Sometimes the problem could have occurred just because of the time and date sync issue on the system. Sometimes it is a DNS update issue or maybe office 2013 and 2016 co-hosted on the same server. Here in this article, we will see if one of the above is the issue and steps to solve the problem.

Method 1: Download and Install Latest Microsoft Office 2016 Volume License Pack

As mentioned in Microsoft support article, if your system co-hosts the Office 2013 KMS host and Office 2016 KMS host and the operating system is either Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2, you might get this error. This is a bug and downloading and installing the latest Volume License pack will solve the problem.

Method 2: Disable and Re-enable DNS Host

Sometimes we may face this error due to DNS not updating and disabling and enabling DNS publishing would help. To disable DNS publishing, we can use “Slmgr.vbs” script can be used, however, you can do this manually by following the below steps.

Method 3: Check System time and date

It could be possible that your client system’s time and date are not in sync with the server and this could also can the error 0xC004F074 during Office 2016 client activation. It is observed that if the system time on the client computer and system time on the KMS host differ by more than 4 hours, this error occurs. To take care of system time and date sync issues, it is recommended to use the Network Time Protocol (NTP) time source. You can also configure Active Directory Service to synchronize time between client and server systems on the network.

Method 4: Check Firewall Settings on Server Host

If ‘Key Management Service (TCP-In) – All‘ and Key Management Service (TCP-In) – Domain are not enabled on your KMS host, then you will have the current Office 2016 activation error. Enabling that service in the Firewall’s settings may solve the problem.

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