How to extend Office Trial Period

The standard trial period for both Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) is one month. When the trial period approaches its end, Microsoft begins notifying you so you can take action. If you need more time to explore Office before it enters the ‘reduced functionality’ mode (a state where Office apps operate with limited features until activated), you may extend its trial period. In this post, we will show you how to extend the Office trial period on a Windows 11/10 PC.

Your trial has expired

The Microsoft 365 trial subscription expired. To use Office, select one of the options below.

How to extend Office Trial Period

To extend the Office trial period, you may use the following methods:

Buy or use a different account
Use Rearm
Use Microsoft 365 Admin Center
Use vnextdiag.ps1

Let us see these in detail.

1] Buy or use a different account

As suggested by Microsoft, you can use an alternative email account or opt to buy Office.

2] Use Rearm (For Volume Licensed Versions)

Rearm refers to the process of resetting the activation grace period of your Office edition. It allows you to use Office without activation for a limited time by extending its trial period.

You can rearm Office up to 5 times by default. Each rearm resets the activation grace period (usually 30 days), giving you up to 150 days of use in total. Once you’ve used up all 5 rearms, you can’t rearm again. However, if you activate Office using a KMS host computer (a type of volume license server used in organizations), you get one more rearm opportunity.

To perform the rearm operation, Microsoft provides a built-in tool called ospprearm.exe. This utility is included with volume-licensed editions of Office and is located in the Office installation directory.

To rearm Office using the ospprearm command, follow these steps:

Close all Microsoft Office applications. Open Command Prompt as Administrator (elevated command prompt). Then run the following command to navigate to the Office installation folder:

cd C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16

The above command will work for 64-bit Office. For 32-bit Office on 64-bit Windows, run:

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

Next, type the following command and press Enter:

ospprearm.exe

If the rearm is successful, you’ll see the message:

Microsoft Office rearm successful

Exit Command Prompt and continue using Office in extended trial mode.

Read: Use Slmgr to Install, Uninstall, Activate, View or Extend Windows License

3] Use Microsoft 365 Admin Center

If you’re using Microsoft 365 and you need more time to evaluate the suite before buying a subscription, you can extend the trial period directly through the Microsoft 365 Admin Center (provided you’re an admin of the account).

Find and click on the Microsoft 365 trial you’re currently using. This could be Microsoft 365 Business Standard Trial, Apps for Enterprise, etc.

If your trial is eligible for extension, you’ll see an “Extend end date” link below Expiration date. Click the link and follow the on-screen instructions to add another 30 days to your trial. Once done, your new trial expiration date will be updated in the portal.

Note: You can only extend the trial once, and only if your subscription qualifies.

4] Use vnextdiag.ps1

If you’re using Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise, you can use the Microsoft-supported PowerShell script vnextdiag.ps1 to reset the activation status of Office apps. While this method doesn’t officially extend the Office trial period, it can reset license information and force a reactivation, giving an extra buffer to evaluate the product.

The script is included with Microsoft 365 Apps, starting with Version 2104. Before using the script, check that your version of Microsoft 365 uses the new activation method.

Open Word and go to File > Account > About Word. A dialogie box will appear. On top, you will see an entry for License ID. For Microsoft 365 Apps, the ID starts with EWW.

Note:

The License ID for consumer versions of Microsoft 365, such as Microsoft 365 Family, starts with CWW instead of EWW.
For volume-licensed versions of Office, such as Office LTSC 2021, a Product ID is listed instead of a License ID.

Once verified, you can view activation of Microsoft 365 Apps using vnextdiag.ps1 as follows:

Open PowerShell as Administrator. Then navigate to the Office installation directory:

For 64-bit Office: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16
For 32-bit Office on a 64-bit system: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16

Next, run the following command:

./vnextdiag.ps1 -action list

From the output, note down the License ID (if you’ve already verified your License ID from Word, you can skip the above command and directly use the reset command below).

Then run the following command to reset activation:

./vnextdiag.ps1 -action remove -LicenseId EWW_GUID_ID

The app will prompt for reactivation next time it launches. And if your system still qualifies for grace activation (e.g., it’s within the total trial window or it hasn’t used all the rearms), then you may get another grace period.

I hope you find this useful.

Read: Your trial period for this app has expired error in Windows 11.

There was an error when trying to rearm Office. You can try passing the SKU ID as a parameter.

When multiple versions of Microsoft Office are installed on a computer (e.g., Office 2016 Pro Plus and Microsoft 365 Apps), the ospprearm.exe tool fails to determine which Office version to rearm. As a result, it throws the following error:

There was an error when trying to rearm Office. You can try passing the SKU ID as a parameter. Passing the SKU ID is necessary if you are relying on an activation to permit an additional rearm.

The above error indicates that you need to explicitly specify the version of Office (via its SKU ID) that you want to rearm.

To list all Office SKUIDs on your computer, open Command Prompt as Administrator and run the following command:

cscript ospp.vbs /dstatus

Choose the Office version you want to rearm, and copy its SKU ID. Then run the rearm command with the SKU ID:

ospprearm.exe d450596f-894d-49e0-966a-fd39ed4c4c64

This explicitly tells the tool which version of Office to rearm.

Read: SkipRearm lets you use Windows without activating

Error: 0xC004D307 The maximum allowed number of re-arms has been exceeded. You must re-install the OS before trying to re-arm again

The default rearm count for Windows is usually 6 or 3, depending on the edition you have. When you try to rearm Windows after this count reaches zero, it throws the following error:

Error: 0xC004D307 The maximum allowed number of re-arms has been exceeded. You must re-install the OS before trying to re-arm again

To fix the error, try reinstalling Windows. This is the only official method to reset the rearm count. If you’re within the activation grace period, consider using a valid license key to activate Windows permanently.