<p>My friend just bought a laptop with Windows 10 pre-installed. He also bought a retail version of Office 2016 and activated it. After each start of any of the Office 2016 apps, he received an Office 365 activation pop-up window saying:</p>
<p><strong>Let&#8217;s get started. Choose one.</strong><br />
<strong>Try (Get a free trial of Office 365)</strong><br />
<strong>Buy (Buy Office from the Microsoft store)</strong><br />
<strong>Activate (Enter your Product Key or sign in)</strong></p>
<p><img class="alignnone wp-image-3216 size-full" title="disable Office 365 activation pop-up window" src="https://www.wincert.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/office365activation.png" alt="disable Office 365 activation pop-up window" width="640" height="363" /></p>
<p>I presume this pop-up window appears because of the previous Office 365 demo installation that came with Windows 10. To disable the Office 365 activation pop-up window, we&#8217;ll have to delete one registry key.</p>
<p>Open Registry Editor from the Run prompt (regedit.exe)</p>
<p>If you had an x86 version of Office 365 installation, navigate to the following registry key:<br />
<strong>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\OEM</strong></p>
<p>Note: Before you delete this registry key, please make a backup by clicking on the <strong>OEM folder</strong> and clicking <strong>Export</strong>. Save the key wherever you want.</p>
<p>After you have exported the key, it is safe to <strong>delete the OEM folder</strong>.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone wp-image-3220 size-full" title="disable Office 365 activation pop-up window" src="https://www.wincert.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/office365activation3.png" alt="disable Office 365 activation pop-up window" width="640" height="296" /></p>
<p>If you were using x64 version of Office 365 installation, you&#8217;ll have to backup and delete the following registry key:<br />
<strong>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE_SOFTWARE_WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\OEM</strong></p>
<p><img class="alignnone wp-image-3219 size-full" title="disable Office 365 activation pop-up window" src="https://www.wincert.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/office365activation4.png" alt="disable Office 365 activation pop-up window" width="640" height="174" /></p>
<p>Close the registry editor and try to start Office apps again. The annoying pop-up window should be gone.</p>
<p>Hope this helps.</p>