When you install Office Professional Plus, Visio Professional, or Project Professional through your employer's Workplace Discount Program (formerly known as Home Use Program) benefit, you enter your product key after you install your product.
If you see a Let's get started screen with options to try, buy, or activate Office, this means that Office is installed on your new PC as a 1-month trial of Microsoft 365 Family. You won't receive a product key from your PC manufacturer unless you paid for an Office product key card. Instead, you can start a trial of Microsoft 365 Family, or buy Office.
If you paid for an Office product to be included on your new Windows PC, a digital product key is transmitted to your PC when you activate Windows. You won't receive a printed product key. Instead, you'll see a message similar to the following when you start Word (or any Office app).
If you bought an Office product key card, you might need to carefully scratch off a silver foil coating on the back of your product key card to reveal your product key. If you damage the key while scratching off the foil coating, see I lost or damaged my product key.
If you bought Office Professional Plus, Visio Professional, or Project Professional through your employer's Microsoft Workplace Discount Program benefit, you'll need your product key to install Office on a PC. To locate your product key online, see Get your Workplace Discount Program product key.
If Office came pre-installed on your new device, and you see a yellow or red banner in an Office app that says PRODUCT NOTICE Most of the features of have been disabled because it hasn't been activated, you must start a new Microsoft 365 Family trial, sign in with a Microsoft account that's associated with Office, or buy Office. For help, see Activate Office.
No, you don't. Just go to the Microsoft account, Services & subscriptions page and sign in using the Microsoft account that you used to buy Office. We can help if you forgot your Microsoft account or password.
You can also switch your Office license if you buy a different version of Office. For example, if you have Office Home & Business and decide to subscribe to Microsoft 365, you can switch your existing install from Office Home & Business to Microsoft 365. To learn how, see Switch your Office license.
Instead, for Microsoft 365, Office 2021, Office 2019 and Office 2016, you can view the Microsoft account that Office belongs to. This account takes the place of your product key and can be used to reinstall Office from the Microsoft account, Services & subscriptions page and to activate Office.
To view the Microsoft account that Office belongs to, open a document in Word (or any Office app) and go to File > Account. Look for the email address after Belongs to below the product name.
No, your product key isn't displayed online (see exception for Workplace Discount Program below). You should sign in to your Microsoft account dashboard using the Microsoft account that you used to buy and download this version of Office.
If you bought an older version of Office Professional Plus, Visio Professional, or Project Professional through your employer's Workplace Discount Program benefit, you can view your product key online on your Order Details page. For help, see Get your Workplace Discount Program product key.
If you bought Office Home & Student, Office Home & Business, Office Professional, or individual Office apps from the Microsoft Store and you haven't installed them yet, you can also view their product keys and install them from the Microsoft Store.
Locate the Office one-time purchase or individual Office app, and then select Install Office to view your product key (this doesn't actually install Office). Note that this product key won't match the product key shown in the Microsoft account, Services & subscriptions page. This is normal.
This is normal. The Office product key shown on the Microsoft account, Services & subscriptions page will always be different than the product key that's shown on a product key card or email receipt. They are two different types of keys, even though they use the same format.
To buy a brand new copy of Office, or start a new Microsoft 365 subscription, you can buy an Office product key card from a retailer. You can redeem your key at to set up your Microsoft account and install Office. You can also buy a digital download directly from the Microsoft Store at www.microsoftstore.com. You'll receive a product key if you buy a one-time purchase Office or individual Office apps, but you won't need or receive a product key for Microsoft 365.
To renew your Microsoft 365 subscription, you can buy an Microsoft 365 product key card from a retailer and redeem the key at You can also renew your subscription online, without a product key, at -renew-your-office-365-subscription.
If Office is prompting you for a product key, and you want to buy a product key to activate Office, it's better to uninstall your current version of Office and then buy and install a new version of Office from the Microsoft Store. This way you can be sure that Office will activate successfully.
If you're shopping for Office product keys elsewhere, we recommend that you review our tips for safer shopping to make sure you're buying genuine Microsoft software. Be sure to read the tip called Beware of Product Keys Sold Separately if you want to buy a product key online. If you buy a product key online and it doesn't work or stops working, see My Office product key isn't working.
If you believe the product key has been lost, stolen, or misplaced and you simply would like to buy a newer version of Office, you can click the button below to compare prices and options and to make your purchase.
If you're shopping for Office elsewhere, we recommend that you review our tips for safer shopping to make sure you're buying genuine Microsoft software. Be sure to read the tip called Beware of Product Keys Sold Separately if you want to buy a product key online.
Are you facing a repetitive clean up of fifty tables in Word? Do you want a particular document to prompt the user for input when it opens? Are you having difficulty figuring out how to get your contacts from Microsoft Outlook into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet efficiently?
The Office suite of applications has a rich set of features. There are many different ways to author, format, and manipulate documents, email, databases, forms, spreadsheets, and presentations. The great power of VBA programming in Office is that nearly every operation that you can perform with a mouse, keyboard, or a dialog box can also be done by using VBA. Further, if it can be done once with VBA, it can be done just as easily a hundred times. (In fact, the automation of repetitive tasks is one of the most common uses of VBA in Office.)
Beyond the power of scripting VBA to accelerate every-day tasks, you can use VBA to add new functionality to Office applications or to prompt and interact with the user of your documents in ways that are specific to your business needs. For example, you could write some VBA code that displays a pop up message that reminds users to save a document to a particular network drive the first time they try to save it.
This article explores some of the primary reasons to leverage the power of VBA programming. It explores the VBA language and the out-of-the-box tools that you can use to work with your solutions. Finally, it includes some tips and ways to avoid some common programming frustrations and missteps.
Interested in developing solutions that extend the Office experience across multiple platforms? Check out the new Office Add-ins model. Office Add-ins have a small footprint compared to VSTO Add-ins and solutions, and you can build them by using almost any web programming technology, such as HTML5, JavaScript, CSS3, and XML.
VBA is effective and efficient when it comes to repetitive solutions to formatting or correction problems. For example, have you ever changed the style of the paragraph at the top of each page in Word? Have you ever had to reformat multiple tables that were pasted from Excel into a Word document or an Outlook email? Have you ever had to make the same change in multiple Outlook contacts?
If you have a change that you have to make more than ten or twenty times, it may be worth automating it with VBA. If it is a change that you have to do hundreds of times, it certainly is worth considering. Almost any formatting or editing change that you can do by hand, can be done in VBA.
There are times when you want to encourage or compel users to interact with the Office application or document in a particular way that is not part of the standard application. For example, you might want to prompt users to take some particular action when they open, save, or print a document.
Do you need to copy all of your contacts from Outlook to Word and then format them in some particular way? Or, do you need to move data from Excel to a set of PowerPoint slides? Sometimes simple copy and paste does not do what you want it to do, or it is too slow. Use VBA programming to interact with the details of two or more Office applications at the same time and then modify the content in one application based on the content in another.
The critical question to ask is whether there is an easier way. Before you begin a VBA project, consider the built-in tools and standard functionalities. For example, if you have a time-consuming editing or layout task, consider using styles or accelerator keys to solve the problem. Can you perform the task once and then use CTRL+Y (Redo) to repeat it? Can you create a new document with the correct format or template, and then copy the content into that new document?
Before you begin a VBA project, ensure that you have the time to work with VBA. Programming requires focus and can be unpredictable. Especially as a beginner, never turn to programming unless you have time to work carefully. Trying to write a "quick script" to solve a problem when a deadline looms can result in a very stressful situation. If you are in a rush, you might want to use conventional methods, even if they are monotonous and repetitive.
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