Office 2010 activation is a new topic that many users and admins face. This article explains how you can activate Office 2010 and rearm Office 2010.
Latest posts by Michael Pietroforte (see all)

Update: If you have to rearm Office 2013 SP1, please read my updated article. Things are quite different with Office 2013.

This article explains how you can rearm Office 2010 and for what you need this feature.

Office 2010 is certainly the best Office suite out there. However, compared to Office 2007 it has one major drawback: Like Vista and Windows 7, Office 2010 has to be activated. However, Office 2010 behaves a little different than Windows if it is not activated. Rearming Office 2010, that is resetting the grace period, works similar as rearming Windows.

Office 2010 Reduced Functionality Mode

Retail versions of Office 2010 will only run in Reduced Functionality Mode (RFM) after the grace period of 30 days has been exceeded. In RFM Office, documents can only be viewed but not modified.

Volume editions of Office 2010 don't have an RFM. However, Office will start nagging users with messages after 25 days. You can just imagine how many helpdesk calls it will provoke if you don't ensure that Office 2010 has been activated during this grace period.

Activating Office 2010

You can use the latest version of the Key Management Host (KMS) or activate Office 2010 with VAMT. Either way shouldn't be doable within 25 days after the installation.

However, it might be difficult to activate Office 2010 during the grace period if you deploy a pre-installed Office with an OS image. The grace period begins immediately after you installed Office 2010 on your master PC. If you have to perform other configurations before you create the master image, then it is quite possible that 25 days is too short. You also have to take into account that it might take some time until Office finds a KMS host or until you activate it manually.

This is where Office 2010 rearm comes in. This features allows you reset the grace timer to 30 days grace. If you rearm Office right before you create the OS master image, you can be sure that you have the full 25 days before users will bothered with Office activation notifications or before the retail edition goes into Reduced Functionality Mode after 30 days.

How to rearm Office 2010

You will find some complicated instructions on the Web of how to rearm Office 2010. Most of these articles were written before Office 2010 was released. There are also third party tools that allow you to rearm Office 2010. However, I recommend following Microsoft's instructions. This topic is too sensitive to rely on third party tools.

To rearm Office 2010, you only have to run ospprearm.exe in %installdir%\%Program Files%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatform from an elevated command prompt. "%Program Files%" has to be replaced with %Program Files (x86)% if you installed Office 2010 32-bit on Windows 64-bit.

Rearm Office 2010 - ospprearm.exe

Rearm Office 2010 - ospprearm.exe

Since you can rearm up to 5 times, you can run Office 2010 for 180 days (30 days + 5 x 30 days) without activating it, if you rearm it every time after the 30 days grace period has been reached.

Another effect of rearming Office 2010 is that the client machine ID (CMID) is reset. The KMS host uses the CMID to identify unique clients. This allows the KMS host to count Office 2010 correctly.

Rearming Office 2010 Trial

Office 2010 rearm could also be useful if you installed Office 2010 Trial. The Office 2010 Professional Plus Trial comes with a special activation code that will allow you to test Office 2010 for 60 days. There are reports on the web indicating that you can also rearm the trial version of Office 2010. Office 2010 Trial indeed comes with ospprearm.exe. However I doubt that rearming will work after you used the trial activation code because rearming makes only sense with an Office installation that hasn't been activated.

Office 2010 Activation Wizard

Office 2010 Activation Wizard

You can run Office 2010 Trial without activating it but every time you launch the Office 2010 Activation Wizard will pop up. If you cancel this dialog, you can continue using the Office application. I suppose this will only work for 30 days. If you have experience with rearming Office 2010 Trial, please let me know.

30 Comments
  1. Rory Schmitz 13 years ago

    In the article, it says:

    To rearm Office 2010, you only have to run ospprearm.exe in %installdir%\%Program Files%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatform from an elevated command prompt.

    ospprearm.exe does not exist in my 64-bit installation of office 2010. In the image below that paragraph, it displays to use osppsvc.exe. This file is in the directory. I think maybe there’s a typo in the article?

  2. kichitaro 13 years ago

    i had been try KMS 1.2 in vista and succed..
    but i try in windows xp, its not function..

  3. wisque 13 years ago

    For x64 based systems use the %installdir%\Program Files (x86) directory.

  4. martin 13 years ago

    I have tried rearming with Office 2010 Professional Plus. But it doesn’t work. I bought oryginal Home & Business

  5. Remy 12 years ago

    I have the trial version of Office Professional Plus 2010 32-bit (v14.0.4734.1000) installed on XP SP3. I just ran the ospprearm.exe app and it appears to have worked fine for me. The activation prompt has disappeared.

  6. Luke 12 years ago

    i had office 2010 pre-installed on my laptop, i took a look at excel, word and powerpoint, but left the others alone. i put my product key into word which activated all three but, my ms access and publisher still required a key, unfortunately i did not know this so didn’t open the program as i didn’t need it at the time. now, when i open publisher or access, it needs a key as the trial had expired, but went into the grace mode. so now i cannot use access or publisher. will the method shown in this article, allow me to rearm, and re-enter the same activation key i used at the start, and how will it affect the activation on the programs which were activated

  7. kyle gilmore 12 years ago

    i recently had to have my hard drive wiped clean do to a virus in my computer. fixed now but can’t open my resume because it’s asking for a product key??? PLEASE help need my resume asap. my computer is only 3 months old

  8. Ramsi 12 years ago

    The instruction above says: “To rearm Office 2010, you only have to run ospprearm.exe in %installdir%\%Program Files%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatform …”
    but in the command line below there is mentioned the exe-file “osppscv.exe”. What’s correct???

    Best regards
    Ramsi

  9. The screenshot was wrong. osppscv.exe is for activating Office 2010 not for rearming. ospprearm.exe is the correct program to rearm Office 2010. If you cant’t find the oppsrearm.exe in the folder mentioned in the article then you might not have a business edition of Office 2010. I didn’t verify it, but I guess the home edition doesn’t come with ospprearm and probably can’t be rearmed. I replaced the incorrect screenshot with a new one.

  10. Ramsi 12 years ago

    Thanks for replacing the incorrect screenshot.

    Ramsi

  11. Sebastian 12 years ago

    Wors fine for me. Thx.

  12. VIVEK 12 years ago

    For me it’s not working..I was able to run the application but the problem is it is not allwoing me to edit anything..It gives me only a read only mode

  13. Allie417 12 years ago

    I just used this to rearm my trial version and it worked great. I didn’t realize my version had expired. Since it is 6:57 PM on a Sunday, there is not much chance of finding an open store; so this is a life saver. I know I could download it directly, but I prefer to have physical backup copies. Thank you.

  14. Glory 12 years ago

    Thank you very much, it works on my laptop using xp sp3. That’s very simple, can’t believe it.

  15. darnxpuser 12 years ago

    hi to all i know this late. i also using officce 2010 pro plus in winxp, first when i found SITE this i tried all the manual given to activate the office but its failed.
    but i do something unexpected and its work till now (hope its last forever) i RENAME ALL THE FILE IN THIS FOLDER ”C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatform” TO .EXE1. this cazy but works

  16. wisque 12 years ago

    @darnxpuser

    Really? You “hope it lasts forever”? We call that stealing where I live.

  17. b4ckd00r 11 years ago

    @wisque

    really?, well that’s what microsoft do ALL THE TIME, about time they get a taste of their own medicine!!

  18. b4ckd00r 11 years ago

    use open source software whenever possible. those lads deserve ALL the credit for their work.

  19. wisque 11 years ago

    @b4ckd00r

    Yeah really, two wrongs don’t make a right. Grow up. And stay away from open source, developers should be getting paid for their hard work.

  20. SomeRandomGuy 11 years ago

    Followed this website guide once to rearm the Office trial I had, however I cannot rearm the trial product, despite only using 1 rearm.

  21. steve 11 years ago

    I am running I guess a volume licensed ver of office pro plus 10 32 bit on a 64 bit windows 7 machine and I go to rearm and I get the following error 00xc004f025 Note: they are zeros. It also says “on a computer running Microsoft Windows, non-core edition run ‘slui.exe 0x2a oxc 00f4025”

    What does this mean?

  22. Guest 11 years ago

    @steve
    Have tried from an elevated command prompt (run “cmd” as administrator)?

  23. Kamal Kant Sharma 11 years ago

    If you are installing MS Office 2010 32bit edition on Windows vista/7 (32bit) :–>

    Run command prompt as a Administrator, then follow the below command:–>

    C:\users\administrator>Cd c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\

    C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14>cscript ospp.vbs /inpkey:xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx (Note: Where xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx is the Product Key.)

    After the Product Key has been inputted, we can run the following command to activate it:

    C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14>cscript ospp.vbs /act

    If you are installing MS Office 2010 32bit edition on Windows vista/7 (64bit) :–>

    Run command prompt as a Administrator, then follow the below command:–>

    C:\users\administrator>Cd c:\program files (x86)\microsoft office\office14\

    C:\program files (x86)\microsoft office\office14>cscript ospp.vbs /inpkey:xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx (Note: Where xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx is the Product Key.)

    After the Product Key has been inputted, we can run the following command to activate it:

    C:\program files (x86)\microsoft office\office14>cscript ospp.vbs /act

  24. varun 11 years ago

    how to activate this

  25. lewis-bfc 11 years ago

    does anyone have the link for the Activator program?

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