Product Key for office 365

You should record product keys yourself, I use my 1Password for doing that type of recording to keep track of my passwords, product keys, bank account numbers, etc. Your best bet is to contact Microsoft directly or to go to the Office for Mac forums hosted by Microsoft.

Mac OS is NOT at all like MS Window that needs a re-install at the hint of trouble, it is an extremely stable OS. A much smarter move is to analyze why you are having the problems. The best place to start is by posting an EtreCheck report of your system. Please follow the directions below:

It will help us get a good idea of what is causing your problem if you provide a report of your system, that way we do not have to play 20 questions with you. The report we are requesting does NOT provide any personal information and is extremely safe to use. Please navigate to www.Etrecheck.com and download the free version of EtreCheck. Once you have you downloaded the app and installed it, please run the report and save it. This report will help us get a good idea what has been installed on your system and help us be able to diagnose what may be wrong.

When you have your report, you can attach it when you reply to this message and we can then review it and help you determine what is needed to get your system running well again. 

For instructions on how to download your EtreCheck report and attach it to your reply to this message please click How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community It is helpful to us if you download the report to your Desktop.

Why are you having to factory reset...?

Best bet, is to take this matter up with the MS Office folks.

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

AGH55 wrote:

Hi all and thanks for your prompt responses. The reason I think I will have to carry out a factory reset is due to performance issues. It takes approx. 10 minutes to boot-up and if I go to launch a program eg Word it will take another 2-3 minutes…

That can be hardware issue. Is this possibly a hard disk drive iMac? Maybe the 8 GB model?

The iMac HDD configurations are slow to start with, and particularly the 8 GB / HDD configuration.

It is also possible the HDD is also failing, but “slow iMac” reports are usually the lack of memory combined with the HDD (lack of) performance.

If this is the iMac 8 GB / HDD, re-installs won’t help.

The EtreCheck report will confirm this, and will also show any overt HDD hardware issues, and (if this is the 8 GB / HDD configuration) there’s a reasonable workaround for the HDD performance prior to replacing the iMac.

Yep. It’s the 21.5” iMac 8 GB HDD configuration. This iMac was under-configured for what it’s now doing.

It’s slow. See my previous “why?” link for why it’s slow, too: Why is my hard disk drive iMac so slow? - Apple Community

The iMac 21.5” is not pleasant (and not cheap) to upgrade the internals, but is easily feasible to migrate to and boot from an external SSD. The performance of a USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt SSD will exceed the performance of a 5400 RPM HDD.

Can’t help with the under-configured memory, but the performance boost from the migration to SSD will mask some of the lack of memory.

Your 2017 21.5" iMac is/was the base model iMac in 2017 and was never designed to do much more than some basic web surfing and e-mail. It was not designed for professional applications such as MS Office or any Adobe apps. Its primary "block" is the glacially slow 5400 RPM hard drive, other than the HD it's not a horrible computer however remember it is also 7 years old and is simply showing its age. Doing an erase and install will not do anything to improve it.

If performance is what you are after you have a couple of options, option 1 is replace the computer with a more up-to-date model that has an SSD instead of a traditional HD. This is a good option as your current machine is very close to being deemed obsolete meaning it will not run current versions of Mac OS and parts are difficult to obtain. If you do this you can get another iMac or even a Mac mini, MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, any of these would be dramatically quicker than your 2017. You can also select an Apple Refurbished Mac from Apple's Refurbished store.

Option 2 is to take your 5400 RPM HD out of the equation by installing an external SSD which is not too difficult at all. Going this route will get a few more. years out of your 2017. An external SSD installation is done by following the steps in How to setup an external SSD as your startup disk. Instead of using the drive that is recommended in the link, I'd recommend the OWC Envoy Pro SX.

So you do have options, which one you decide on is of course totally up to you.