Office 2016 For Mac Vl Serializer

| Posted on by

Soon Microsoft are to release an update to the Office 2016 Volume License installer on VLSC.

  1. Office Serializer
  2. Microsoft Office 2016 For Mac Vl Serializer
  3. Vl Serializer
  4. Microsoft Office 2016 Vl Serializer

This update is 15.17 & is the first that has a few changes that may affect the way you deploy Office 2016.

These changes are going to be later enforced in 15.20 & onwards. Below are some details on the changes, some of the why & how via the power of the MacAdmins.org Slack & the awesome @pbowden that some of us have had a sneak peek.

Contents

  • 1 What’s Changing?

Note: In a future release of Office 2016, Office apps will check for a valid VL serialization on each launch. Currently, they check periodically, so while it might work if you bake the VL serializer or the resulting plist file into your image, it is destined to fail eventually. (The originally scheduled release for this was 15.20, but it has. Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac 大企业版 Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac 开心版. Office 2016具有节省时间的功能、全新的现代外观和内置协作工具，可帮助您更快创建和整理。此外，您可以将您的文档保存在OneDrive中，并从任何地方访问这些文档。. MS Office Pro 2016 includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook.Click here for more information about the Mac full installer and VL serializer. FYI: Office 2019 for Mac VL Serializer de-activates Office 2016 installations I found this out the hard way. After finding out that Office 2019 for Mac was just a straight update to Office 2016 going from 16.16 to 16.17, I pushed out the Office 2019 Volume License Serializer to our Macs that currently had 2016 installed in preparation for the.

When you download the .iso from VLSC you’ll notice two packages within it:

The change is the new second pkg: “Microsoft_Office_2016_VL_Serializer.pkg”

What’s that about?

Well, for a while now it’s been fairly common practice to deploy the Office license to Macs outside of the Office installers or updates.

This came about as on occasion an Office Update or Installer would delete the file.

However, whilst the deletion itself was a bug, the ability to use the license.plist across Macs was also a bug.

What is it & should I use it?

With Office 2016, Microsoft are moving to a device based serialisation method. Which means that deploying the plist /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.licensingv2.plist will no longer work.

This device based serialisation is based around the generating a license on the Mac that is to be running Office 2016.

So if you employ monolithic imaging or deploy Office 2016 via a Composer snap shot etc, the serialisation will not work. (Please don’t deploy Office 2016 via a Composer snap shot, use the pkg).

Office Serializer

Also, if you install Office 2016 whilst booted to another volume (as in when installing via a NetBoot or NetInstall volume or something like Target Mode Imaging), again the serialisation will not work.

To install Office 2016 from another volume & have the serialisation work, cache it locally on the Mac being imaged & install on first boot or if using Casper Imaging check “Install on boot drive after Imaging” for the PKG from within Casper Admin.

However, to enable Office 2016 to be correctly licensed in the multitude of deployment scenarios that we mac admins employ, @pbowden & his team have created the “Microsoft_Office_2016_VL_Serializer.pkg”

Running this will correctly serialise the Office 2016 suite, & should be run from the Mac that’s running the suite. So again, can be added post imaging & then the suite will be correctly serialised.

To be clear, this will only affect you if using the Volume Licensed version of Office 2016 & not the Office365 version.

What happens if I carry on copying the licensing.plist?

Microsoft office 2016 for mac vl serializer

For now, not much.

15.17 is the first release with the “Microsoft_Office_2016_VL_Serializer.pkg”, from 15.20 (scheduled for Q1 2016) you will have to use the correct license.

How did people find this out?

Microsoft Office 2016 For Mac Vl Serializer

Well a little over a month ago a gentleman with the nick @pbowden hopped into the #microsoft-office channel on the MacAdmins.org Slack, this was awesome as @pbowden is a: Software engineer for Office for Mac/iOS at Microsoft, a fellow Brit & nice guy.

Vl Serializer

It’s been a great few weeks with the community sharing feedback with @pbowden & some of us being able to test pre-release installers for Office.

Microsoft Office 2016 Vl Serializer

I hope this warning has been as helpful to you, as it was when @pbowden shared it with us.