We find ourselves in an era where almost every service or program we use on a daily basis resides in the cloud, with a subscription model based on paying for use through annual, or even yearly, licenses.
However, in the case of programs such as the Microsoft Office suite or even Windows, it is likely that many users still have some type of software or program with a perpetual license or acquired years ago installed on their computer. .
Finding the product key for your office suite or your Windows operating system once it is installed on your computer can be a real ordeal if it turns out that you have thrown away the original packaging or purchased a license. on line.
However, be aware that there are alternatives to be able to recover said key if you want to install the program on another computer or change the hard drive of your PC. Currently, it is not possible to locate a product key by searching the Windows Registry, as the code is encrypted.
If you don’t already have Microsoft Office and are considering buying a specific edition, see the article on which version of Microsoft 365 you should buy based on your intended use.
Programs that serve as tools
Luckily, there are a number of third-party programs that will do all the work for you, which we’ll discuss below. One of our favorites is ProductKeya small application that goes deep into the registry to find and decrypt the product key.
The installation size of the file is small, which means it won’t take long to download and run. Once you download it, run it and it will immediately show the product keys of any Software of Microsoft Office until 2013, as well as operating system keys such as Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.
You can then copy the keys for future use or export them to an HTML file to store them in digital format and be able to refer to them at any time.
If Office was pre-installed when you purchased your PC or laptop, it’s possible that no Software retrieve the key. But if you’re willing to pay for it Software, Collect the keys must be your choicebecause it allows you to scan deeper than any other free app including the famous Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder.
Although you’re probably only interested in finding the Office product key, Collect the keys is compatible with more than ten thousand applicationsas it can scan remote Windows or Mac computers, retrieve license keys from external storage, and scan multiple Windows installations on USB drives.
If you want to guess your PC’s configuration, be it CPU type and speed, graphics, storage unit type, or amount of RAM, check out this article What Material my pc has: how to know graphics, cpu and ram.
Also take a look at the article on how to download Microsoft Word for free on your computer.