"How can I reactivate Microsoft Office 2011 on my Mac?"

When I purchased Office 2011 in 2010, I assumed that a perpetual license was . . . well, perpetual. But apparently Microsoft has other ideas.

It used to be that I could move Office 2011 freely among drives and Macs. After each move, all I had to do was supply the product key again. An online server would verify the key and activate Office in the new location, while deactivating copies in other locations. There were no limits on how many times it could be moved. So, basically, as long as you had the product key, the only thing you COULDN'T do was open copies of Office apps in two locations at once.

Then Microsoft shut down the activation server. Users were now relegated to phoning Microsoft and going through a lengthy, tedious, exacting automated process to verify ownership and activate Office. It was nerve-wracking and nothing you wanted to do often, but you could still move Office or reinstall it when you needed to.

Today, though, you can't even do that. Microsoft has decided that you cannot use your purchased product key to activate Office unless it has NEVER been used before. That means Microsoft will not activate your copy of Office if you have moved it to a new Mac, or to a new drive, or even if you're reinstalling on the same drive in the same Mac! If you try, the phone activation system just gives you an error message, with no recourse.

Luckily, you're not completely stuck. Legitimate copies of Office 2011 can be purchased on eBay for dirt cheap, now that it no longer runs on current Macs. I bought one, and its product key activated Office on my new drive just fine. (If Office is already on your disk, you don't actually need a new copy, just the product key.)

But as I discovered, you don't even need a new product key, just to reinstall on the same drive. You just need to know two things:

1. Activation is tied to the physical characteristics of the drive, so the license can't be transferred to a new location without Microsoft -- which will no longer do it for you. BUT . . . 

2. The license for THAT location is stored on your drive, right in the open in a plain text file. It's called com.microsoft.office.licensing.plist, and it's stored in /Library/Preferences. (Any file com.microsoft.office.licensingV2.plist is for Office 2016 and later.)

That's all. If something happens to your startup drive and you have to reinstall MacOS and Office 2011 on it, you do NOT need to reactivate Office. All you need is to restore com.microsoft.office.licensing.plist from a backup. Office will start up without a hitch. 

Don't keep good backups? Drop everything, make a copy of com.microsoft.office.licensing.plist, and store it in a safe place OFF your startup disk. As long as you have that file, that drive, and that Mac, you'll never need Microsoft's activation again. 

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