Odd registry behavior - Changing Office 2010 MAK

johngarrison4976 · 2013-06-06T11:50:27.000Z

I may be fundamentally misunderstanding how MS Office’s registration works, but this has me stumped.

I use a script that returns the license key in use by an Office 2010 installation. Specifically, it reads and converts the DigitalProductID value at

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Registration

or HKLM64\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Registration

The script works great for reading the MAK initially used to activate Office, however, if the key is changed after the fact (either through Office’s interface or the command line) the registry value is not updated and the script continues to return the original key.

Should I be looking somewhere else for the new key or is this the wrong approach completely?

Thanks

alexjimenez9625 · 2013-06-08T05:35:40.000Z

have you tried using ospp.vbs? It’s located in the \Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\ folder (Tools to configure client computers in Office 2010 | Microsoft Learn. cscript OSPP.VBS /dstatus will give you the status of the installed keys and the last 5 characters of the product key. You can setup a script to query client computers, look for the sku id of the office version you are using and last 5 characters of the product key.

johngarrison4976 · 2013-06-10T11:29:49.000Z

Thanks Alex, that workaround did the trick.

I wonder where the script is grabbing the key from. Tried to pick through it and it wasn’t immediately clear.