Workspace Weekly: Activation-less Office Workloads – Testing Beyond Licenses

May 27, 2025

In this week’s Workspace Weekly, we’re excited to introduce out-of-the-box Office app workloads on desktops without activated licenses. With these new workloads, you’ll be able to run basic tests against Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, even when full licensing isn’t available, empowering you to validate environments and generate user-like load where it was previously impossible. 

Want to read the full guide? Check it out here, Activation-less Microsoft Office Workloads.  

Why Activation-Less Workloads Matter 

Many organizations face environments where Office activation doesn’t exist or can’t be maintained on every desktop. Traditionally, Login Enterprise’s Office workloads would error out without a valid license, leaving gaps in your testing coverage.  

By enabling limited functionality workloads on unlicensed Office apps, you can: 

• Validate readiness in restricted environments – Ensure read-only scenarios, PDF printing, and navigation flows work as expected, even when activation is omitted. 

• Maintain consistent workload coverage – Fill testing blind spots in audit-only workspaces. 

• Generate user-like load – Opening files, scrolling through documents, and printing to PDF still drive CPU, GPU, and I/O, offering valuable metrics that mirror real usage. 

Key Capabilities 

Read-only document interactions 

• Open existing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files without errors. 

• Navigate content with smooth, natural mouse scrolling to stress rendering pipelines. 

PDF print function 

• Print to PDF from any Office app, generating file-save I/O even in license-free mode. 

Outlook read and print 

• Open emails, scroll through message lists, and print to PDF. 

Business Benefits 

• Broader EUC coverage – Test essential Office workflows on unlicensed or audit-only clients. 

• Cost avoidance – Avoid temporary licensing costs for environments where only basic validation is needed. 

• Risk mitigation – Catch imperative Office functionality in read-only scenarios before users experience it. 

• Faster time-to-insight – Spin up tests in new or temporary environments without waiting for activation keys. 

Import to Appliance and Assign 

Import to Appliance 

• Upload the modified Office workloads to your Login Enterprise virtual appliance. 

Assign and Run 

• Add workloads to an “Office Activation-less” Application Group. 

What to Expect During Tests 

When you run activation-less Office workloads, you’ll see: 

Our virtual user closes the Sign in to set up Office window so the Office window behind it can maintain interactivity. 

Figure 1 – The Sign in to set up Office window 

Outlook scrolling through an email list, opening an existing email, scrolling within it, then printing to PDF. 

Figure 2 – Outlook in activation-less mode, viewing an email. 

Excel loading a workbook, scrolling through a sheet, then printing to PDF. 

Figure 3 – Excel workbook open in read-only view. 

Word opening in read-only mode, scrolling through a document, then printing to PDF. 

Figure 4 – Word document scrolling smoothly in license-free mode. 

PowerPoint viewing a slide deck, then printing to PDF. 

Figure 5 – PowerPoint slide deck in read-only presentation view. 

Integration with Existing Edge Workload 

Our multi-tab browsing workload for Microsoft Edge remains fully compatible, and requires no modification, since Edge doesn’t need an Office license. To include it in your test mix, simply add: Knowledge Worker 2025 – Microsoft Edge – Multiple Tabs Workload 

It’s Your Turn Now!

Activation-less Office workloads open new testing possibilities in constrained environments, ensuring you capture essential user experience metrics, even without full licensing. Try it today and let us know how it performs!