How to activate Microsoft Office on Mac for free

Microsoft Office is a very important software for generating, editing and sharing documents. It’s totally irreplaceable and most people find it very essential for their day-to-day activities. But in order to use the software you need to buy a license for activating it. Buying the license for MS Office suite or the individual packages is often expensive for most people. But there’s a way you can activate MS Office without buying the license, using the steps highlighted below.

1. MS Office 2021

Ms Office 2021 does not support activation via copy/pasting the plist license file. You will need to use the VL Serializer tool instead. Follow the steps below to activate MS Office 2021 for free.

1. Download Microsoft Office 2021, or install via brew:

brew cask install microsoft-office

2. Do not run MS Office after installation.
3. Download and install Microsoft Office 2021 VL Serializer.
4. Run the Microsoft Office 2021 VL Serializer and it will automatically activate MS Office 2021.
5. You can now open and use the activated MS Office.

2. MS Office 2019

Ms Office 2019 does not support activation via copy/pasting the plist license file. You will need to use the VL Serializer tool instead. Follow the steps below to activate MS Office 2019 for free.

1. Download Microsoft Office 2019, or install via brew:

brew cask install microsoft-office

2. Do not run MS Office after installation.
3. Download and install Microsoft Office 2019 VL Serializer, or from GitHub.
4. Run the Microsoft Office 2019 VL Serializer and it will automatically activate MS Office 2019.
5. You can now open and use the activated MS Office.

3. MS Office 2016

Ms Office 2016 can be activated by simply copy/pasting the plist license file. Follow the steps below to activate MS Office 2016 for free.

1. Download Microsoft Office 2016 – official link, or manual download, or install via brew:

# brew cask install microsoft-office  # this point to Office 2019 now
# install last office 2016 version below
brew cask install https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/raw/538c7cf34c085e3bb4fdac36f6370ded87930036/Casks/microsoft-office.rb

2. Copy license file com.microsoft.office.licensingV2.plist to “Preferences”.

# md5(com.microsoft.office.licensingV2.plist) = a8f1283303838b4d3bd943775e463239
cp com.microsoft.office.licensingV2.plist /Library/Preferences/

# or download it in library by command line
curl -sSL git.io/office16-plist -o /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.licensingV2.plist

3. You can now open and use the activated MS Office.

Note: If you’re being asked to “Sign in” and still the MS Office package requires activation, you can remove the MS Office license files from your Mac and reinstall again.