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I have installed Office 2007 Home and Student on my laptop. I have registered the license with this Office installation. Now I have to return the laptop because it is defective. I don't want to keep the licenses registered with the laptop. Instead I want to use it on the replacement.

How can I revoke the Office license from the laptop before returning it?

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No need to revoke anything; just uninstall Office on the defective laptop. You may have to re-register and activate over the phone, but as long as each license is only actively used on a single computer at any given time, Microsoft doesn't care about your install history (that is, unless it's an OEM license tied to a specific machine, which doesn't appear to be the case).

Edit: I had read somewhere that Office 2007 didn't need activation, but this support page states otherwise. However, you should still be fine with just uninstalling Office from your defective laptop and re-activating/registering it on the new one. You may need to use the phone-in method, but it should still work fine (unless you're unlucky and end up getting shafted by OGA down the road).

But hey, there's always LibreOffice/OpenOffice if your product key gets rejected or you don't want to deal with the hassle of Microsoft's DRM/spyware.

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  • Does this mean, Office is calling home and reports that is is used every time I use it?<br/>If I get rich somtimes and have more than one laptop that I will not use anymore, how will Microsoft detect which formerly license is revoked?
    – harper
    Mar 12, 2012 at 8:26
  • @harper: I've seen conflicting information. Some claim that Office doesn't phone home on its own, and serials only get invalidated after you install the WGA patch as seemed to happen with this poor bloke. But others seem to imply that Office needs to be activated on install, which would require it calling home over the internet or using the phone activation method, or potentially checking with the WGA servers during startup. I'm guessing all of these are true, just for different versions of Office. Mar 12, 2012 at 8:55
  • It's also worth noting that the Student and Home editions supposedly allow Office to be installed on either 2 or 3 machines, so long as only one copy is running at any given time. I'm not sure how this is detected or enforced in Office 2007. Mar 12, 2012 at 8:57
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You can leave the Office on your laptop intact and send it back. Simply install the license on new laptop and that's it. Office calls home on activation and registers your serial number but that's about it. It doesn't call like every day or something so don't worry about it.

There's built-in amount of times one serial key can be activated and if you reach that limit you can call Microsoft and get them to activate your office always. So really no need to worry about uninstalling/revoking.

Also keep in mind that Microsoft offers 60days+ of free office trial usage so you can install Trial office on your replacement laptop for the time being. And even if it takes longer and you will activate the license when the old laptop comes back you can start using old laptop anyway. It's not like they count your usage. But they do count your activation tries. So at some point you're gonna get blocked and you will have to call Microsoft for activation. As bad as it sounds it's as simple as answering to question why you run out of activations (like I have reinstalled my system multiple times) and they will activate you by phone in no time.

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    I highly suggest the user remove office before sending it back. Its a bad idea to keep it installed, the key can be recovered, if the manufactor does not format the hdd before selling the defective laptop.
    – Ramhound
    Mar 12, 2012 at 11:50
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    Of course it can be recovered. Windows key can be recovered as well. But it's not going to be sold. The service companies have rules in place. If they decide to send new computer instead surely the old one isn't going to be send back to customers (as refubrished) without cleaning it up totally and this includes putting new system image and so on. Also in many cases the OP could unscrew the HDD and leave it in his hands for the time of fix. Companies do allow that if asked before hand. Keys isn't something you have to worry about. You data is thou
    – MadBoy
    Mar 12, 2012 at 12:07
  • @Ramhound Removing all installed prorgams was my plan anyway. I ask before uninstalling, because there could be anything useful to be done before uninstall.
    – harper
    Mar 12, 2012 at 18:18
  • @harper if you're sure the drive is good call your service and ask them if you can leave the hdd and just send the computer back. They usually allow that (you have to send some paper attached to computer saying so). This is what I have done multiple times and I always left hdd at work.
    – MadBoy
    Mar 12, 2012 at 22:31

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