Are Technet product keys for Office still valid?

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I used to have a MS TechNet sub until the price increased sharply a few years ago. I have 2 product keys for Office Professional Plus 2010 x86 from that time.

I have been unsuccessful in finding a download of O2010. Journeys around MS properties lead either to dead links or to errors that my keys are not approved to download the product. Example:
Download Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ee390818.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396
[Note the “Error=” at the end of the URL, I tried deleting from the ‘?’ and ‘&’ without success]
The Get Started Now button 3/4 down that page leads to a blank page
http://view.atdmt.com/action/FY11_Office2010ProPlus_TechNetEval_Try

A post on MS Answers said that a valid key would activate the trial version above.

This is the page which told me my product keys were invalid:
https://www20.downloadoffice2010.microsoft.com/usa/registerkey.aspx?ref=backup&country_id=US&culture=EN-US

Questions:
1. Are Technet product keys for Office still valid, or did MS deactivate them sometime since?
[My current Win7 Pro, last activated December 2014, is from the same TechNet sub]

2. Where can I find a legit download of Office Pro 2010?

I am shortly discontinuing my Office 365 sub, which supplies my current Office 2013 Pro [no problem with it, just don’t need the team sharing etc facilities it offers]. Office Pro will do me fine [must have Access], I don’t need the “Plus” version which adds sharing functions like SharePoint.

If my TechNet keys are duds now, then I guess I’ll be going the eBay/Amazon etc route to buy Office–should still be cheaper than the annual 365 sub, which is only great value if there was a bunch of PCs here I need Office on.

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

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I had a Microsoft Partner subscription and I think the keys may still be valid.

As for Office, version 2007 still works on Win10, I’ve put it on 3 computers in our church that run Win10 mainly for the Publisher application. I really like LibreOffice even though it’s still free and it does have an app called Base which should work with Access but I haven’t tried it. There’s not many, if any, comparable apps for Publisher functions but Serif PagePlus may work.

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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THIS LINK might be useful, but you must have your membership number for TechNet to log into it. If it is the site I have in mind, then so long as you can log into it you will have access to the full set of serial numbers and the full set of downloads you are entitled to. You may be richer than you think… or not. Mind you, you may have some significant downloading to do, but it’s worth it.

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Thanks Berton, in that case I’ll keep trying to find an O2010 download.

I need 2010 or later rather than 2007 because of ribbon customization, which is a significant productivity boost for me.

Dogberry, that does look like the old sub download site. Sadly I don’t have my old login info anymore, and it doesn’t look like there’s a way back in:

Microsoft is retiring the TechNet Subscriptions service and discontinued sales on August 31, 2013. Subscribers with active accounts may continue to access program benefits until their current subscription period concludes.

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

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If you are not using the Business features of the Office 365 subscription, consider Office 365 Home or Personal. See Choose your Office for an overview of each. Either is cheaper than Office 365 Business Premium.

--Joe

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consider Office 365 … Personal.

Well where the heck did “Personal” come from? I could swear I’ve never seen that before. Or if I have, I ignored it as being the lightest version. But lo and behold, it has Access included.

Thanks Joe, this is a definite runner, what with the prices for the older Pro suites that I’ve seen–hundreds of bucks for 2010-13.

Now to check out Dogberry’s contris.

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

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Don’t give up yet, whatever you do.

1. The keys are valid. Download the trial of Copernic Desktop Search to hunt for it, if you must, but find that account number! It’s probably a paper receipt, but you may have it somewhere.

2. Where to get the program? TechNet is the proper (and possibly only) place. If you had the account with them they will certainly have a record of the account, but if you don’t have the number you may have to jump through some legitimate hoops (and communicate with a live human) to establish that you are you.

3. If you get back on that account page copy the whole thing (collections of numbers – worry about what they are later), and print it out if your printer is online. Then download what you want most first, and while it is downloading scour the list for other potentially useful programs (including different versions of the same thing, such as the non-Pro version, to which you are probably also entitled). The list will give you the serial numbers, but the numbers aren’t much good without the programs, so downloading is the order of the day. Visio is an expensive part of Office, which you can download separately if you want something new to learn, and Project is another, if you have serial numbers for them. There is a forum for them in the Lounge. (Don’t forget the EULA – you can’t use these for business purposes, or however it goes.)

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I get TechNet Flash newsletter in my mail all the time, which I largely ignore. I had been left with the impression that the old stuff was still around and could still be available, but it doesn’t look it. There are links to things like these:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ee939245.aspx

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/

https://mva.microsoft.com/ebooks

https://click.email.microsoftemail.com/?qs=12ac9b1379d94ecfa8e0478a991032e68b4263a398f684ec962a94d07411049e056c286133fe0802

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/flashnewsletter

https://mva.microsoft.com/

I suggest you run Microsoft Office Starter, which is available online but for which I’d better let you perform your own search. That, without a number, will give you a somewhat crippled Word 2010 and Excel 2010, and you can use your serial number to upgrade it. The serial number determines the version you will get.

You paid a fortune for TechNet, and it would be a pity to see you spend more to get a replacement.

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Don’t give up yet, whatever you do.

Thanks a bunch Dogberry for your help and enthusiasm I think I will give up at this stage though, after Joe pointing me to a viable option at a good price–I already found 365 Personal for $10 cheaper. I have no problem with $60/year for 4 pieces of fine software, kept up-to-date.

For anyone new reading this later, the Home version has to be the best value in high quality software–same as Personal, but for 5 users. $100/year, maybe cheaper from main retailers.

You paid a fortune for TechNet, and it would be a pity to see you spend more to get a replacement.

I didn’t pay that much, somewhere around $200/year. Very handy, great value for evaluating which software to supply to my former company’s main staff. I dropped my TechNet sub when they discontinued that cheap rate.

Good point about the EULA, TechNet was for evaluating software for use within a company. I could hardly claim to be doing that with Office 2010 these days Thanks again, I’m good with 365 Personal.

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

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You are giving yourself short shrift. It is likely that you already have the necessary file, and have had the necessary file all along, to download Office 2010 in all its glory. All you need is a single 5 MB file, office.exe, which was bundled with every (street) OEM Windows computer sold from the time Office 2010 was introduced to the time 2013 was introduced.

Much depends on what sort of hardware and backups you have, and whether or not your computer falls into that category, but your OEM installation will include it, as may any early backups you made of the OEM plus a bit of your own stuff. There are geeky ways of extracting individual components of the OEM file(s) to provide you with the office.exe, which are over my head, but it is readily available as a download from various sources online if you don’t care to make an image of everything, restore to OEM state, copy office.exe (A.K.A. Office Starter, with the snazzy icon) to a flash drive or other storage, then restoring the drive to the current state from the image. (Acronis backup will let you restore individual files, if you imaged an early setup with that.)

Install it on any new computer, ‘buy it’, paste your valid 25-character TechNet serial number, and Go Man Go. It will download the full installation that corresponds to your number, and Windows Update will download the million updates it takes to get you up-to-date. You can do the same thing on another computer with your final remaining valid number.

Take Office Starter with you is a Microsoft post that led to no end of threads on the subject, under various names. For me, it’s a standard on keychain flash drives, because it creates and saves Word files in docx format. More interestingly, with that valid 25-digit number, you can slap the whole suite on a new computer on the spot if you have internet access, which appears to be what you want.

I have participated in a number of threads that involve the subjects discussed here. In a comparatively recent thread, someone was looking for the Lite version of Office, and I eventually realized that it was this Office and that I had had it all along.

I referred to the EULA because I added references to Visio and Project, which provides a context for the note. Visio is a diagram-and-layout program, possibly overpriced but for the fact that its primary use would be commercial and it has the benefit of being part of Office (but it is a million miles short of AutoCAD), and Project is uncertain because I am not sure of the competition but I am well aware that capital projects can easily run into billions of dollars, and to the best of my knowledge, MS Project is in widespread commercial use in project management. It is a question of what is reasonable.

That is where you draw the line on TechNet licences not being for commercial use, if not before. In a different thread, I suggested that the point at which it becomes profitable is relevant. ‘Have you made a (net) profit YET’. When you break even commercially on your total investment in TechNet, then you become a ‘new customer’ and pay your way. If you want to add a deck to your house and manage the project using Project, that would be educational. If you want to get the general idea, I recommend ToDoList.

I made a post in one thread about the EULA for Cloud storage limiting Microsoft’s liability to what you can claim in Small Claims Court, which Microsoft appears to have subsequently changed. Anyone’s losses could easily exceed that criterion if MS failed to protect data they entrusted to its Cloud, and I explicitly said something about no client with a multi-billion dollar project is going to accept that. Setting the bar that low means that no one is going to buy any MS cloud-based products at all: the user stands to lose everything. Read and track that EULA carefully (although I admit I haven’t looked at it for some time). I use Windows 7.

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