Your licence is not lost
Windows reinstalls wipe your installed software — that’s the point. What they don’t wipe is your licence entitlement, which lives on Microsoft’s servers rather than your hard drive. A perpetual Office licence purchased from Software Supplies remains valid and usable after any number of Windows reinstalls, hardware changes, or clean installations. You own it.
The question is how to get Office back on your machine. The answer depends on which edition you have, because Home & Business and Professional Plus use completely different activation systems. Getting this wrong at the start is the most common cause of reinstallation errors.
Reinstalling Office — choose your edition
Select the edition you have. The steps below are specific to each activation method — follow the wrong one and you’ll hit errors immediately.
Office Home & Business 2024 ties your licence to a Microsoft account rather than directly to the device. When you reinstalled Windows, your account wasn’t touched. Log back in and download Office again — no product key required at this stage.
- Open a browser and go to account.microsoft.com/services. Sign in with the Microsoft account you used when you first activated Office.
- Find Office Home & Business 2024 in your list of products. Click Install.
- Run the downloaded installer. Office installs directly from Microsoft’s servers — this typically takes 10–20 minutes depending on your connection.
- Once installation is complete, open Word or Excel. Office should activate automatically because it recognises your signed-in Microsoft account. If prompted, sign in with the same account.
- Confirm activation by going to File → Account in any Office app. The product name should show Office Home & Business 2024 with no subscription prompt.
If you genuinely cannot access the original Microsoft account and have exhausted your recovery options, contact Software Supplies support at [email protected]. We keep records of your original purchase and can advise on next steps.
Office Professional Plus 2024 (and 2021) does not use a Microsoft account. Your licence is your product key — the 25-character code delivered to your inbox when you purchased. You’ll need that key to reactivate. The installation uses the Office Deployment Tool, which downloads Office directly from Microsoft’s servers.
Step 1 — Download the Office Deployment Tool
Go to the Office Deployment Tool page on Microsoft’s Download Center and download the installer. Run it, accept the licence terms, and extract the files to a folder — C:\ODT works well.
Step 2 — Create the configuration file
Open Notepad and paste the XML below exactly as shown. Save the file as config.xml inside the same folder as the ODT files (C:\ODT\config.xml).
For Office Professional Plus 2021, change PerpetualVL2024 to PerpetualVL2021 and ProPlus2024Volume to ProPlus2021Volume.
Step 3 — Run the installation
Open Command Prompt as Administrator. Right-click the Start button and select Terminal (Admin) or search for cmd, right-click, and choose Run as administrator. Then run:
Office downloads and installs automatically. The download is around 3–4 GB — allow 10–30 minutes depending on your connection. An installation progress window will appear.
Step 4 — Enter your product key
Once installation is complete, open Word (or any Office app). Go to File → Account. Under Product Information, click Change Product Key. Enter your 25-character product key from your Software Supplies email. Click Activate. Activation completes over the internet in seconds.
cscript "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16\ospp.vbs" /dstatus to see the current licence state. If a previous volume key stub is listed, it may be conflicting. Contact Software Supplies support and share the output — we’ll walk you through clearing it.
Microsoft 365 subscriptions are always account-linked. Reinstalling after a Windows wipe is straightforward.
- Go to account.microsoft.com/services and sign in with the Microsoft account your subscription is under.
- Find your Microsoft 365 subscription and click Install Office.
- Run the downloaded installer. Sign in when prompted during or after installation.
If your subscription has lapsed, you’ll be prompted to renew before Office will activate. A perpetual licence — Office Professional Plus 2024 — avoids this entirely. See our comparison of perpetual Office vs Microsoft 365.
Can’t find your product key?
For Office Home & Business editions, the product key is usually irrelevant after the initial activation — the licence lives on your Microsoft account. But for Professional Plus, the key is the only route back in. If it’s missing, here’s where to look.
Check your email
The key was delivered to the email address used at purchase. Search for “Software Supplies” in your inbox, including spam and archived folders. The subject line contains the product name and order number.
Check your Microsoft account
If you bought Office Home & Business (any version) at retail or direct from Microsoft, go to account.microsoft.com/services. Retail H&B licences are stored there. Professional Plus purchased via the ODT route will not appear here — it’s not account-linked.
Retrieve the key from your old Windows installation
If you still have access to your previous Windows installation — on another drive, or in a backup — tools such as ProduKey (NirSoft) or Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder can read the Office product key from the registry before it’s gone. This only works if Office was previously activated on that installation and the registry is still intact. It doesn’t work on a wiped drive.
Contact Software Supplies
If you purchased from us and genuinely cannot locate your key, email [email protected] with your name and the email address used to order. We can look up your purchase and resend the key. Our support team is available 9am–6pm, 7 days a week.
Problems after reinstalling
The errors below account for the majority of reinstallation issues we see in support. Each has a specific cause and a specific fix.
“Product not found on your account” (Home & Business)
You’re signed in with the wrong Microsoft account. Office Home & Business binds to a single account at the point of first activation. Try every email address you own — older Hotmail, Live, or Outlook.com addresses included. If you’re certain you have the right account, sign out of your Microsoft account inside any Office app (File → Account → Sign Out), close Office fully, reopen, and sign back in.
Office installs but sits in an unlicensed or trial state
For Home & Business: the key redemption step was skipped or didn’t complete during the original activation. Sign in to account.microsoft.com/services and confirm the product appears under your purchased products. If it doesn’t, the key may not have been fully redeemed against your account — contact support.
For Professional Plus: the product key has not been entered yet, or activation didn’t complete. Go to File → Account → Change Product Key and enter your key manually.
Activation error after ODT installation (Professional Plus)
The most common cause is a ghost key stub left over from a previous Office installation — particularly if a volume-licensed or trial version was on the machine at any point. Run Command Prompt as Administrator and check the current licence status:
The output shows every licence key currently installed against this Office instance. If you see a key ending in characters you don’t recognise alongside your key, that’s the conflict. Share the output with Software Supplies support and we’ll guide you through removing the conflicting entry.
Error during ODT installation — download fails or stops partway
Check your internet connection first. The ODT download is 3–4 GB and times out on intermittent connections. If the download stalls, close Command Prompt, delete the partially downloaded Office folder from your ODT directory, and run the setup.exe /configure config.xml command again from scratch. The tool resumes cleanly.
Office Professional Plus 2024 — Perpetual Licence Key
Common questions
No. A perpetual Office licence purchased from Software Supplies does not expire and is not cancelled by a Windows reinstall. Your licence key remains valid. For Office Home & Business editions, your licence is tied to your Microsoft account — sign back in and reinstall from account.microsoft.com/services. For Office Professional Plus, your product key works exactly as it did on first installation. Re-enter it after reinstalling via the Office Deployment Tool.
A perpetual Office licence covers one device at a time. You can reinstall on the same device as many times as you like — a Windows reinstall on the same hardware is straightforward. If you’re moving to a completely new PC, the licence needs to be deactivated on the old machine first. For Home & Business, this is done via account.microsoft.com/services. For Professional Plus, contact Software Supplies support and we’ll advise on the transfer process for your specific licence.
This is a Microsoft branding inconsistency, not an activation problem. Office Home & Business 2024 and Microsoft 365 share the same underlying installation files. The About screen sometimes shows “Microsoft 365” regardless of which product is activated. To confirm your actual licence, open any Office application, go to File → Account, and check the product name listed there. It should show Office Home & Business 2024 or Office Professional Plus 2024. If it does, your activation is correct.
The Office installation download is 3–4 GB. On a typical UK broadband connection, installation takes between 10 and 30 minutes. The actual file extraction and setup after the download completes takes around 5 minutes. For Office Professional Plus via the ODT, most of that time is the download — the configuration and key entry steps are quick. If the download is taking significantly longer, check nothing else is consuming your connection bandwidth.
This usually means the key is still registered against the previous Windows installation on the same device, or it was activated on a machine that has since been wiped without the licence being released. For Office Professional Plus, contact Software Supplies support at [email protected] with your order details. We can check the activation status of your key and advise on the correct next step. Do not purchase a replacement key without speaking to us first — in most cases a key already in use is recoverable.
Gary Walsh is the Head of Tech Support at Software Supplies, with more than 20 years in the IT industry. Fully Microsoft-certified and experienced across the full business software stack — from Windows and Office to cloud infrastructure and device management — Gary delivers practical, no-nonsense advice that helps users and businesses get the most from their technology.
