Office 2016 won't activate with valid volume license key

If Office 2016 (pre-installed or even a volume license that has been installed and then later been update) won't activate - here's the problem and the fix.

What it looks like is that you choose to enter a product key, but then Office still won't activate.  The problem is that the system still thinks there's a trial version on the system.

Here's the fix . . .

Run this from an elevated command prompt:

(on a 32 bit system):
cscript.exe "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16\OSPP.vbs" /dstatus

(on a 64 bit system)
cscript.exe "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16\OSPP.vbs" /dstatus

You'll often see something like this (note that there are two versions listed here and one of them is in a grace period):

We can see that the trial version (in grace period) is on there simultaneously with our activated version.  The fix is to remove the trial version's license.  Here's the command to remove the trial version:

(on a 32 bit system):
cscript.exe "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16\OSPP.vbs" /unpkey:KHGM9

(on a 64 bit system)
cscript.exe "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16\OSPP.vbs" /unpkey:KHGM9


You might need to adjust the last 5 characters of the product key to match your specific situation.

Pre-installed Office 2016 won't activate (keeps trying to activate even after entering the correct key)

If you're working with a pre-installed Office 2016 (Microsoft Desktop Apps) and you want to activate that installation with a volume license key, you need to make some registry edits.  Very, very annoying.

This page goes over the process:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/office-repeatedly-prompts-you-to-activate-on-a-new-pc-a9a6b05f-f6ce-4d1f-8d49-eb5007b64ba1

In essence, you delete these two keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\OEM

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\OEM


Delete the entire OEM key

Office 2016 installation fail - error 1935

I've had trouble with working with pre-installed Microsoft Office 2016 and then uninstalling that version and then installing my own Office 2016.

Per this page, the answer is to download and run the .net framework repair tool.  This will solve the issue and allow you to install your own Office 2016 volume license.