Office 2016 – How to reset activation grace period

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If you’ve over used a trial install of Office you’ll find that it goes into a limited usage mode – basically making it so documents are read only and not editable.

If you haven’t yet got a licence or don’t have access to it – you can reset the trial period up to three times.

The steps below show how to reset the trial period for Office 2016. It is a similar process for Office 2013 and Office 365.

  1. Close any Office programs (Word, Excel etc)
  2. Open “Computer” and browse to 
  3. C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16
  4. Right-click on OSPPREARM.EXE and choose ‘Run as administrator’
  6. Now open up an Office program and you should find the activation period has been reset.

Can’t find OSPPREARM.EXE ?

Try opening C:\Program Files and C:\Program Files (x86) and searching for it.