This article applies to Office Home & Business and Office Professional. It doesn't apply to Office programs that are installed from an Office 365 subscription or Office installed on a Mac.
If you buy and install multiple copies of Office, we recommend that you create a list to track the Office product key that's used on each PC. This list will save you time later if you need to reinstall Office on a new PC (when retiring an older one) or you need to reinstall Office after reformatting or replacing a hard drive. You can use this list to avoid accidentally reinstalling Office using a product key that's in use on a different PC.
To begin, create a simple table that has two columns. One column lists each PC name where Office is installed, and the other contains the product key that was used to install each copy of Office.
If you've already installed Office on multiple PCs and are having trouble activating them, see Change your Office product key.
Tip: When you need to install Office on multiple PCs, it’s easier to manage them if you buy an Office 365 business subscription or purchase a volume license version of Office.
Step 1: Write down the full product key for each copy of Office
In the first step, you fill in the Product Key column of your list using the full product keys that appear in Services & subscriptions.
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Sign in to your Services & subscriptions page with the email and password associated with the Microsoft account that was used to install Office.
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For each Office product that's listed on the page, choose View product key and add each product key to your list.
Step 2: View the product key on each PC where Office is installed
In this step, you view the last five characters of the product key on each PC where Office is installed. Using this information, you can fill in the PC Name column for each product key in your list.
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Go to a PC that has Office installed.
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Open a Command Prompt window.
Windows 10 and Windows 8.1
Windows 7
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Select the Start button
(lower-left corner). -
Type Command Prompt.
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Right-click the Command Prompt icon, and select Run as administrator.
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Select the Start button
(lower-left corner). -
Right-click Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.
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From the drop-down list below, select your Office version and Windows version (32-bit or 64-bit) and run the commands as described.
Tips:
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The default installation for Office is 32-bit but if your computer has more than 4 GB of RAM, you probably have 64-bit Windows.
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If you don't know which Office version is installed, see What version of Office am I using? To check whether Windows is installed as 32 or 64 bits, see Which Windows operating system am I running?
Select your Office and Windows version- Select your Office and Windows version
- Office 2019 or 2016: 32-bit Office and 32-bit Windows
- Office 2019 or 2016: 32-bit Office and 64-bit Windows
- Office 2019 or 2016: 64-bit Office and 64-bit Windows
- Office 2013: 32-bit Office and 32-bit Windows
- Office 2013: 32-bit Office and 64-bit Windows
- Office 2013: 64-bit Office and 64-bit Windows
Tip: If you get an Input Error: Can not find script file... message, it means that you used the wrong command. Don’t worry, running the wrong command won’t hurt anything. Double-check your Office and Windows versions and try a different command.
Copy the following command, paste the command into the Command Prompt window, and then press Enter.
cscript "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16\OSPP.VBS" /dstatus
The command prompt displays the last five characters of the product key that was used to install Office on the computer. Our example below uses XXXXX to represent these characters.
Tip: If you get an Input Error: Can not find script file... message, it means that you used the wrong command. Don’t worry, running the wrong command won’t hurt anything. Double-check your Office and Windows versions and try a different command.
Copy the following command, paste the command into the Command Prompt window, and then press Enter.
cscript "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16\OSPP.VBS" /dstatus
The command prompt displays the last five characters of the product key that was used to install Office on the computer. Our example below uses XXXXX to represent these characters.
Tip: If you get an Input Error: Can not find script file... message, it means that you used the wrong command. Don’t worry, running the wrong command won’t hurt anything. Double-check your Office and Windows versions and try a different command.
Copy the following command, paste the command into the Command Prompt window, and then press Enter.
cscript "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16\OSPP.VBS" /dstatus
The command prompt displays the last five characters of the product key that was used to install Office on the computer. Our example below uses XXXXX to represent these characters.
Tip: If you get an Input Error: Can not find script file... message, it means that you used the wrong command. Don’t worry, running the wrong command won’t hurt anything. Double-check your Office and Windows versions and try a different command.
Copy the following command, paste the command into the Command Prompt window, and then press Enter.
cscript "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\OSPP.VBS" /dstatus
The command prompt displays the last five characters of the product key that was used to install Office on the computer. Our example below uses XXXXX to represent these characters.
Tip: If you get an Input Error: Can not find script file... message, it means that you used the wrong command. Don’t worry, running the wrong command won’t hurt anything. Double-check your Office and Windows versions and try a different command.
Copy the following command, paste the command into the Command Prompt window, and then press Enter.
cscript "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office15\OSPP.VBS" /dstatus
The command prompt displays the last five characters of the product key that was used to install Office on the computer. Our example below uses XXXXX to represent these characters.
Tip: If you get an Input Error: Can not find script file... message, it means that you used the wrong command. Don’t worry, running the wrong command won’t hurt anything. Double-check your Office and Windows versions and try a different command.
Copy the following command, paste the command into the Command Prompt window, and then press Enter.
cscript "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\OSPP.VBS" /dstatus
The command prompt displays the last five characters of the product key that was used to install Office on the computer. Our example below uses XXXXX to represent these characters.
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Use the last five characters of each product key to fill in the PC Name column on your list.
