Volume activation quick start guide for Office 2010

Updated: May 5, 2011

This is a quick start guide for activating Volume License editions of Microsoft Office 2010. If you are not familiar with volume activation, see Windows Volume Activation Planning Guide (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=183040), Plan for volume activation of Office 2010, and Deploy volume activation of Office 2010. The intended audience is IT administrators who are familiar with Windows volume activation and who want to know which steps are required for volume activation of Office client products.

Volume License editions of Office 2010 require activation. The activation technology is based on the Windows Software Protection Platform. If you are familiar with Windows Key Management Service (KMS) or Multiple Activation Key (MAK) activation, you will be familiar with requirements for Office 2010 activation. This article describes the differences between Windows and Office. It also includes the steps that are required to activate Office 2010.

Important:
This information applies to volume-licensed editions of Office 2010. It does not apply to Office Professional Plus for Office 365, which is licensed through subscription.

In this article:

Differences between Windows and Office activation
Scenarios for Office 2010 volume activation
Office 2010 volume activation methods
Install and configure the KMS host
Co-host an Office KMS host with a Windows KMS host

Differences between Windows and Office activation

Differences between Windows activation and Office activation with regard to both KMS and MAK are as follows:

For KMS activation:

The activation threshold for the KMS host is five client computers. At least five physical or virtual computers that have Office installed must request activation before KMS clients can be activated.
Only one KMS host key must be installed and activated on the Office 2010 KMS host. This KMS host then activates all Office 2010 products that have the KMS client key installed.
When using slmgr.vbs commands on the KMS host, you must enter the Office 2010 activation ID (bfe7a195-4f8f-4f0b-a622-cf13c7d16864). For more information about the slmgr.vbs script, see Deploy volume activation of Office 2010.
To ensure that the Office 2010 KMS host key is recognized, you must install the Office 2010 license files by downloading and running KeyManagementServiceHost.exe at the Microsoft Office 2010 KMS Host License Pack (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=169244) Web site.

For MAK activation:

Each Office suite or product has its own MAK key.
There are separate MAK keys for Microsoft Project 2010 and Microsoft Visio.

For example, with a single MAK key, you can activate all applications in the Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 suite. However, you must enter separate MAK keys for Project 2010, Visio, or any of the Office Professional Plus 2010 suite products, such as Microsoft Word 2010 or Microsoft Excel 2010.

Scenarios for Office 2010 volume activation

Scenarios help users determine what best fits their current or proposed environment and they provide step-by-step guidance for activating the Volume License editions of Office 2010 software. The detailed steps for activation that are listed in the scenarios apply to all Volume License editions of Office 2010 client products (Office Professional Plus 2010, Visio 2010, and Project 2010).

The scenarios are located in the following articles:

Office 2010 volume activation methods

There are two methods for activating Volume License editions of Office 2010: Key Management Service (KMS) and Multiple Activation Key (MAK). For a detailed description of these two methods, see Review activation methods in Plan volume activation of Office 2010.

Install and configure the KMS host

Only the following operating systems can serve as the KMS host:

Windows Server 2003 Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter editions (32-bit and 64-bit) or with any applicable service packs

Important:
The Office 2010 KMS host is not supported on Windows Small Business Server 2003. For more information, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 968915: An update is available that installs Key Management Service (KMS) 1.2 for Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2) and for later versions of Windows Server 2003 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=183046).

Volume License editions of Windows 7
Windows Server 2008 R2

Important:
The KMS host key for Office 2010 is not specific to a particular operating system. You can use it on any of the operating systems that are listed above. This includes both 32-bit and 64-bit editions.

The following operating systems are not supported as the KMS host:

Windows Vista, all versions
Windows Server 2008, including service packs

For more information, see Volume Activation 2.0 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=151726).

Co-host an Office KMS host with a Windows KMS host

If you currently have a Windows KMS host that runs on an operating system that supports an Office 2010 KMS host, we recommend that you use the same computer for your Office 2010 KMS host. You still must follow these steps to install and activate an Office 2010 KMS host key. For more information, see Plan volume activation of Office 2010.

To activate an Office 2010 KMS host on Windows Server 2003

To configure an Office 2010 KMS host on Windows Server 2003, see To activate an Office 2010 KMS host on Windows Server 2003 in Deploy volume activation of Office 2010.

To activate an Office 2010 KMS host on Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2

The KMS host service is included as part of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. For information about how to activate the KMS host on these two platforms, see To activate an Office 2010 KMS host on Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 in Deploy volume activation of Office 2010.

Concepts

Volume activation overview for Office 2010
Plan volume activation of Office 2010
Deploy volume activation of Office 2010
Tools to configure client computers in Office 2010
Troubleshoot volume activation for Office 2010

Other Resources

Office 2010 Volume Activation forum
Office 2010 forums

Change History

Date	Description
May 5, 2011	Updated Windows Server 2003 editions that can be used as a KMS host and added an Important note.
October 14, 2010	Updated and redesigned. Originally created to give system administrators quick information about volume activation of their Office 2010 clients, this article now contains links to that information in the more detailed Office 2010 volume activation articles.
September 2, 2010	Updated to indicate that TCP communications port 1688 is the default port number whena firewall is enabled on a KMS host.
August 27, 2010	Added a note and/or text that calls out the KMS host default firewall port, which is 1688.
August 12, 2010	Changed the reference to Key Management Service to the required version 1.1. This is consistent with what is documented on other Microsoft sites.
May 12, 2010	Initial publication