Ms Office 2010 Not Activated

[ask100]

I bought a laptop online last August which came with MS Office Pro 2010.
It has worked fine until this month when I started to get daily messages from Microsoft saying that "This copy of Microsoft Office is not activated".
I've tried contacting the seller but so far to no response.
I'm down to 6 days remaining now. Does any member know what will happen in 6 days when the count down is finished?
It seems to me that I can buy an activation code on eBay for a small sum. Should I do this?

[Guilbert53]

Have you tried activating it. There should be an option or button for you to do this?

Or if it was a trial version of office then you would need to buy a license to activate it.

[Guilbert53]

I forgot to add. Was it a second hand computer?

If so it may be that your version of Office used a "dodgy" code which Microsoft has now realised was dodgy and removed your activation.

What happens is that when a large company buy Office they get one copy of the code (on a CD/DVD) but an "enterprise site" license which everyone in the company uses.

What some people do is "steal" the code used for the enterprise site license and sell them on ebay.

If MS never find out then Office can work for years. but if Microsoft find that thousands of people are using the site license when it was only supposed to be for 10 people then they revoke the site license. This may have happened to you.

If you buy another one off ebay the same thing could happen.

[ask100]

Thanks for your answers. Yes it was refurbished and the seller kindly came to me to install the MS Office software as he had not done that before shipping it. I thought that was nice of him. Now he doesn't respond to any of my messages. I can't activate it as I don't have the code.
I am still wondering what happens in 7 day time!

[ask100]

Does any member know what will happen in 5/6 days time when I can't activate MS Office Pro 2010. Will it just shut down or what?

[Guilbert53]

I believe Word and Excel will still open but function will be limited and you may not be able to do a Save to save any changes you make.

So in effect your files become "read only"

[ask100]

Thanks Guilbert53.
You are spot on. I just saw that on Microsoft's site.
I'll have to buy myself an activation code on eBay regardless of the rights or wrongs of this case.
Or maybe a member has one to pass on?

[Buenchico]

Remember that you don't actually need Microsoft Office anyway. Many, probably most, ABers (myself included) use OpenOffice instead:
https://www.openoffice.org/
(I actually prefer it to Microsoft Office, as the developers of OpenOffice have eschewed the use of 'ribbons' and stuck to a more user-friendly interface)