Disclaimer: My title is a horrible generalization but I am shocked by how stupid Microsoft is with the way they set things up
Disclaimer 2: This is a little bit my fault, but not really
Story: One of my users had their computer die while I was out of the country, traveling for work. We purchased a new computer for this user as well as a copy of Office 2013 Professional. The computer and Office arrived before I was back in the country, and since they needed to work, I told them to go ahead and set up the computer and install Office and do what work they could. I figured that as soon as I got back, I would wipe the computer and set it up on the domain and give them their normal standard user access. Yes, this is a smaller company and there was no tech available locally to perform the installation. Even if there was, I'm not sure even I would've avoided this stupid Microsoft "trap". It is important to note that this is the first time our company has purchased Office 2013 and so it was our first experience with it; I was assuming that installation and activation of Office would go just as it has with every Office before, or with Windows 8 which is a recent MS product I did have experience with.
So apparently during the Activation phase of Office 2013, it asks you to sign in with a Windows Live account. What it DOESN'T TELL YOU ANYWHERE is that once you sign in with that account, that license key will be FOREVER ATTACHED to that Windows Live ID. In fact, Microsoft doesn't really give you any kind of information or warning whatsoever: it just tells you to login to Windows Live. So of course, my user, not knowing any better (I'm not sure I would've known any better either considering I've never had to reinstall Office 2013 before) used their PERSONAL Windows Live account to activate the software.
Of course, when I finally got back to the Office and wiped everything and went to reinstall Office again, it wouldn't let me do so without using the "correct" Windows Live account. I called Microsoft and got bounced around to various departments but all with the same message: IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO TRANSFER AN OFFICE LICENSE FROM A MICROSOFT LIVE ACCOUNT ONCE IT HAS BEEN ATTACHED. I asked to speak to a supervisor, I asked to escalate the request. Nothing. So look where this leaves me:
Option 1: The user has to give me their personal e-mail address and password, giving me access to all of their Microsoft services such as their personal e-mail and skydrive.
Option 1A: The user has to give me their personal e-mail address and password and abandon their account and go through the hassle of notifying all their friends and family of their change of e-mail and move all their skydrive files.
Option 2: The user keeps their e-mail address and password secret, but if they ever leave the company, or god-forbid we ever upgrade the Office on their computer, then the license is forfeit because we won't have the account information for activation purposes.
All of these are horrible options. Does anyone else think this is a completely draconian policy by Microsoft? This is MY LICENSE (or my company's anyway) and I can't use it as I want to in a completely legal manner!
Fast forward to a couple of weeks later. I'm in one of our South American offices and I'm doing installs of like 10 recently-purchased copies of Office 2013 Pro. I've wised up to Microsoft's new policy, which still has no warning: they should have a very clear CONFIRMATION page that says
"WARNING, Please review the following information: the key ABCDE-FGHIJ-KLMNO-PQRST-UVWXY will be FOREVER and PERMANENTLY ATTACHED to the following Windows Live account name@domain.com"
...with a nice clear "CONFIRM" button below. But they don't have that, so anyway...
What I've decided to do is create a new and unique Windows Live account for each License Key. So If my license ends in UVWXY as above, I am creating a Windows Live account called "office.2013.pro-UVWXY@mycompany.com". I am doing this for all ten licenses in a row, and I guess somewhere along the line I failed to log out of one account and log into the next one, and I ended up with two licenses on the same Windows Live ID. I called Microsoft again and they told me to screw off. Again, this is a normal, understandable human error. I'm not incompetent, I was simply tired and made an error doing a repetitive task. But Microsoft has NO ALLOWANCE for correcting errors. This is ridiculous.
What I also find stunning is these are copies of Office 2013 PROFESSIONAL. Yea, it is not a Volume or Open license. Yea, we're not a giant corporate enterprise with our own Microsoft rep on the other line. But it is still, supposedly, a product aimed at BUSINESSES (I'm sure of this because the two levels below are called "Office 2013 Home and Student" and "Office 2013 Home and (Small) Business"), and yet they treat their users like morons and garbage.
Disclaimer 2: This is a little bit my fault, but not really
Story: One of my users had their computer die while I was out of the country, traveling for work. We purchased a new computer for this user as well as a copy of Office 2013 Professional. The computer and Office arrived before I was back in the country, and since they needed to work, I told them to go ahead and set up the computer and install Office and do what work they could. I figured that as soon as I got back, I would wipe the computer and set it up on the domain and give them their normal standard user access. Yes, this is a smaller company and there was no tech available locally to perform the installation. Even if there was, I'm not sure even I would've avoided this stupid Microsoft "trap". It is important to note that this is the first time our company has purchased Office 2013 and so it was our first experience with it; I was assuming that installation and activation of Office would go just as it has with every Office before, or with Windows 8 which is a recent MS product I did have experience with.
So apparently during the Activation phase of Office 2013, it asks you to sign in with a Windows Live account. What it DOESN'T TELL YOU ANYWHERE is that once you sign in with that account, that license key will be FOREVER ATTACHED to that Windows Live ID. In fact, Microsoft doesn't really give you any kind of information or warning whatsoever: it just tells you to login to Windows Live. So of course, my user, not knowing any better (I'm not sure I would've known any better either considering I've never had to reinstall Office 2013 before) used their PERSONAL Windows Live account to activate the software.
Of course, when I finally got back to the Office and wiped everything and went to reinstall Office again, it wouldn't let me do so without using the "correct" Windows Live account. I called Microsoft and got bounced around to various departments but all with the same message: IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO TRANSFER AN OFFICE LICENSE FROM A MICROSOFT LIVE ACCOUNT ONCE IT HAS BEEN ATTACHED. I asked to speak to a supervisor, I asked to escalate the request. Nothing. So look where this leaves me:
Option 1: The user has to give me their personal e-mail address and password, giving me access to all of their Microsoft services such as their personal e-mail and skydrive.
Option 1A: The user has to give me their personal e-mail address and password and abandon their account and go through the hassle of notifying all their friends and family of their change of e-mail and move all their skydrive files.
Option 2: The user keeps their e-mail address and password secret, but if they ever leave the company, or god-forbid we ever upgrade the Office on their computer, then the license is forfeit because we won't have the account information for activation purposes.
All of these are horrible options. Does anyone else think this is a completely draconian policy by Microsoft? This is MY LICENSE (or my company's anyway) and I can't use it as I want to in a completely legal manner!
Fast forward to a couple of weeks later. I'm in one of our South American offices and I'm doing installs of like 10 recently-purchased copies of Office 2013 Pro. I've wised up to Microsoft's new policy, which still has no warning: they should have a very clear CONFIRMATION page that says
"WARNING, Please review the following information: the key ABCDE-FGHIJ-KLMNO-PQRST-UVWXY will be FOREVER and PERMANENTLY ATTACHED to the following Windows Live account name@domain.com"
...with a nice clear "CONFIRM" button below. But they don't have that, so anyway...
What I've decided to do is create a new and unique Windows Live account for each License Key. So If my license ends in UVWXY as above, I am creating a Windows Live account called "office.2013.pro-UVWXY@mycompany.com". I am doing this for all ten licenses in a row, and I guess somewhere along the line I failed to log out of one account and log into the next one, and I ended up with two licenses on the same Windows Live ID. I called Microsoft again and they told me to screw off. Again, this is a normal, understandable human error. I'm not incompetent, I was simply tired and made an error doing a repetitive task. But Microsoft has NO ALLOWANCE for correcting errors. This is ridiculous.
What I also find stunning is these are copies of Office 2013 PROFESSIONAL. Yea, it is not a Volume or Open license. Yea, we're not a giant corporate enterprise with our own Microsoft rep on the other line. But it is still, supposedly, a product aimed at BUSINESSES (I'm sure of this because the two levels below are called "Office 2013 Home and Student" and "Office 2013 Home and (Small) Business"), and yet they treat their users like morons and garbage.
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