Hi, over the past 20 years, I bought two different versions of Office. Whenever I changed machines, I used TimeMachine. When I got the MBP 16" 2019, I had two working versions of Office on it. No problem. Then, I worked at a school which uses Office (I think it is Office 365 version as when I used them on a PC or iPad Pro, the software used my school's email address for verification I guess). I don't recall installing new version of Office to my MBP. Now I no longer work there and my email address has expired. Whenever I launch programs such as Words or Excel, I cannot save documents. When I checked the program, my product ID contains a bunch of zeros. It shows my former school's email address and a device ID. Did Office automatically converted from my two old versions to Office 365? What can I do to use full features of Office? The older versions I bought in the past are sufficiently good enough for my use.
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Original office licenses not working
- Thread starter hajime
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You’d purchase another license to continue using it, since the last one was connected to a work email that has now been deactivated and can no longer be used in full functionality because the email cannot be verified, and therefore the program was purchased from your work, not you. However, if you have office on a 2019 PERSONAL computer, do you have a personal email associated with it that has a license that is activated? That would be your best bet if I’m reading the information you gave correctly.
So the Words and Excel I bought in the past somehow got changed to Office 365 programs which require a new license or a valid school email address for activation?
The ones I bought did not require email activation. I bought them over 10 years ago. They were made before the practice of email activation. They are in CD/DVD format. If I uninstall all office related software and reinstall using old CD/DVD with the license that I bought, that would fix the problem?
I am interested in Office 2021 but nobody knows when it will be released besides second half of this year.
Yes, you’d need a DVD drive to read the licenses since they’re formatted to the DVD and not a digital program, unfortunately. It’d be a pretty simple reinstall. Otherwise you can buy a single license that has no expiration, but a login feature tied to either email or a phone.
What's the difference between Microsoft 365 and Office 2021? - Microsoft Support
Learn about the differences between a Microsoft 365 subscription, Office 2016, and the free Office Online apps.
I switched from an old version of Office to 365 (which I paid for myself) because I got tired of the old version randomly crashing, especially with big documents that included lots of images. But I'd assume you could uninstall the 365 version, then re-install your old version from DVD. However, I believe my old version of Office is a 32-bit app so if this is the case with yours too, it would not run natively on anything newer than MacOS Mojave.
Thanks for the warning. I don't recall upgrading to Office 365 on my Mac. Perhaps it did it automatically. Is uninstalling simply dragging Excels and Words to the trash? I don't know if mine is 32-bit or not but when the 16" 2019 came out, I ran it on that machine without issue.
Has anybody here been using the pre-release free version of Office 2021 for Mac as a beta tester? Is it stable? I wonder if it is a good idea to sign up to be a beta tester to use it and when they officially release the standalone perpetual version, buy it.
Perhaps you should use the free online version of the Office programs for the next several months until you can buy Office 2021 after it's released. Maybe you'll find that they're all you actually need