Wednesday, May 11, 2011

TIP: Office 2010 Volume Activation Tips and Tricks

Ospp.vbs


This handy script is helpful for performing local and remote licensing operations for Microsoft Office 2010. You can find it in the “%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office\Office14” folder. For 32-bit installs of Office on 64-bit operating systems, look for it under the “Program Files (x86)” folder. Keep in mind ospp.vbs is the script to configure the Office 2010 client, while slmgr.vbs is used to configure the KMS host and Windows installations.


To run this script, open an elevated command prompt by clicking the Start button and searching for “cmd” in the search box. Right click on the command prompt window and select “Run as administrator.” Go to the directory with this command:


cd “%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office\Office14”


You can see the options that are available by typing:


cscript ospp.vbs -?


Richard Moloney, the developer of this script, says a useful benefit after setting up a KMS host is using the -act and -dhistory commands to verify the Office client is finding the KMS host and successfully activating. He suggests, “If you’re setting up a KMS host, you can manually trigger and verify successful activation. You don’t need to wait 25 days until notification dialogs start popping up to start troubleshooting.”


Trigger activation and view the KMS activation history by running:

cscript ospp.vbs –act

cscript ospp.vbs –dhistory


For MAK activation, one common task would be to check the status of your computer, install a Professional Plus Beta MAK key, and trigger activation. Run these commands (if you’re pasting these commands, you may need to change the long dash to a short dash). In this example, note that when you run the –act command, you’ll be triggering MAK activation, which goes to Microsoft’s activation servers, not your KMS host.


cscript ospp.vbs –dstatus

cscript ospp.vbs –inpkey:22HGX-728MX-BBWX9-7BB8X-J96B4

cscript ospp.vbs –act

cscript ospp.vbs –dstatus


What if you got an error code? You can easily get the error description with this command specifying the error code:


cscript ospp.vbs –ddescr:0xC0020017


You can even run this script to check the status or trigger activation of a remote computer. Just provide the computer name and login credentials:


cscript ospp.vbs –act


Source: http://blogs.technet.com/b/office2010/archive/2009/12/18/volume-activation-tips-and-tricks.aspx