Hi all, I recently purchased a license/product key for MS Office 2016 Home & Business for Mac from a software selling company I had no business relation before. In the past I bought Office 2008 & Office 2011 retail boxes, but these get no Updates anymore and the activation server got turned off, so I bought a Office 2016 Home & Business licence online and got a product key and a download link to a package containing Microsoft_Office_2016_VL_Serializer_2.0 + Microsoft_Office_2016_15.23.0_160611_Volume_Installer. My problem is that I can't verify the Volume Installer with e.g. SHA256 (internet search for some hash variants did not yield reliable results), so I would like to know if I can just download a "well known" version of the VL Installer and use it the same way I would use the package distributed by the software selling company? What I don't understand is, that the company pointed out to install the Serializer first before installing office, but I read inside Apex Support Bulletin that the Serializer is only needed when I would have a pre-installed office on my computer (which I don't have!). I also read in the Support Bulletin that all customers use the same Serializer and therefore share the same VL key. But what is the purpose of my delivered product key and how is Microsoft checking this product key against the VL activation limit? I mean, in the past Microsoft did as much as they can to protect their VL activation against fraud. I worked in a company for years ago and witnessed Microsoft blocking legally purchased VL keys and providing new working spare VL keys to the company. So today everything is about downloading the right PKG from Microsoft and there is no need to enter a key or activate by internet/phone? Has Microsoft completely given up in relation to software piracy? I guess not and think, that I totally misunderstood something decisive. Best regards and thank you very much in advance, Keyboard88
@Sajjo Thank you very much for your help. So I have to install the 2016er Serializer too - and would like to verify its hash as well if it is possible. If I remember correctly there where official SHA-1 hashes on MSDN when downloading VL-ISOs years ago. Are there official SHA-256 hashes for the Serializers? I only found a few virus scan results for your 2016er Serializer.