Is it? I don't know why it's problematic in Germany, but both online and phone activation here still works. Oh one note, there's some TLS settings you need to change if you're doing this in Win7 or earlier (and needs a "hacked" XP (to be precise, with updates for POS Embedded also installed) because XP is so old). Alternatively, phone activation still works, at least here.
Update: Just done a phone activation to verify, and it's automated, plain simple, and it's done painlessly. Office 2010 Home and Student (on Windows 7, which I think is irrelevant here). So unless there's a phased deactivation happening, then I'm scratching my head to be honest, especially that weird editions of Windows XP (like the "64-bit Edition" for Itanium and Media Edition <insert year variant>) are still available for telephone activation.
The article says that others have call Microsoft, to do phone activation only to be told "... that an activation is no longer possible under any circumstances."
Just done a phone activation to verify, and it's automated, plain simple, and it's done painlessly. Office 2010 Home and Student (on Windows 7, which I think is irrelevant here). So unless there's a phased deactivation happening, then I'm scratching my head to be honest, especially that weird editions of Windows XP is still available for telephone activation.
Also in Germany? I wonder if there's something weird with Office 2010 and Germany.
Perhaps there's something broken in certain Office activations, and given the activation software is over decade old Microsoft support just doesn't care to deal with it. They just tell the customers that activation isn't possible, because they no longer have the tools or infrastructure to fix what ever is misbehaving.
I just tried it and was able to activate my copy of Office 2010 just fine online automatically during install in North America. Although I have an academic edition I bought when I started university.
Okay, so at least that covers America and Asia. So something weird is happening with Office 2010 and Germany (or possibly Continental Europe or even EMEA)
Update: Just done a phone activation to verify, and it's automated, plain simple, and it's done painlessly. Office 2010 Home and Student (on Windows 7, which I think is irrelevant here). So unless there's a phased deactivation happening, then I'm scratching my head to be honest, especially that weird editions of Windows XP (like the "64-bit Edition" for Itanium and Media Edition <insert year variant>) are still available for telephone activation.
Update 2: this is not in Germany, but in (a country in) Asia, using the official toll-free hotline as listed here https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/existing-customer/...