I checked all 16 digits of the Product Key and they looked right to me. Anyway, it's my wife's new shiny, she can sort it out, before the anger they've ignited inside gives me command of the mighty turd storm. I'm calling it the Brown Fury. Behold the loose stools of intemperance.
It ought to be rule number 1. Do not ask humans to type 16 digit sequences of characters. Do they really need 1016 combinations and 53 bits of entropy?
Put seriously, 54 digits is laughable (that's about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible combinations and I may have missed a few zeros, they probably got tired of lining up and wandered off for a pint or three). Really, they can't create a unique hardware key with a few fewer digits?
Mind you, Microsoft may have simply opted to disown Office 2011 for the Mac. I think it was only invented to give Steve Jobs indigestion.
I've met Bill and Melinda Gates. They never mentioned this.