Why did Wondows 10 install destroy Office 2013?

[Windows Central Question]

Every few years, they bring out a new Office suite, not because the old one doesn't work, but because they need to make everyone's software obsolete. The last time they did this, I reluctantly bought Office 2013, which offered no discernable improvements but took up more disk space and wiped out my 8000 contacts in the install.

Last week, I installed "free" Windows 10, and I started getting a message that my Office 2013 wasn't registered; it demanded my product key, which I haven't seen for a couple years -- but which I obviously had, since it's been working without any such warnings for years.

So, now Office 2013 has shut down.

I called Microsoft, and they offered to sell me a new product key for a clipped-wing version of Office 2013 for a hundred bucks, or a complete Office 2016 suite for $249. I called their tech support; they pointed out that they don't keep my product key -- it's in the "Terms and Conditions" (no doubt on page 488 or something -- but what can you do, anyway?). Well, Office 2013's search feature can't find the email that has the key, so...

I have boxes for Office 2003, 2007, and 2010, but I bought 2013 online, so there is no product key for that one. There is NO WAY they're going to get me to buy another download -- I totally don't trust them. I can't access Outlook, so can't possibly find the old key, and my email hosting server keeps emails (I average 300+ per day) for only 60 days, so it's not there.

Is there a hack that can find my old key, or some other way to make Outlook 2013 work again?

 

[realwarder]

If you rollback to Windows 8.1 it should still be working. Then use tools available online to extract your product keys.

Note: My office also got un-activated in the upgrade. But I just clicked the activate button that Office displayed and it re-enabled it and all worked. So if yours was legit and not an overused license I'd expect it to just reactivate too.