How to change the Product Key in Office 2010
Sometimes you’ll want to change the Product Key used on your installation of Office 2010.
The Product Key is the 25 letter/number string that is supplied with your purchase of Microsoft Office. It is vital to any purchase of Office software and should be kept safe.
Go to the Windows Control Panel, Programs and Features (“Add or Remove Programs” in some versions of Windows), select Office 2010 in the list of programs and choose ‘Change’.
This will start the setup program and show an ‘Enter a Product Key’ option
From there, you can change the Product Key using the same steps as during the original installation.
‘Activation’ is the process of checking the Product Key and computer details with Microsoft to ensure that the software is properly licensed. Expert Office users often choose to UNcheck the ‘Attempt to automatically activate my product online’ preferring to activate the software later when they are sure the hardware and software are working properly.
Activation can be done later from the File | Help menu in any Office 2010 application.
At the next step you can either ‘Continue’ which keeps your Office setup or ‘Customize’ which gives you another chance to change the programs and extras installed.
Even if you make no setup changes and only change the Product Key, it may take a few minutes for the configuration settings to be updated.
Office 2010 applications won’t reflect the changes until you close and restart them.
See Also
- Office 2007 – changing Product Key
- Office 2010 licence terms
- Do Office 2007 version upgrades really qualify for Office 2010?
- Fixing Product Activation problems
- More on Office 2010 Technology Guarantee
- Buy Office 2007 – Get Office 2010
- Office 2010 – comparing the value of box and Product Key Card
- No savings with the Office 2010 Product Key Card
- No upgrade pricing for Office 2010
- Generated Product Key trap?
- If your product key is stolen, part 2
- What happens if your product key is stolen?