Office 2003 Activation in VDI environment

Question

Hi,
Does office 2003 support KMS activation. If not how to activate Office 2003 in VDI environment. I have activated 2010 and 2013 in VDI environment successfully . But not sure about 2003
Thanks and Regards
J.P Raj

Answer 1

Hi Don,
Thanks for ur confirmation on KMS activation. 'There is no "activation" needed for Office2003 nor Office2007'
Does this mean no key installation and activation needed if we use Volume Licensing channel product.
Oue real problem is the activation state will not be retained ( on logoff, restart) in virtual desktops if we use
MAK kind of activation.
Thanks and regard's
J.P Raj
For the VL channel products, Office2010/2013 uses Volume Activation v2.0, which involves the use of KMS, or, MAK.
VL channel products of Office2003/Office2007, do not use VA v2.0, they only use a type of CSVLK (Customer Specific Volume License Key), which does not require to be "activated" with MS, nor with any on-premise activation service.
So, when you install these older products, yes, you must input a product key (or have the installation customised in such a way that the relevant key is applied automatically).
For Office2007, you can use the same approach as you would for Office2010/2013, i.e., use the config.xml, or the OCT.
For Office2003, you must use the ORKtools to generate an MST, or, modify the setup***.ini (I think, it has been a very very long time since I built Office2003 packages ;)
We used to have large VDI pools of WindowsXP+Office2003, and, WindowsXP+Office2007, they were all setup this way and never had any activation issues at all.
Many of the VDI pools we had, were destroyed every night, and no issues with Office2003/2007 at all.
For newer versions of Windows+Office, we use KMS, many thousands of VDI's and physicals.
Don
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