How to find your Office product key (and when you don’t need one)

Microsoft’s own wording is that your Microsoft account takes the place of the product key for many tasks. So before you hunt through drawers and old inboxes, it’s worth checking whether the key matters for your copy at all.

First, work out which Office you have

What you have	Do you need the key?	Where to look
Microsoft 365 (Personal, Family, Business)	No. Microsoft 365 doesn’t use one	Sign in with the subscribing account
Office 2016 to 2024 bought for home, already redeemed	No, for reinstalling or moving to a new PC	account.microsoft.com, Services & subscriptions
New product key card, not yet redeemed	Yes, once	Back of the card (scratch off the foil) or email receipt
Office bought from the Microsoft Store	Sometimes	Order History in your Microsoft account
Office through an employer’s Workplace Discount Program	Possibly	Order Details page for that purchase
Volume licence Office at work	Not yours to find	Ask your IT admin
Office 2010 or older	Yes	Card, packaging, email receipt or Certificate of Authenticity

Microsoft 365 and Office linked to your account

Once a key has been redeemed, the licence lives in your Microsoft account. That’s why Microsoft says you won’t need or receive a product key for Microsoft 365, and why you don’t need the key to reinstall a one-time purchase either.

1. Go to account.microsoft.com and sign in.
2. Open Services & subscriptions. Your Office product should be listed there.
3. Choose Install (the exact button wording can vary) and run the installer on the PC.
4. When an Office app asks you to activate, sign in with the same account instead of typing a key.

If Office isn’t listed, you’re probably signed in with a different account. People often have two: a personal Outlook.com or Hotmail address and one set up when they bought the PC. Try each one. If activation still fails after sign-in, work through Word product activation failed, which covers the usual causes.

Don’t be thrown by a different key. Some users see a key mentioned on the account page that doesn’t match the one on their card. Microsoft says this is normal: the two are different types of key that only share the same format.

Got a brand-new key card? Redeem it at microsoft365.com/setup and follow the prompts. That links it to your account, and from then on you won’t need the card again.

Check which account Office belongs to

If you’re not sure which Microsoft account holds the licence, the installed copy can tell you. Open Word or any other Office app, go to File > Account and look under the product name for Belongs to followed by an email address. Sign in at account.microsoft.com with that address. This works for Microsoft 365 and Office 2016, 2019 and 2021, according to Microsoft.

Where a purchased key is written down

Office keys are 25 letters and numbers in five groups, like XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX. If you bought a key rather than a subscription, it is in one of these places:

• Product key card: scratch off the silver foil on the back.
• Email receipt: search your inbox, including spam and archive folders, for the retailer’s name together with “Office” or “product key”.
• Microsoft Store: sign in, select your name in the top-right corner and open Order History. For some products the key is shown there.
• Workplace Discount Program: Microsoft makes an exception for Office Professional Plus, Visio Professional and Project Professional bought this way: the key is on the purchase’s Order Details page.
• Office 2010 and older: the card or packaging, the email receipt, or for a preinstalled copy the Certificate of Authenticity sticker that came with the computer.

Apart from those cases, Microsoft says your product key isn’t displayed online, so there’s no account page that will reveal a key you never wrote down.

Office that came with a new PC

Most PCs sold with Office don’t come with a printed key. Microsoft explains that a digital key is sent to the PC when Windows is activated, and you claim Office by signing in with your Microsoft account when you first open an app. After that, it sits in Services & subscriptions like any other purchase.

If you see a Let’s get started screen offering a trial, the PC came with a one-month Microsoft 365 Family trial, not a permanent copy. There’s no key to find in that case.

See the last five characters with ospp.vbs

For volume licence and other one-time versions of Office, Microsoft’s ospp.vbs script reports the licence status and the last five characters of the installed key. That won’t give you the whole key, but it’s enough to match an installed copy against a list of keys or a receipt.

1. Open Start, type cmd, right-click Command Prompt and choose Run as administrator. Microsoft says the script needs an elevated prompt and an administrator account.
2. Change to the Office folder. For 64-bit Office:

cd "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16"

For 32-bit Office on 64-bit Windows, use C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Office16 instead. Older installs may not have the root folder in the path.

Then run the status command:

cscript ospp.vbs /dstatus

The output lists each installed licence with its status and the last five characters of its key. Microsoft notes that ospp.vbs doesn’t work for Microsoft 365 Apps or subscription versions of Project and Visio; for those it points to a PowerShell script called vnextdiag.ps1. If you’re on Microsoft 365, you don’t have a key to recover anyway.

Key finder programs: use with care

Plenty of guides suggest free or paid “key finder” tools. They were mostly built for older Office versions, and for Office 2013 and later, community testing generally finds the PC holds only enough to show the last five characters, the same as ospp.vbs. Microsoft doesn’t endorse these tools. If you try one, download it only from the developer’s own site and scan it first, because unofficial downloads of these tools can carry malware. Don’t pay for one that promises to recover a full Microsoft 365 key; there isn’t one.

If you still can’t find it

• Contact Microsoft support if you have proof of purchase. Microsoft says it may be able to replace a lost or damaged key or offer other options.
• Ask the seller. If a key you bought doesn’t work, Microsoft’s advice is to contact the seller and ask for a refund.
• At work, Office Professional Plus with a volume licence is managed by your organisation, so ask your IT admin rather than searching the PC.
• Be wary of cheap keys online. Microsoft warns that some sellers offer stolen or otherwise unauthorised keys, and those can stop working later.

Once you have the key, store it with your other important records, such as in a password manager, so the next reinstall is quicker. If you’re reinstalling because you’re also starting Windows over, see how to reinstall Windows 10 first, then install Office from your account. A different kind of key, the BitLocker recovery key, is also kept in your Microsoft account; this BitLocker guide shows where.

Related guides

• Word Product Activation Failed: 7 Ways to Fix It
• A required authentication broker is missing: how to fix it
• Classic Outlook download: how to get it back on Windows 11 and 10
• How to Reinstall Windows 10: Reset, Repair Install or Clean Install

Official sources:

• Microsoft Support: Using product keys with Office
• Microsoft Support: Examples of Office product keys
• Microsoft Learn: Tools to manage volume activation of Office