Hi,
Over the last year or more we have replaced PCs in the office and bought one copy of Office Home & Business 2013 for each. We follow the correct installation procedure and each time another Office Home & Business gets added to the list in our office.com account. They all look identical - there is nothing to indicate when they were installed, the PC they were installed on etc.
Recently, we had one install of Office that refused to start. We tried and failed to repair the installation as suggested, so moved on to uninstall/reinstall. I noticed there was an different id in the code of each of the install buttons when we look at the long list of identical 30 Office H+Bs we have in our account. No idea which we should pick, or whether it matters, so picked a random one. Installation finished. I had to phone up to activate as it complained that this was already a registered product. Completed this and got Office back working.
That was yesterday. Today I switched on another PC which was very recently set up but not in use yet and found Office had stopped working on this too. I'm concerned now that the installation download is locked to one particular installation and if so, how do I know which one is which, so I don't spend the rest of the year wandering round reinstalling office on PCs and finding I've broken it on another one each time?!
Yes, I know volume licensing may be more sensible for a business but we don't renew everything at once, and most of our PCs now have a standalone license which covers them probably for at least 4-5 years.
thanks
Darren