I recently set up a KMS server for my Office 2013 deployment.  I know was able to reach the 5 machine threshold that is required.  The 6th machine activated with no problem but the first five are still showing that need activation.  I was figuring they would just activate when the threshold was met.

Hi,

Try to enable Auto-discovery for a KMS Client by running slmgr.vbs /ckms at a command prompt, or manually activate the client by cscript slmgr.vbs /ato to check the result.

We can learn more from this article:

Configuring KMS Clients

I hope it's helpful.

Regards,

Melon Chen
TechNet Community Support

I recently set up a KMS server for my Office 2013 deployment.  I know was able to reach the 5 machine threshold that is required.  The 6th machine activated with no problem but the first five are still showing that need activation.  I was figuring they would just activate when the threshold was met.

Have the first 5 machines successfully re-contacted your KMShost?

If not, that's what you need to arrange.

Check the log on your KMShost, and check on the client - you should be able to see the re-tries.