Windows 10: covid based office 2016 deactivation

Hello, i never liked that office now activates via online conection and then pokes microsoft from time to time to check if licence is still valid. In case of failed communications or error on one side you simply lose one licence and have to reinstall it increasing activation counter on volume licencing servers.
I work in medium sized polish highschool , we have around 100 computers to mannage, but due to lockdown computer classrooms were not used since april.
Now with new school year i wanted to evaluate state of computers, install all updates, and in 2 computer classroomswe have windows 10 pro edu/office 2016 standard combo with 16 computers in each classroom.

office 2016 was activated last year and was actively used to april with no problems but now 75% of those computers say that office "require activation" while cscript ospp.vbs says that "licence status --oob grace-- error code 0x4004f00c"
and when i try to manualy activate office from command line /act i get error 0x8007007b

i did updated windows to 2004 version but in one classroom it wiped out all but one office licences while in the other it tool less than half of them, probably because that classroom was more in use before lockdown

i can't leave it like this, my activation counter is set to 100 by microsoft, we have 60 licences to fit in this counter and i fear that remaining 40 activations might get used upwhen i try to fix this

i already uninstalled one licence on one computer following some online help but that only made that computer think no licences were ever on it

so please help if you need more info , i do as much as i can to provide required informations

:)

 

Reinstalling Office 2016

Hi Leon

If you previously has Office 2016 installed on your PC and want to re-install Office:

Uninstall Office 2016

Then, you need to deactivate your previous Installation to keep your activation count correct and then re-install Office 2016

Go to Sign in to your Microsoft account and sign in using your Microsoft account, if prompted

Select Install

Under Install information, locate the PC which Office was installed on

Select Deactivate Install to deactivate the Office installation

Then, click Install to install Office

 

Office 365 or Office 2016

Under info for the new office listing on My Visual Studio it states.

Office Professional Plus 2016 (x86 and x64) - (Multiple Languages)
To obtain the product, follow these steps:

Step 1: Get your product key by clicking the ‘Get key’ button on the right.

Step 2: Go to the Office website by clicking the ‘Get it now’ button.

Step 3: Enter your 25-character product key and continue as directed on the site.

Released: 9/23/2015

And for the discontinued it states.

Office Professional Plus 2016 (Discontinued)
Info
Keys
Office Professional Plus 2016 (x86 and x64) - DVD (English)
No additional details are available for this file.

Released: 9/22/2015
SHA1: 213A8A0F8849516704101CB6C49F6A027B0D6D5F
File name: en_office_professional_plus_2016_x86_x64_dvd_6962141.iso

I'm thinking option one is going to be my only option. I'm fine with that as long as I can get Outlook to work with my ISP's pop3 e-mail. Last time I tried that with the new 2016 install I could not get it to work, no way no how. All the same settings that work with the ISO install?

EDIT: I should mention, for me as far as I know, neither of these options are a subscription. They use two different keys but they are perpetual one time activation licenses. I only ran the new download briefly though, as I could not get outlook to work. I bailed and went back to what works.

 

Office 2016 programs are not grouped under Microsoft Office 2016

Hi,

To address your concern, you can compress the view of your Microsoft Office programs inside a single folder in the Start Menu. To do this, follow the steps below:

• Go to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs.
• Right-click on a blank space, click New > Folder.
• Rename the New Folder as Microsoft Office 2016 (or any name that you want).
• Highlight all the Microsoft Office 2016 programs.
• On your keyboard, press Ctrl + X (make sure that all programs are highlighted).
• Double-click Microsoft Office 2016 folder (the folder that you've created).
• On your keyboard, press Ctrl + V.
• Wait until all the programs are moved to the new folder.
• Check the Start Menu if the settings are saved.

Let us know the outcome after you perform steps above for us to assist you further.