converter, MiniTool MovieMaker, MiniTool Video Repair, MiniTool uTube Downloader, etc. You can download and use any product you are interested in. If you have any issues with using MiniTool Software products, you can contact [email protected].

Also read: Learn the best trick for data recovery hard drive on Windows 11/10/8/7