Level 1

9 points

office mac keeps asking for license key with fusion drive

I'm posting this in case anyone else is having this trouble where Office for Mac 2011 keeps asking for the license key. I have a later 2013 iMac with Fusion drive and never have been able to use office on this computer without entering the key. In talking with Microsoft they removed office and all the files and reinstalled with no help. In speaking with Apple, they said there is a known issue with Microsoft Office and the Fusion drive and Microsoft is working on a patch. Evidently the fusion drive moves the files around and to Microsoft that looks like new hardware so it prompts for the key. Realy annoying! Microsoft

iMac (27-inch, Late 2013), OS X Mavericks (10.9.1), Fusion Drive

Posted on Jan 18, 2014 7:02 AM

27 replies

rkaufmann87

Level 10

148,494 points

Apr 19, 2014 8:22 AM in response to avidfcpfan

avidfcpfan wrote:

10.9.2 has not resolved this for me, still get Office requesting a licence key on what appears to be every other restart.

This might not be possible, but could the relevant licence part ofthe application causing this issue be forced to reside on the HDD and reference the HDDs ID rather than the SSD... if I understand the problem correctly?

When I had this issue (it was with Lion) I had to totally uninstall MS Office and re-install. This solved the problem, it's a MS Office issue.

Apr 20, 2014 8:57 AM in response to rkaufmann87

Have done a full uninstall and reinstall, all appears to be ok so far...

rkaufmann87

Level 10

148,494 points

Apr 20, 2014 9:01 AM in response to avidfcpfan

That should do it, please report back in a couple days after a thorough test.

Apr 24, 2014 3:48 PM in response to rkaufmann87

Well 4 days on and Office still working fine, so the complete removal and and reinstall does work with 10.9.2.

rkaufmann87

Level 10

148,494 points

Apr 24, 2014 3:54 PM in response to avidfcpfan

avidfcpfan wrote:

Well 4 days on and Office still working fine, so the complete removal and and reinstall does work with 10.9.2.

Yes I know.

Apr 25, 2014 9:57 AM in response to rkaufmann87

and 5 days on it's now asking for the licence key again... so it doesn't work permanently 😢

hawkman123 Author

Level 1

9 points

Apr 25, 2014 10:16 AM in response to avidfcpfan

I ended up formatting my drive and reinstalling the OS then the office software. It hasn't asked me for a key since. When I bought the computer this year, it had an old OS on it, then I upgraded. Don't know if that was part of the issue or not. Microsoft also said it wa a corrupted user id but I don't buy that.

Stupid that it doesn't work unless you go through this. I'd probably look at using Google Docs for free before I kept chasing this down.

rkaufmann87

Level 10

148,494 points

Apr 25, 2014 12:38 PM in response to avidfcpfan

OK, doing a reformat and reinstall is overkill. I susect there is setting that is amis or a corrupt cache. Restart in Safe Mode, this will clear some caches and may help. To restart in Safe Mode simply hold down the Shift key when you hear the startup tone until a progress bar a appears, let it fully boot and then restart normally. If no chance occurs then create a new user account and try using Office in the new account. If the new account works normally then that tells me there is something amiss in your standard user account and OS X is fine. You would need to track down what that problem is.

hawkman123 Author

Level 1

9 points

Apr 25, 2014 1:36 PM in response to rkaufmann87

Yea reformatting is overkill but I was wanting to do this anyway and it semeed to fix the problem. I worked with MS to create a new user and it asked for a license key there too after a few days. MS tried everything with me and nothing worked.

Apr 27, 2014 3:31 AM in response to hawkman123

I've raised issues with Apple, MS and AppleCare for good measure.

However there must be a simple fix for this without having to go through these extreme measures.

Office should be capable of being installed from fresh on any system and then working, once the licence key is input, repeatedly... it does on all my other non Fusion drive Macs (3).

As for reformatting, well with my current replacement iMac I started out of the box with a clean OS install and not using the delivered image, this didn't make any difference the same issue exists with Office and the Fusion drive. Now Apple could code in an option in to the Fusion drive to allow custom fixed installs to the HDD and to not use the SSD or MS could fix the licencing issue, either way we're stuck in the middle.

Apr 30, 2014 7:44 PM in response to avidfcpfan

There's a fix from Microsoft coming for this issue in the next couple of weeks. Hold tight.

debbiery

Level 1

0 points

Jun 30, 2014 8:52 AM in response to uksaint

Microsoft has released a fix for this problem which can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2970766

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office mac keeps asking for license key with fusion drive