The Realm of the Verbal Processor

OSPP.VBS – Unsupported Command Passed

I’ve been working on automating the activation of Office 2010 during the initial installation at a client who is using Multiple Activation Keys (MAK). I wanted to be able to script the activation instead of having the activation window pop up when an Office application runs. Microsoft includes a method for doing this in the installation of Office 2010. It is a vbscript that is in the installation directory for Office 2010 (C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14 by default). It is the Office Software Protection Platform script (OSPP.vbs).

So, I found multiple places where the syntax for using OSPP.vbs is wrong. The places where I found the syntax to be wrong were mostly blogs…some TechNet blogs as well as plenty of non-Microsoft sites. The link above is to the documentation for the tool which has the correct syntax. The incorrect syntax that I found had the switches for the tool referenced with a dash instead of a forward slash. Using the dash in the command causes a message box to pop up stating “Unsupported command passed.”

Below are examples of both the incorrect and correct syntax for scripting the activation using OSPP.vbs.

Incorrect Syntax (note the –act)

cscript ospp.vbs –act

Correct Syntax (note the /act)

cscript ospp.vbs /act

October 14, 2010 - Posted by Jarvis | ConfigMgr, Office 2010