Office 2016 and 2019 holdouts blame update for license deactivation bug

Users report that a recent optional update for out-of-date Microsoft 365 applications might be connected to suddenly deactivated Microsoft Office 2016 and 2019 installations. The activation bug cropped up this week and appears to mostly impact Home and Business perpetual license installations, stripping away their …

[Anonymous Coward]

Now is the time to move

Away from Office 365 if you can. This episode shows how they have you over a barrel and ready to be shafted with a big fat stick.

LibreOffice is also free of AI madness (at the time of writing)

You know that it makes sense.

[neoaliphant]

Re: Now is the time to move

I had this issue yesterday, they didn't have license key for office 2019. .... Installed libreoffice..... Problem fixed

[Evilgoat76]

Re: Now is the time to move

Fine...

If you never deal with anyone else in the real world that has to use Office. Cue broken formatting, excel sheets that wont even open and much weirdness. What people being smug about OO/LO forget is that some people HAVE to exist in an MS Ecosystem if they want to work or work with other businesses that do.

[Richard 12]

It's an ecosystem

Once enough people and businesses leave, it dies.

First slowly, then all at once.

[Tron]

Re: Now is the time to move

Some people are irritatingly smug about it, but if you remove the smugness, it still makes sense. It's like people who stay with abusive partners because of X, Y, Z. Just walk. There is no perfect zero-work answer, but its better to begin excluding MS from your list of problems rather than waiting to be stuffed when they inevitably screw up again and break your printing or backups or whatever.

[webstaff]

A little government nudge

Yeah, for businesses its not enough.

25 years doing this, would love to see MS get a proper kicking for killing the thing I love to increase shareholder value..

But, and I hate to say it, it will need uk and EU government to start applying the thumb screws or create incentives for it to happen in less than 10 years.

Or someone like China picking up the baton and pushing for an alternative.

People are lazy and will stick to things the know or are good enough.

[BassX]

Re: Now is the time to move

Or you stick with Microsoft and have do things like allowing multiple values per cell, or yet another feature you rely on being broken via a monthly patch which will also break your workflow.

Sometimes voting with your wallet and leaving is the only thing that'll make life easier for you in the long term.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Now is the time to move

Microsoft Excel (non-) compatibility is just a sub-problem of the larger problem of people mal-using spreadsheets for things they ought not be used for.

[RAMChYLD]

Re: Now is the time to move

Sadly, this. LO faced strong opposition at my previous workplace because their "programs" won't open (actually Excel spreadsheets imbued with VBA spaghetti code- apparently being able to code in VBA automatically qualifies you as a programmer) due to LibreOffice supporting their own dialect of BASIC called StarBasic instead which is derived from Java. Hardly their fault since Microslop patented VBA, but well, the users don't care. They're too entrenched into Microslop's proprietary language.

And that's to say nothing of the users who use Word to design forms.

[Terje]

Re: Now is the time to move

That is a valid issue though. VBA may be a creation from one of the nastier circles of hell, but rewriting and more importantly validating some of the more complex spreadsheets (that should or should not exist) may simply be to much work.

Trying to do forms in word is something that requires purging by flame and a good witch burning though.

[JollyJohn54]

Re: Now is the time to move

I have Office 2019 Home and Student. Yesterday morning it was working fine then my Office desktop and Taskbar Icons disappeared and a big buy a license banner appeared.

I've entered the original license key but it gets rejected as 'PIN-INAPP-UNKNOWN-9'. I can't find any reference to KB5002907 on my PC.

However I do have 'prep_oft Office_root_Office16_sdxs_FA000000069_licensing_win32_bundle_V8_perf.cache' in my appdata\local\temp folder which I assume has something to do with it. This file arrived a few seconds before Office blew up.

I do have LibreOffice installed but nearly all of my Excel files are automated with VBA and the thought of adapting them to work with L.O. has put me off for a long time. Maybe now's the time to make that change.

[RobDog]

Re: Now is the time to move

I installed Libre Office because I didnt want to pay for MS Office when my 2019 was nobbled.

Literally my firstbaction was a fail - I copied a range of cells (in Excel obviously) and pasted them into whatever its called in LO. No, it did not paste the values as you would absolutely expedt - for some reason it pasted a BITMAP picture of the copied cells!

A quick search suggests this is somehow normal. Not a good start.

[AJ MacLeod]

Re: Now is the time to move

Don't think that's LibreOffice's fault - I can copy and paste between Gnumeric and LibreOffice calc on Linux no problem so either it's Windows or Office to blame.

[David 132]

"Unintentional", my posterior

"Support ended for Office 2016 and 2019 on October 14, 2025. As such, Microsoft is under no obligation to release updates for the software."

Yes, but benign neglect is one thing; actively breaking people's valid & licensed installations is something else. I'm sure any national consumer protection organisations that have teeth (um... there must be some, right?) will take a close interest in this.

I mean, my elderly Volvo is out of warranty, but I'd be pretty miffed if I took it to Volvo for service, they bricked it*, and their response was "too bad, it's out of warranty".

(* Heh. "Brick". Volvo. Heheheheh.)

[ecofeco]

Re: "Unintentional", my posterior

"400. Car not found."

[that one in the corner]

Re: "Unintentional", my posterior

Ahem.

"404. Car not found".

Although a 402 "Payment required" seems more likely (What? It took them an hour to brick your car. Garage mechanic time ain't free!)

[David 132]

Re: "Unintentional", my posterior

"440. Small Hatchback Sedan".

Icon --> POETS day. Cheers!

[Tron]

Re: "Unintentional", my posterior

Welcome to the Microsoft SUV 3/11. This car will not start until you read out your 17-character VIN number followed by your password of 14 to 30 characters, including at least one graphical symbol and one Greek letter. You will then receive a confirmation code by text. Read this out within 30 seconds. This must be repeated each time the engine is to be restarted or a car door is opened. If you fail to do this, your car will be permanently bricked. If no network connection is available, please wait for someone to pass by and explain to them that you require assistance.

[simonlb]

Re: "Unintentional", my posterior

"I'm sure any national consumer protection organisations that have teeth (um... there must be some, right?) will take a close interest in this."

You obviously weren't around when MS pushed out GWX to millions of Windows 7 machines to download the full Win10 installation without any user input at all. That and releasing 'updates' that changed the behaviour of Windows Update in Win7 to remove any user interaction to updates, as well as breaking things in Win7 to try and gently coax you into installing Win10. Despite it being touted as a 'free' upgrade, MS were really trying to force it on users with as little grace or courtesy as possible.

[Col_Panek]

Re: "Unintentional", my posterior

"...consumer protection"? Why, that's Un-American. Are you a communist/Democrat?

[ecofeco]

Bug?

Sure Jan. A bug.

Funny way to spell extortion, but, whatever.

/s

[VicMortimer]

Class Action, Anyone?

Definitely seems deliberate. A class action lawsuit would seem to be in order.

And if it's not deliberate? It's still negligence. And it should still cost Micro$loth a lot of money.

[Tron]

Re: Class Action, Anyone?

MS have been doing stuff like this for decades. They never seem to cough up any compensation.

If someone can do anything they want to you with impunity, you need to steer clear of them.

[PRR]

Office 2003 still works fine.

[FirstTangoInParis]

> Office 2003 still works fine.

And is likely more reliable than current versions.

[Doctor Syntax]

Ancient IT proverb:

That's not a bug, it's a feature.

[DJV]

"occasionally releasing a patch that breaks stuff"

When do they ever NOT do that nowadays?

[webstaff]

Re: "occasionally releasing a patch that breaks stuff"

Honestly from my pov vs years gone by windows updates has got way better.

Yes there are bugs but they tend to be smaller bugs that don't cripple systems.

And the repair options are far better.

My biggest gripe is always sage line 50 and mapi email sending but I have pushed hard for years now to end that scurge on society and am down to the last two hold outs and next year's contracts will include steep line items for its support.

Because frankly I can't be bothered telling them anymore to move systems.

So I will make it a pain point like it is for me.

[Excused Boots]

I have a similar (possibly related) issue with Server 2025, which I am running on my work laptop. Why? Well because it provides the features of Win 11 without all of the AI crap, plus other crap, not AI related, but which MS seems to want to stuff down your throat. Alas for $WORK reasons, I have to be using Windows.

Almost every single month, when there is an update, Windows decided that it is not activated, I click on the ‘Activate’ button and it bombs out with some claim that it can’t do it. I select the option to change the Windows key (pasting in the exact same key I have been using for the past year), select activate and it works!

Why?

[webstaff]

Because your digital key is not getting stored in the bios properly would be my guess.

Cmd

wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey

See what it comes back with if its not your server key, thats likely tge issue.

[Wolfclaw]

Time for an EU investigation over Microsoft licencing, that will scare them !

[WinBummed]

This was the final rehearsal

for deactivating all on premise licenses. Good luck to all you MS doormats.

[dionrhys]

Proof of Purchase removed successfully.

This happened to my copy of Office 2016 Professional Plus on the 24th, right after KB5002907 downloaded and installed itself automatically. The Windows Event Viewer gleefully reports "Proof of Purchase removed successfully." (Security-SPP event code 1018).

Well, great.

I uninstalled Office to reinstall it from the original installer, but that doesn't work. Now I get "We can't install" "The following product(s) can't be installed at the same time:" "ProPlusRetail".

System Restore didn't help. Fork over £120 for Office 2024 Home I guess?

[Peter2]

Re: Proof of Purchase removed successfully.

You want the Microsoft 365 uninstall troubleshooter.

It'll uninstall 2016 totally including all of the registry stuff that's left behind and you can then reinstall.

[RobDog]

Re: Proof of Purchase removed successfully.

I looked for that, there doesn’t seem to be one for Windows 11. I imagine MS withdrew or vetoed it as being too useful for the proles to have access to.

[Col_Panek]

Re: Proof of Purchase removed successfully.

Oh, sure there is. You can download it from the ZorinOS or Linux Mint websites, and it fixes all those Windows problems.