Microsoft Office activation and View refresh

[chriswu11111]

Hi Guys,

For those of you that do office deployments on your view systems can anyone explain to me please how you got the activation working on office with view?

I've tried to create an image with office already activated and then after that i create linked clones.

It is configured to refresh on logoff.

After all the above is done when a person logs in they need to activate!!! which i don't get the office activation has already been completed on the master copy.

Does anyone have any ideas with this or how they set it up?

[mittim12]

Check out this blog post, http://terenceluk.blogspot.com/2012/01/problems-activating-microsoft-office.html, and see if it's applicable.  

[chriswu11111]

Thank you. I checked out the link but this means i still have to activate office after the rearm.....

Because we run a refresh every time a user logs off the next reboot they have to activate again.....which at some point those keys will be blocked after so many activations.

my solution would be activating the gold image / master image with office 2010 on it then do linked clones of this. which will have activation on it so when users login they are already activated.

Any joy anyone? i can't believe that no one has actually done this?

[JonT]

Have you considered using a ThinApp packaged version of your Office distribution? this would prevent having to activate the software everytime because you aren't truly "installing" it when you load from the thinapp package. (if thinapp isnt your choice, look at other application packaging options).

[chriswu11111]

Hi Jon thanks.

Just wanted to check with thin app don't you need to install it on the one you are going to capture? activate it? i read somewhere i think that you have to activate it again even with thin app install.

[JonT]

We generally have a "thinapp" machine we have set aside to create our packages on. You have to license ThinApp so yea that could be an issue, and then you need to run it in capture mode, install your app (office in this case), activate or properly license/key that software, then stop your capture. The resulting package is activated and ready to go already. At that point the package is portable to any system you want to run it on.

Delivering the packages to the actual pool view guests is tricky and we've modified our method several times, but currently its done via AD Group Membership and a loop in our logon script. After the logon .vbs enumerates all groups a user is a member of (AppRole_Office for example) it then does a ThinReg of that package into the system via some more groups and custom attributes. Usually this part only takes a few additional seconds during the logon process, as it doesn't install the app just the package which is on a network share.

Hope this helps!

[chriswu11111]

thank you Jon, I might give that ago just need to go set it up.

Just one quick question since its a thinapp how did you associate all the file extensions to use the approrpate application provided by thin app?

[JonT]

File extensions as well as any possible launch point are defined when you are completing the package. Basically it will say which executable files are allowed to start the application, and which files are associated will actually be written into the registry. The portions of registry that changed during install are also wrapped into the package for mobility. When you run it on a separate client, those registry modifications are stored in the app cache (usually somewhere buried in your user\AppData folder).

[chriswu11111]

Hi Jon,

I've just tried the thinapp for office 2010.

Sadly when doing it i did activate the office package hoping it does not ask for activation once the thin app has been built.

But once i launch the thin app for office it still requires activation.

how did you get past this?

I'm asking because we run a refresh after log off scheme......on our floating pools so having it asking to activate is not good for us.

[vSolid]

Dear Chris

Since you creates a linked clone pool for VDI, then you need Oslo a KMS license for office 2010

But if you are going to thinApp office then I strong recommended you to go use thinApp 4.6.1 or higher

Sent from my iPad

[chriswu11111]

thank you.

Is there anyway to avoid activation with KMS?

My linked clones are refreshed every time teh user logs off.....this would mean they have to activate it every time they log back on.

Eventually the serial key they are using will be blocked after so many activations.

[Claudiocaf]

KMS activations will not expire. That is the way!

[RachelW]

Need some help with the Office activation on Horizon 7.8 Farm.  I am using Instant clones and have been fine with Office 2010 on the desktops until yesterday.  We are now suddenly getting the Office activation box when opening Office on the virtual desktops; I am a little confused as to why and how to fix it permanently.  We ARE using KMS activation and there are more than 5 requests (see below).  This post talks about "rearming Office 2010" however, if I am understanding correctly that is only a temporary fix.  We need a permanent fix.

Appreciate the help!!

[sjesse]

Did you make an changes to office, is it on an appstack or something similar, or installed directly. I've seen this when a change to office was made, usually I just reinstall office.

[RachelW]

Office is installed on the Master Image, not an AppStack.

No changes were made to Office.

[mchadwick19]

Rearming Office should be a permanent fix. When installing Office, make sure you do not run any of the apps as that will activate Office on your master machine. Using ospprearm should clear out the activation. You could also run a repair of your Office suite which will accomplish this (and then some).

I've never had an issue with Office activation that wasn't solved by rearming, repairing, or clean install and not running the apps in my masters with any version of the Office suite.

Are you install Office with an ODT file to configure it?

[RachelW]

No, I did not use an ODT to install Office.

So I ran the rearm on the image for office, created a new snapshot and recomposed the desktop.  I have logged in/out several times and Office says it still needs to be activated. Should I see this activation happen right away?

[mchadwick19]

Yes - Office should pull it's KMS key as soon as it's executed and activate.

From a command prompt within a linked-clone try running "nslookup -type=srv _vlmcs._tcp"

Does this return the record to the KMS server?

[sjesse]

Thats a good thing to check, before we switched to AD activation, someone installed there own kms server and overwrote that key. If it did change make sure that the dns security is set correctly to prevent rogue kms servers from popping up.

[RachelW]

Yes.  When I type that command the two KMS servers we have are listed.  Earlier this year, we setup a new KMS server on 2016 but realized that Office 2010 would not be able to use that server for activation so we took one our 2008 servers (previously a DC) and set that up with the KMS key for Office 2010.  That server is listed first when I type the nslookup command.

However, Office is still not activated.