OT: Recovering an MS Office product key from a hard drive

Just changed my Wife?s MacBook Pro HD for an SSD and now MS Office 2011 is saying it needs to be activated.

It was a legitimate purchase but we can?t find any emails or info about product keys anywhere.

I guess *somewhere* on the old HD there will be a product key (although this may be encrypted).

MS no longer offer any support for this version so unless we can sort it I think we?re stuffed.

Any tips on where or how to search for the key?

Tim

Reply to
Tim+
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If it was Windows the tool would be magical jellybean keyfinder, there seems to be a Mac equivalent ...

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Reply to
Andy Burns

try Belarc Advisor, that gives the key for Win 10, so it may help with Office.

Reply to
critcher

Belarc Adviser seems to find old keys and it's free.

Reply to
The Other John

But it?s for Windows (unless I?ve misread the site). I need something for Mac OS

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

Free version a waste of space. To mean to take a punt on the paid for version without any assurance that it?ll work. Thanks for the suggestion though.

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

Do you know how you bought it in the first place?

This any help:

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Reply to
John Rumm

If you can still boot from it, use Belarc advisor on it. Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

I can't help with the key search but this seems like a good time to consider switching to the latest LibreOffice. Just sayin'.....

Reply to
mm0fmf

We've got that. My wife likes to have Office as well (no, I don't know why).

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

Given the lack of email receipts or activation codes, I beginning to think that we must have a physical disc *somewhere*. Just gotta find it... ;-)

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

Is that going to work?

Belarc advisor is a windows based tool, and this is a Mac version of Office running on a Mac...

Reply to
John Rumm

Crucially it is the packaging that contains the activation code.

On Windows I have used Recover Keys with good effect

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On the Mac you need to ask in a Mac hacker specific group to stand any real chance of success. The only Mac one that I can see explicitly says it does not work on later versions of MS Office.

If you have an old copy of Office 2008 then it might be worth a punt.

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Reply to
Martin Brown

I still have it/use it on a Mac - mixture of familiarity, compatibility, free (to students/teachers).

Still continues to annoy - the update just now updated the updater twice (last update November 18), and proceeded to download 3.5GB of files that introduces one billed 'feature' - dark mode. And that's before I've done anything with it yet.

That said, Excel is the best spreadsheet programme I've used.

Reply to
RJH

If you buy a new apple device of course you have to buy new software.

That's Apple.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

After much rummaging, we *did* find the disk & box. Despite this installation still baulked at the activation stave and my wife phoned Microsoft.

After a bazillion codes it?s all working again thankfully.

Overall, really pleased with the SSD upgrade.

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

No you don?t.

Nope, and its MS, not Apple.

Reply to
dkol

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