In the course of our work, we are all faced at a point with the necessity to implement "solutions" that are against nature and common sense. I invite you to take a journey on a fairy tale where a critical process requires Microsoft Office 2010 on a server to run. Using an enterprise, preconfigured MS Office 2010 package will install properly but may fail to activate. After investigating, I found out that Office wasn't able to find to resolve the address of the KMS License Server.
Here's how I resolved the issue:
1. Add the Key Management Service server key to the server's Registry
you can look this up on any of your workstations where MS Office 2010 is properly configured and activated
– Open Regedit
– Navigate to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\
– Create a new String Value (REG_SZ) as follows:
– Name: KeyManagementServiceName
– Value: fqdn.kmsserver.hostname
2. Activate MS Office 2010 Manually
– Launch cmd.exe
– cd to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14
– Launch the following command: cscript ospp.vbs /act
3. Output
(from Command Line Activation)
—Processing—————–
——————————
Installed product key detected – attempting to activate the following product:
SKU ID: <—————————>
LICENSE NAME: Office 14, OfficeStandard-KMS_Client edition
LICENSE DESCRIPTION: Office 14, VOLUME_KMSCLIENT channel
Last 5 characters of installed product key: xxxxx
<Product activation successful>
——————————
——————————
—Exiting——————–
You can now launch any application qnd check that it is properly validated.
4. Make coffee or tea and enjoy!
Max