View or change the Office or Outlook Product Key

While you could simply try one of your Product/License Keys and see if it gets accepted, it’s not a very sophisticated approach.

The proper method to determine or change the Product Key depends on your version of Office or Outlook. However, for either version there is no need to completely reinstall Office.

Note: Microsoft 365 installations don’t require a license key as they activate automatically when you log on to Office with your Microsoft Account. The same applies to Office 2016, Office 2019 and Office 2021 licenses that are linked to your Microsoft Account. You can still look up these license keys in the Services & Subscriptions section of your Microsoft Account.

Find license keys for Office 2010, Office 2013, Office 2016, Office 2019 and Office 2021 via a script

Office 2010 and later include a vbs-script which will reveal the last 5 characters of your Product Key.

It’s pretty safe to state that these 5 characters would already be more than enough to find out which Product Key you have used (as you should already have safely stored the full Product Key code somewhere else together with your other license information).

You can run the vbs-file in the following way;

1. Open a command prompt. For instance via:
   • Start-> type: cmd
2. In the command prompt, type the following:
   • Office 2016/2019/2021 (32-bit) on a 32-bit version of Windows
     cscript "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16\OSPP.VBS" /dstatus
   • Office 2016/2019/2021 (32-bit) on a 64-bit version of Windows
     cscript "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16\OSPP.VBS" /dstatus
   • Office 2016/2019/2021 (64-bit) on a 64-bit version of Windows
     cscript "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16\OSPP.VBS" /dstatus
   • Office 2013 (32-bit) on a 32-bit version of Windows
     cscript "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\OSPP.VBS" /dstatus
   • Office 2013 (32-bit) on a 64-bit version of Windows
     cscript "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office15\OSPP.VBS" /dstatus
   • Office 2013 (64-bit) on a 64-bit version of Windows
     cscript "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\OSPP.VBS" /dstatus
   • Office 2010 (32-bit) on a 32-bit version of Windows
     cscript "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\OSPP.VBS" /dstatus
   • Office 2010 (32-bit) on a 64-bit version of Windows
     cscript "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\OSPP.VBS" /dstatus
   • Office 2010 (64-bit) on a 64-bit version of Windows
     cscript "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\OSPP.VBS" /dstatus
3. You should now get a screen with some license details such as the license name, type and the last 5 characters of the Product Key.

Office offers a scripted method to lookup your Product Key.

Changing the Product Key for Office 2010 / 2013 / 2016 / 2019 / 2021

Changing the Product Key for msi-based installations of Office (available up to Office 2016) can be done directly from the Control Panel/Apps & Features or via a command line.

Product Keys for Click-to-Run based installations of Office can only be modified via the command line.

Change Product Key for MSI based Office installations

• Windows 11
  Start-> Settings-> Apps-> Apps & features
• Windows 10
  Start-> Settings-> Apps
• Windows 7 and Windows 8
  Start-> Control Panel-> Uninstall a Program

Here, locate your Office application and press Modify or Change. Setup will now start with the option “Enter a Product Key” which allows you to enter a different product key.

Change Product Key for Click-to-Run and MSI based Office installations

When you are using a Click-to-Run based installation of Office or want to change the Product Key via a command line, you can use the same OSPP.VBS script as mentioned before.

Step 1: Add the new key
Instead of using the /dstatus switch, you must use the /inpkey:value switch, where you should replace value for your Product Key.

Step 2: Remove the old key
To remove the previous key, you must use the /unpkey:value switch, where you should replace value for the last 5 character of the installed product key as reported with /dstatus.

Changing the Product Key for Office XP/2002 / 2003 / 2007

Changing the Product Key for Office 2007 or previous requires you to go into the Registry.

1. Browse to the following key:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\<version>\Registration
2. Now is a good point to make a backup of that key;
   Right click on the key, choose Export… and save the file to for instance your Desktop.
3. Expand the Registration key in the Registry and you’ll see one or more sub keys which contain a lot of characters between curly brackets: { and }
   Each sub key stands for an installed Office application.
   The proper name for this identifier string is called a “GUID”.
4. Click on the sub key to reveal its contents in the right pane.
   The SuitName key will reveal the name of the package that you have installed. If you have multiple GUID sub keys listed, you can use this key name to determine for which installation you’ll be changing the Product Key.
5. In the pane on the right, delete the following keys:
   • DigitalProductID
   • ProductID
6. Close the Registry and start Outlook (or any other Office application); you’ll now be prompted to fill in your Product Key and activate Office again.

Delete the DigitalProductID and ProductID key to reset your Product Key.

Determine the Product Key with a 3rd party tool

Determining the used Product Key when using Office 2007 or previous isn’t directly supported by Microsoft. However, you can use a little program called Magic Jelly Bean Keyfinder to find out your used Product Key. Simply install and run the application to find out the Product Key (note: during the installation, there will be a prompt to also install a sponsored application which you can choose not to install).

Another free application which you can use is Belarc Advisor. This application does a bit more thorough scan of your computer for which it generates a report that also includes license keys for several of your installed applications. If you are in a large corporate network, you might want to disconnect your network connection as it will also try to build a network map which may cause the application to appear to hang at the “checking the local network of this computer” stage.