MS Office Fakes Me Out

[space-time]

so this thread has some info. TL/DR MS will not activate a new 2011 copy.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msof...7a51fe9e05

But one guy, apparently a MS tech, says this: "You could have brought your old installation forward using Apple's Migration Assistant."

So maybe that is something you can try.

Good luck.

EDIT: maybe not, I just saw the responses, and the guy who asked still had to activate it... so Migration assistant did not help. Sorry for false hope.

[Speedy]

space-time wrote:
so this thread has some info. TL/DR MS will not activate a new 2011 copy.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msof...7a51fe9e05

But one guy, apparently a MS tech, says this: "You could have brought your old installation forward using Apple's Migration Assistant."

So maybe that is something you can try.

Good luck.

EDIT: maybe not, I just saw the responses, and the guy who asked still had to activate it... so Migration assistant did not help. Sorry for false hope.

My son activated Office 2011 about six months ago on a MBP (after he pulled his former MBP off a table with his corded headset and broke the screen) by calling Monopolysoft. The process took awhile but he had his original box and DVD and he had unused installs - he did use up an install when he activated Office on the second MBP.

[mrlynn]

Speedy, does MS really count 'installs'? I don't know how many I've done over the 10 years since 2011. Probably more than the five (?) users allowed. Currently there are only two computers on my home network that run Office:Mac2011, and one is a laptop usually asleep.

/Mr Lynn

[N-OS X-tasy!]

mrlynn wrote:
[quote=Speedy]
You can call Monopolysoft to get an activation code. You may need the retail box or, possibly, connect the external to its original device and grab the number(s) from the About Office menu item.

I still have the original CD and activation code. It's a 'home and student' pack, which was good for a number of computers.

Whenever you enter the code, you get a message saying either "You are not on the Internet" (false), or "The activation server is unavailable." You can then try to activate by phone, which involves typing a long series of numbers on your phone, then entering a ridculously long series of numbers which the robot speaks on your computer, only to get a message that it "Failed."

I did actually get the phone activation business to work on a MBAir running Mojave (!) a few years ago, and on a 2010 MBP that I wiped last year and gave to Number Two Son's family. Guess I'll try it again, just for the halibut.

/Mr Lynn
It sounds like you have a version that is no longer supported by MS, including server-based license activation. A phone call to MS should get you taken care of.

[fauch]

There has to be a way to "fool it" by giving it the info it thinks it wants. No one has figured this out yet?

[NewtonMP2100]

.....nacho......libre......

[mrlynn]

fauch wrote:
There has to be a way to "fool it" by giving it the info it thinks it wants. No one has figured this out yet?

I need Commander Data, to connect to the MS Collective via their subspace channel and put them to 'sleep'.

We just watched the two Star Trek Next Generation episodes in which the Borg arrive at Earth after destroying the Federation armada, but Riker has retrieved Locutus of Borg (Captain Picard), and the 'primitive artificial organism' (as the Borg called him) Data defeats them.

I thought I had a way of fooling the MS Collective, because I have a nightly SuperDuper! clone of my iMac internal drive. So I thought to Change Startup Drive to the clone, which surely would run the existing copy of Office. If that worked, then I could create a new 'sandbox' clone that I could leave at OS 12, and run my old applications when I needed.

But, when I tried it on the existing clone and attempted to open a .doc file, after a long, long wait (the USB 2.0 clone is excruciatingly slow), instead of opening the file I was presented with. . . the Activation window.

Somehow the insidious collective mind of MS knew that the clone was not the same as the internal drive, even though it had identical files and OS, and was running on the same computer! The Collective must be communicating with all its appendages wherever they are.

This is beyond me, so having no Data, I guess I'll just proceed with my system update to 10.13, and just see what works. Most of my text files over the last few years are just .rtf documents, anyway, which anything can read. And Open Office can read Excel files. So what the heck; I never liked MS Word ever since version 5.1 for Mac, back in the System 7 days. Good riddance!

/Mr Lynn

[mrlynn]

UPDATE: Just finished installing 10.13.6. So far, no problems, and. . . surprise! Word and Excel seem to work. Opening a document I get a notice saying that Office "Has not been optimized for your Mac," with a Learn More button. That takes me to a document saying Apple is moving to 64-bits, which of course they have done with later OSes, but High Sierra seems to allow 32-bits. But I'm not getting the Activation screen, so all is well for now.

/Mr Lynn