Have just been on Amazon to replace my ageing Microsoft office programme and was amazed to find loads on offer at under twenty pounds. My first thoughts were these have got to be dodgy but hundreds if not thousands have been sold and the reviews are positive with Microsoft validating the installations. It made me curious enough to investigate further and the story seems to be that these are used company serial numbers that are being resold and perfectly legal. It seems there has been a huge court case about their reuse with Microsoft saying no they can’t be reused but the European court of justice has ruled that they can and it is legal. Seeing as Microsoft are validating these codes it seems they have had to bow to the European count. I am wondering if any of you folk have seen these for sale so cheaply and what your thoughts are.
Brian.
It seems genuine if this Amazon review is anything to go by.
“Like many others I was sceptical but these appear to be legitimate resales of previously used licenses and under the 2012 Case C‑128/11 of the ECJ, and restated in 2016, vendors do not appear to be able to prevent such resales within the EU. If worried please look it up and judge for yourself. Personally I looked at the court judgement itself rather than trust other websites. The process here is easy enough - you get sent a key, you plug this into a MS website. The website decides what software you have bought and it downloads. First time you use one of the applications the whole lot activates. Away you go. Brilliant software”
I’m tempted I must say.
Blimey … :shock:
I’ve just visited Amazon and found MS Office Professional Plus 2016 on sale @ £11.98 … 
There’s a few negative reviews about some of the licence keys not being accepted or failing after a few weeks but plenty of positive reviews.
I’ve got an old copy of MS Office (2007) and am sorely tempted to upgrade. Will do a disk image first though in case it cocks my system up.
OK, you first … 
I know there are always ‘one star’ reviews for anything on Amazon but worth reading what they are for the cheap version Microsoft Office 2016 Professional Plus before buying. Not a lot of money to lose if things don’t work out I suppose.
For anyone that is interested I have purchased the MS Office Professional Plus 2016 version for £16.99 from UK seller on Amazon and am now awaiting product key to be emailed to me, I will let you know how the installation goes when I receive it.
Brian.
I got three of these, 2016 Office packages,. a few months ago.
They have all been activated by MS and are working fine.
There could be a risk that dodgy copies are being put into the mix but I would expect the Activation to address this.
I even asked a question on a Microsoft support page, at the time, and was given a very neutral - but not negative reply.
Perhaps the fact that the latest package (365) is basically being handled as an annual leased package,gives the issue a new angle.
OK Brian - Thanks for the information. I did read of some saying that the software worked initially but didn’t work after a while. It would be interesting to learn how things are in a couple of months.
Too late for me. I bought the Home and Student version of MS Office 2016 a while ago from Amazon for around £90 (gone up considerably now). Download and activation was via Amazon. If necessary, reinstallation is done via there as well.
Libre Office is a good but not so ‘polished’ (in my opinion) alternative to Microsoft Office but I expect you looked into using this?
Many thanks … 
That’s encouraging … 
Okay. I’ve taken one for the team - bought it last night from Amazon and have spent the last couple of hours installing it after I made a disk image of my C: drive just in case of cock-ups.
The whole process was seamless - just click on one of the the links supplied in the confirmation email (32-bit or 64-bit depending on your machine) and off you go. It does recommend that you uninstall any previous versions of Office first but I didn’t bother but did do later after everything had been installed and running properly. I have a 64-bit machine but chose to use the 32-bit version for compatibility with Outlook which I use for emails and calendar.
After backing up my Outlook pst. and archive folders I went ahead and uninstalled my copy of Office 2007. Everything runs without a hitch. When you run Word for the first time (recommended) a pop-up invites you to enter the product-code in the appropriate box and the program is verified and authorised. You then have to shut down word and then re-open it again, this activates all of the remaining parts of the Office Suite. Be sure to select the correct document format for your needs in Word because you can select the .odt as used by Open Office and Libre by default but this would preclude you from using MS Office files properly.
The whole layout of the new Office Suite is nice and clean and much more readable than my previous version
Had a bit of a glitch with Outlook as the contents my Gmail folder (imap) wouldn’t show - buggered about with changing profiles but that didn’t work so hit on the idea of creating a new account but using the same details of my original account. Success! I can now access my Gmails, all I had to do then was delete the old account and set the new up as the default.
All I have to do now is set up my Access database files to the new version - it was an absolute pig converting from 2003 to 2007 so I’m not looking forward to this.
Think I need a beer.
You deserve one … 
I’ll get some backups done then have a go myself …
Got Access sorted out now too Not as bad as the last time, in fact, I didn’t have to do anything other than run the program for it to recognise all of my data, files and layouts. Well pleased.
Good news re Access …
I don’t use it, but I understand your apprehension re legacy files - some of my Excel files were begun on software that pre-dated MS Office … :shock:
I have installed my £16 Microsoft office professional plus and concur with everything Judd has said the only hitch I had was my own senior moment but after that everything installs smoothly and validated without a problem. So it looks like this software is a real bargain the only very slight reservation being Mart’s useful observation that some do stop working after a couple of months. But I reckon so long as I keep a copy of my content on a separate drive it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
Brian.
As regards the ‘one star’ ratings on Amazon and what they said, they were far outweighed by the positive ones.
Thanks for the observation Mart as you said previously the slight risk makes it well worth a punt.
Brian.
Thanks for the heads up on this one Brian - nice to get something cheap from MS for a change me being a Yorkshireman and all :). My previous version of Office cost me an arm and a leg so in my eyes I deserve this one at a cut price.
Will just have to see now whether the program updates properly when a new security patch is released.
Installation complete …
No major problems … 
Some slight variations to the installation instructions due to my already having signed into my MS account … 