A new laptop, but Office is only a trial version — what to do

You buy a new laptop, open Word and everything works. A month later a banner appears saying the product is not activated. You have done nothing wrong — that is how almost all laptops are sold.

What is actually included

In a shop „with Office“ usually means one of three things, and the difference matters:

• A trial version of Microsoft 365 — 30 days, sometimes a free month once a card has been entered. After that it locks. This is the most common option.
• Office Home & Student, pre-activated (OEM) — a genuine licence, but tied to that laptop for good and without Outlook.
• Nothing — just icons that start an installation and ask for a key.

Windows on such a laptop is almost always an OEM licence and is perfectly fine — it does not expire. The problem is only with Office.

How to check in 30 seconds

Open Word → File → Account. It states there:

• Which edition is installed — Microsoft 365, Home & Student, Home and Business, Professional Plus.
• The status — activated, trial period, or expired subscription.
• Which Microsoft account it is linked to, if any.

If it says Microsoft 365 and an expiry date appears somewhere — that is a trial version.

The options

1. You pay the subscription for Microsoft 365

The cost recurs every year. It makes sense if you genuinely use the cloud storage and work on several devices.

2. You move to a perpetual Office

A one-off payment, and the licence stays yours. For someone who writes documents, keeps spreadsheets and makes presentations, that is the more sensible sum two or three years ahead. A comparison — Microsoft 365 or Office 2021.

3. You stay with the free options

The web version of Office, LibreOffice, Google Docs. They work, but with complex formatting, macros or specific fonts differences appear. If you receive other people's files to edit, that is a risk.

How to move to a perpetual licence

1. Remove the trial version. Settings → Apps → Installed apps → uninstall Microsoft 365 and everything with Microsoft Office in the name. Restart. Your documents are not touched.
2. Install the version you have bought. We send the direct link to the official Microsoft file together with the key.
3. Enter the key the first time you open Word or Excel.

The steps in detail — guide to activating Office 2021. If you skip the first step, activation will almost certainly be refused; that is also reason number two in the list of why a key does not work.

Which edition to choose

• Office 2021 Pro Plus — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher, Access. The newest functions in Excel: XLOOKUP, dynamic arrays.
• Office 2019 Pro Plus — the balance between price and capability.
• Office 2016 Pro Plus — the most economical option, does the same job for documents.

If the laptop is a MacBook, the Windows versions do not work — see the Office licences for Mac.

One warning

While looking for a way out it is easy to end up at „free activators“. They are not a licence but a way around the protection: activation expires every 180 days, and the tools themselves run with administrator rights. On a new laptop under warranty this is a particularly bad idea — why.

See the Office licences — the key usually arrives by email within 15 minutes during working hours, with an invoice and a 2-year statutory guarantee. Not sure what is on your laptop? Send a photo of File → Account to info@litsenzi.bg and we will tell you.