I have a note 10 with office installed and its less than 6 months old.
It has Microsoft office installed which was set up using the same email address I use for all Microsoft products I have on various devices. It has a 12 month licence on it after which Ill need to get a Ms subscription. It has 6 months of this licence still to run and its always functioned perfectly.
If I log into my Ms account online I can see a list of all the licences I have for all the products I use and which devices they are installed on. I can also see the product keys and can copy and paste them out if I need them for anything.
I can n ot see the licence for the working office installation on my Note 10 because the licence has not come from microsoft, its a mass licence that is licenced to Samsung that allows them to provide the initial 12 month usage. The installation on my note !) will only show up on the microsoft account page once the initial 12 months has expired and I purchase a key from microsoft.
Last week I bought a Tab 7+. It has a 12 month Ms Office licence on it..
I logged into it to set office up yesterday and used the email address I use for all my Ms products and licencing including the Note 10. It doesn't work. I can log into office but I can not use any office application, it just tells me I need to buy an office 365 subscription which will cost £60, and £60 per year thereafter.
I read the samsung help forums and saw in many places the cut and paste answer that you cant use the same email for a microsoft on more than one device. So you need to create a new email account and create a new microsoft account on each new device for it to work.
Wait what? I've worked in the software industry for over 20 years and I specialise in encryption, and Ive never heard such a steaming pile of rubbish in all my life. Ive still got the one single email address that I've used for all microsoft products across all devices for most of the last 20 years.
I rang samsung customer support. They told me the same thing that ms products only work if you have a different email account to register installation for each device, the solution was to delete the office account on the new device and start again with a new email address.
Just to see if this works, this is what I did. It does not resolve the issue. The guy on samsung support told me there was nothing else he could do, told me it was a microsoft licencing issue and I needed to speak to them and basically just ended the call.
ok, Ill let the appalling customer service go... I phoned Ms UK support.
They were amazingly helpful. We went through the office licences I have already (which are at the max devices per licence already unfortunately) and looked at what was happening with the office installation on the Tab 7+.
They confirmed what I already knew (and can clearly see from the number of licences and devices on my account all on the same account) that the cut and paste instruction from samsung about requiring a different account for each device was absolute tosh. They explained that the initial licence is a mass user licence issued to samsung, and that they have no control over it, not have any record of any devices its working on and that the office licence on my NOTE10 will only show on my account once the initial 12 month mass user licence expires and I purchase a new user licence from them.
We then noticed something odd. When I went into the Office settings on the NOTE10, (whish as previously stated has been working perfectly for 6 months and still has 6 months to run on the initial licence)... and discovered in the office settings that it stated that Office had been purchased on the 6 July 2021. Yesterday. When I logged into the TAB7+ for the first time. It still works fine.
The conclusion is that the TAB7+, when I logged into office the first time to set it up, found another existing installation of office on my network with the same account and transferred the licence over to that, over writing the existing licence on the NOTE10.
Following this still? It gets worse.
I rang back Samsung customer support, spent ages on the phone with a lady who kept putting me on hold to speak to a supervisor, then eventually she put me through to another department who were apparently better placed to help me.
I got put through to the resolutions dept.
The lady there said she didn't know why, there was no one technical in her department and after talking to me for a few minutes and creating an account for me so she could log the issue (which over 4 separate phone calls NO ONE had done so far) and then I was put through to the 'technical' dept.
So now I end up talking to someone that sounds young enough to be my grand daughter who just churns out the same cut and paste advice as before, that I have to use a different account on each device etc. She tells me that Ms have given me deliberately incorrect advice and that you cant use a single email address for more than one installation. Clearly she doesn't have a clue what she's talking about, however I go with it because I need to get this resolved.
Eventually after getting to the limit of her cut and paste answers she starts to repeat herself and we are going in circles. So I say ok. Lets go with the fact that you are correct and microsoft, all the licences that I currently use and my own lifetime experience in software all all wrong and you are correct. Talk me through reverting the licence on my NOTE back to what it previously was and resetting the licence on the TAB7 so I can use it.
So... she asks me to delete the office account on my NOTE10. I know that's not going to work, but she says it will.
Then she gets me to delete the office account on the TAB7
Then she gets me to create a new account on the TAB7 with a new email address. Guess what, it doesn't work.
Ill point out here I already knew what the outcome would be and what would happen, but I was going with it because I wanted to prove to her that what she was saying would not work.
Then I ask her how I can use any of the office features on my NOTE10. She tells me I can go into settings and create a new onedrive account using my old email address. Yes I know that, but how do I access word docs and more importantly to me, spreadsheets.
I recreate the office account on my NOTE so I can access all my documents and work again, but now the licence on my NOTE doesn't work either, it wants me to purchase a 365 subscription. She has successfully killed office on my NOTE now as well as the TAB7. And then she got upset when I told her that her 'high level of technical training' she kept telling me she had was a joke.
So... if anyone followed all of that.
I dont recommend you gat any samsung galaxy products if you intend to use them for any sort of productivity.
Being able to have no more than one single samsung device with office installed on your account is ridiculous.
And the operating system transferring the new licence over to an existing device in the background with no possible was of returning it back is just... Its so stupid that I dont have words...
If anyone actually has a constructive solution as to how to retrieve and use the office licences that came with these devices id like to hear it.
