[Office 2016 Mac] - Office 2016 Mac Volume License Asking To Activate

[Carter]

Anyone else having an issue with the Office 2016 for Mac Volume License version asking to be activated?

 

We have our latest image build setup with Office 2016 and everything is great except Microsoft Office 2016 is asking to be activated. The software suite was installed using our install and volume license installer that we get direct from Apple but no luck.

 

Anyone else having a similar issue?

[Mustang]

How are you licensing Office? There is a big change coming to the licensing that will stop a lot of installs from working if they have been licensed wrongly.

What version of the office packages are you running?

[Arthur]

We have our latest image build setup with Office 2016 and everything is great except Microsoft Office 2016 is asking to be activated.

With Office 2016 you need to run the VL Serializer post-deployment of your image so that each Mac is licensed properly.

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3135924

 

With the release of Office 2016 for Mac update 15.17, a new tool was made available to Volume License customers that allows for greater flexibility when Office 2016 for Mac is deployed. The tool is commonly known as the VL Serializer, and it comes in the form of a supplemental .pkg file that's included in the ISO download of the Office 2016 for Mac Standard package in the Volume License Service Center (VLSC). The VL Serializer is a small command-line tool that activates the currently installed version of Office 2016 for Mac on the local computer.

 

The Volume License edition of Office 2016 for Mac allows eligible customers to deploy pre-activated copies of Office applications on a particular user's computer. Before update 15.17, the only supportable method of deploying a Volume License was to run the full application installer from the VLSC.

Because of this behavior, IT departments resorted to unsupported workarounds, such as copying the licensing plist between computers.

 

The licensing plist contains data that's encrypted by using the serial number of the boot drive on the computer where it was generated. At random time intervals, the Office applications will verify that the plist was created on the local computer by decrypting the data through the serial numbers of drives that are currently attached to the computer. If the data cannot be decrypted, Office will go into an unlicensed state without warning. Currently, the time interval between validation checks may be weeks or months, which is why copying the plist between computers appears to work at first. However, customers who use this method end up in a state where their computers randomly "lose" their licenses. In a future update (currently scheduled for 15.20 in March 2016), the license validation check will be performed during every app launch.

 

The following article might be of interest too...

 

https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2016/01/14/creating-an-office-2016-15-18-0-installer/

 

If you combine the latest Office 365 (SKU-less) installer from macadmins.software with the VL Serializer from Microsoft's VLSC you'll end up with an installer that will have less updates to install post-deployment.

[Carter]

Thanks for the info!

I was thinking this was the case yesterday so later in the day I setup DeployStudio to run a script that runs the Office 2016 VL Serializer during Post Deployment. I already have a script made that does the same thing for Adobe Creative Cloud so now both activations run from the same script. I added the VL Serializer installer to the image so it's already there when the script runs.

 

I'd rather MS use a KMS server to deal with the licensing like we do for Windows 7/10 and Office 2016 for PC. Would make life a lot easier.

[JasonNVSD]

I was thinking this was the case yesterday so later in the day I setup DeployStudio to run a script that runs the Office 2016 VL Serializer during Post Deployment.

Can you share your script?

[abillybob]

Can you share your script?

 

There's no actual script. In DeployStudio you just add the package file and tell it to run after imaging the Mac. DeployStudio automatically generates the script.