After Microsoft Office 365/Microsoft Office 2024 installed, our office is still showing Office 2016 / Office 2019 / Office 2021

The Issue

After Microsoft Office 365/Microsoft Office 2024 installed, our office is still showing Office 2016 / Office 2019 / Office 2021

The Fix

Note: Maye have changed since then According to this comment

Usually this is caused by legacy license entries/serial number/key left in the register/system. Thus it is recognized as Office 2016/Office 2019/office 2021, we can simply delete/remove all old serial number/key entries then login using our Microsoft account or Microsoft Education or Microsoft Education account to activate the newer version (2024 or 365).

0 Close/Terminate all Office application/software/program etc.

1 Bring up the start menu by using “Win” key or click on Windows start menu icon, Type “cmd”

3 Right click on “Command Prompt”, Run as Administrator

4 Click on “Yes” if asked by UAC

5 Switch our current working directory to where Office 2021 is installed (Office16)

For 32bit Office: cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16

For 64bit Office: cd C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16

6 Show current Office products license information

cscript ospp.vbs /dstatus

From the output, if we look carefully, we will see lines looks like below

Last 5 characters of installed product key: XXXXX

If we have multiple Office products installed, we may see similar lines multiple times from the output, if we are having problem with all Office products, we need to note down all of those lines which includes the “Last 5 characters of installed product key”.

7 To uninstall/remove/delete legacy license keys, we can use the following command (Where XXXXX is the “Last 5 characters of installed product key” we have noted from the output from Step 6)