Office 2010 – Silent Activation After Unattended Installation

My question is this, if I run this under another account on the individual laptops, does that script effect all the user profiles?

Yes, activation is per machine, not per user.

If NOT can I run this script from a domain Group Policy and have it run even though the user does NOT have admin rights?

I believe that if you run it as a start up script (runs as the SYSTEM user) and not a logon script it should work.

I contacted Microsoft (MSDN) Technical Support and received step-by-step instructions that almost worked. I tweaked them a little and got them working. Since I cannot find the following working solution anywhere on the interwebs, I thought I should post this information for others. (Prior to contacting Microsoft, I did find and try many solutions, but none of them worked.)

Here is what worked for me:

1. Go to services.msc and stop the "office software protection platform" service.
2. Rename three files:
   • In %ProgramData%\Microsoft\OfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatform\ - rename tokens.dat to tokens.dat.old
   • In %ProgramData%\Microsoft\OfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatform\Cache\ - rename cache.dat to cache.dat.old
   • In C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\microsoft shared\OFFICE14\Office Setup Controller\ - rename pkeyconfig-office.xrm-ms to pkeyconfig-office.xrm-ms.old
   • Note: The path above for "C:\Program Files (x86)\" might be just "C:\Program Files" depending on the OS.
3. Launch any office application. (I used Outlook.) A repair occurs and you are asked if you want to restart the OS.
4. DO NOT RESTART.
5. A second operation begins. You are prompted for a product key.
   • I'm guessing you can just cancel out of this, and install the product key using only the steps below for ospp.vbs.
   • However, in my case, I entered the product key and clicked "continue".
6. Close the office application.
7. Launch command prompt with administrator rights.
8. Browse to path C:\Program Files (x86)\microsoft office\Office14.
9. Type in the command cscript ospp.vbs /inpkey:xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx
10. Type in command cscript ospp.vbs /act

I hope the above information helps someone in a similar situation.