Activation
Microsoft Office Professional 2013 KMS offered through Tufts is activated automatically. I cases when the computer is not on the domain, the activation may fail.
Before you install Office 2013, you should make sure that your Windows operating system is set up with the correct Domain Suffix (tufts.edu or tufts.ad.tufts.edu) so that your license will properly activate.
Troubleshooting
How to check if my computer has the proper DNS suffix
- From the Start Menu, go to Control Panel > System.
- In the Advanced System Settings >Computer name tab, click More and check Primary DNS Suffix for the computer
- The Primary DNS suffix of this computer should show tufts.ad.tufts.edu. If it doesn't, enter tufts.ad.tufts.edu and click OK.
Performing DNS lookup
Office activation uses DNS lookup to locate the Key Management Service (KMS); if DNS lookup doesn't find the KMS server, office will not activate.
You can test DNS lookup from a command prompt like cmd.exe, using the following "nslookup" command:
nslookup -type=srv _vlmcs._tcp
The successful output will look similar to this:
_vlmcs._tcp.localdomain
SRV service location:
priority = 0
weight = 0
port = 1688
svr hostname = tabvmsdld.tufts.ad.tufts.edu
If DNS lookup cannot locate the KMS server, Office will not be able to activate.
- Error code 0x8007007B can indicate this problem.
- Setting the Primary DNS suffix, as described above, will often fix the problem.
- Try to setup DNS manually
In elevated prompt, navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office15 and execute
cscript ospp.vbs /sethst tabvmsdld.tufts.ad.tufts.edu
then
cscript ospp.vbs /act
Verifying that outbound TCP port 1688 is open to the KMS server
Download and install the utility portqry.exe from Microsoft. It is a command line utility from Microsoft that reports the port status of a remote host.
From a command prompt, run the command:
portqry.exe \-n tabvmsdld.tufts.ad.tufts.edu \-p tcp \-e 1688
The command will return "TCP port 1688 (unknown service): LISTENING" if the computer is able to communicate with the KMS server.