How to activate Pre-installed Microsoft Office in Dell/Lenovo/HP and other OEM devices

Most of the computers these days are shipped with Microsoft Office pre-installed license. Some of the manufacturers offer Microsoft 365 Home or Personal 1-year subscription and some of them offer Microsoft Office 2019 Home and Student, Home and Business and Pro versions. For most of the users, the activation process is hassle-free. They just have to launch Word in the machine and right after launching, they see the banner which shows that the machine came with pre-installed Office license and after clicking on Activate button, they are asked to log in with their Microsoft account and after signing in, the license gets redeemed with their Microsoft account and Office gets activated on the device.
But there is a big confusion among the users and the OEM technicians about the activation process of Microsoft Office in the OEM devices. These devices are shipped with pre-installed Office 365 applications which are usually MS Store apps or installed with Office Deployment Tool. Now, this is where the confusion begins, the devices which are shipped with Office 2019 licenses, they also have Office 365 applications installed in them and to redeem the license of Office 2019 also, we have to use the Word application which is already installed with the package of Office 365. But out of the confusion, users uninstall Office 365 from the computer and I have seen that not only users, even the OEM support technicians also ask the users to uninstall Office 365 from the machine which is completely wrong. If you uninstall Office 365 from the machine, you might lose your Office 2019 pre-installed license also which is bound in the machine through the Windows registry.

So no matter what license you've got with the device, never uninstall the pre-installed Office 365 applications. Redeem your pre-install license with the Word app which got installed with the Office 365 suite and you would be able to redeem your license for Office 2019 successfully. Once the redemption process is completed, you can install the latest updates of Office and the pre-installed Office 365 would be changed into Office 2019 automatically after updates are installed. If the installation doesn't get changed automatically, you can uninstall Office 365 and installed your redeemed product through https://account.microsoft.com/services
Now some times, it happens that most of the users miss to redeem the license after launching Word and then the banner disappears from the machine. When they relaunch Word or any Office application, the pre-installed offer banner doesn't come up. To fix this issue, you would need to run the OEM Office Activation Troubleshooter from the link https://aka.ms/diag_97275 and running this troubleshooter would reset the pre-installed license to its default state. After running the troubleshooter, if you would launch Word, the activation offer banner would again pop-up on the screen which you can use to redeem your pre-installed license.
I hope this article clears your doubts about the activation of the pre-installed Office in OEM devices. Keep visiting for more tips and tricks.

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Word and Excel crash after opening through Outlook attachment : Fix It

There is a sudden increase in the number of incidents where users are reporting that their Word and Excel crashes and then stops working after they try to open Outlook attachments. After the first crash, if they are trying to launch Word and Excel, the splash screen flashes, and then Word and Excel close immediately. This issue has been reported on Reddit and Microsoft forums as well and users are confused that why is it happening.

Let me tell you the reason behind it. The issue is being caused by a potentially unwanted program, or in simple words, you can say, by a Virus and the name of the virus is "SAntivirus", how funny, a virus with the word antivirus in it's name. S stands for Segurazo in "SAntivirus" and this virus is so clever that it is not being detected by most of the antiviruses and if you uninstall it through the control panel, it comes back automatically.
So I tested this virus in my own PC and found that it was the actual cause of the Word and Excel crash and to remove this virus, I would tell you the easiest way.

1. Install MalwareBytes free version from https://www.malwarebytes.com/ and run it.
2. After running the malwarebytes, perform a full system scan.
3. It would show several threats hidden in the machine and most of them would be created by SAntivirus malware.
4. Once the scan is completed, click on Quarantine or Remove and wait for malwarebytes to delete the virus completely.
5. Once done, it would ask you to restart the computer. Allow malwarebytes to restart the computer and after the restart, open C:\Program Files OR C:\Program Files(x86) and delete the folder "Digital Communications"
6. That's it, launch Outlook and check if the Word and Excel crash while opening any attachment. The issue would be resolved for sure.

For more tips and tricks, keep visiting PC Tricks Guru.

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Setup Cannot Continue because Outlook isn’t Configured to have a Default Profile : Fix the error

iCloud is a handy tool when it comes to syncing your contacts and calendars in Outlook and other Apple devices. It is well known that Microsoft brings new issues with it's every new update and it's the user who has to face the issues. Earlier also, Outlook had issues with iCloud where users were getting an error that said "Set of folders can't be opened" after launching Outlook. Now another issue is going on with Outlook and iCloud. In this error, when you try to configure iCloud with Outlook, you would get an error stating that "Setup Cannot Continue because Outlook isn’t Configured to have a Default Profile". Whatever you try, reinstalling Office and iCloud doesn't work. So, I'm sharing a simple fix for this issue, just go through the steps given below:

1. Perform an Online Repair for Office:

• To perform an online repair of Office, open run box by pressing Windows and R keys together from the keyboard and type appwiz.cpl and click OK.
• After this, search for Microsoft Office (the version which is installed in your machine) from the list of installed applications. Right click on it and click Change.

• After clicking change, a window will appear with the options, "Quick Repair" and "Online Repair". Select online repair and proceed. When the repair gets completed, don't launch Outlook.

2. Set Outlook as default Windows email client

• Click on the start button and start typing "Default Apps" and from the search results, open the Default Apps setting.

• Now, set Outlook as a default email application.

3. Repair iCloud

• Open the iCloud app and sign out of your account. If it opens the browser to remove the chrome extension of iCloud, remove the extension.
• Follow the steps mentioned in step 1 and complete the repair of iCloud. Instead of Office, select iCloud and repair it.
• Now restart your machine

4. Use the PowerShell to fix the issue permanently
This is the final step which will actually resolve the issue now. If you want to skip the above 3 steps, you may skip them and try this fix directly.

• Open PowerShell window as admin and run the following commands:

Get-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online | where-object {$_.packagename –like “*Outlook*”} | Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage –Online

• Now run the following command in the same PowerShell window:

Get-AppxPackage “*Outlook*” | Remove-AppxPackage

• Now close the PowerShell window and open PowerShell again as a regular non-admin app and run the following command:

Get-AppxPackage “*Outlook*” | Remove-AppxPackage

• Now open iCloud and sign in using your iCloud credentials. After iCloud opens, tick the checkbox of "Mail" in iCloud and then click Apply.

You would see that iCloud would download your contacts and calendars and would merge them in Outlook.

For more tips and tricks, keep visiting PC Tricks Guru.

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