If you are located in a specific country, you might get an error when running the Microsoft Office online installer. That’s because some countries are unable to download the Microsoft Office setup files from Microsoft servers due to a blockage by Microsoft. In this article, you will learn how to bypass Microsoft Office download restriction.
Microsoft restricts Office downloads based on countries
Microsoft primarily checks for IP addresses when a user downloads Microsoft Office. Then they will know if it’s in their blocked countries list. If one is detected, the user is shown the error mentioned below. But it doesn’t stop there.
Command not supported
We’re sorry, we can’t continue because we weren’t able to download a required file. Please make sure you’re connected to the internet or connect to a different network, then try again.
Once the installer identifies a blocked IP, it creates the registry key below to store that information. From then on, even if you switch to a VPN, the installer will continue to display the error.
An example of how it would appear if the Netherlands (NL) were blocked.
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\ExperimentConfigs\Ecs]
"CountryCode"="std::wstring|NL"So what is the solution to this problem?
Bypass Microsoft Office download restriction
To bypass the Microsoft Office download restriction, you must adjust the country code to the United States or any other country where Microsoft Office can be downloaded:
- Close the Microsoft Office setup installer.
- Run Command Prompt and run the command below:
reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\ExperimentConfigs\Ecs" /v "CountryCode" /t REG_SZ /d "std::wstring|US" /f- Run the Microsoft Office installer to start downloading and installing the latest version.
That’s it!
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Conclusion
You learned how to bypass Microsoft Office download restriction. First, run Command Prompt as administrator. Next, run the command to add the registry key. After that, the Microsoft Office installer will not display any errors, and it will download the latest version of Microsoft Office to the computer. Another method is to download the Microsoft Office offline installer.
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