Office 2013 and Office 365 installations and transferability

Feedback regarding Office license portability

Canadian IT Professionals — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 16:45:19 GMT

Hello Folks, Yesterday, the "TechNet eNews - Revisiting Windows 8 and Your Feedback" mailing went

re: Office 2013 and Office 365 installations and transferability

mhammo — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 01:55:36 GMT

Ok, somebody has some sense of what's right and wrong at Microsoft. You have made one step in the right direction regarding Office 2013 by changing the onerous licensing to a single device. The next step is to change the same policy towards PowerPivot in Office 2013. On the one hand you claim to want to provide BI to the masses, however, by removing PowerPivot from most versions of Office, except for volume licensing or O365.

It was included in all versions of Office/Excel 2010, however, now we are being forced to buy volume licenses of Office 2013 (which is a minimum of 5) or move to Office 365. The problem is you ar enow adding SO MANY variations of Office 365 it's extremely difficult to know what's in and what's out.

Yes, folks, that's right. If you want PowerPivot (or Power View), you can't go to your local Best Buy or Amazon and buy it -- for any price. And if you upgrade from any version of Office 2010 (like many of us who pre-purchased - thereby helping Microsoft makes it's sales numbers last year) to any version of Offiice 2013, you lose PowerPivot in the process. Period.

Come on Microsoft, you had been doing so well with a noticeable change in becoming easier to do business with. Please don't follow the Oracle route of being a major PITA to deal with and making things much more complicated.

Let's see you finish the right move by adding PowerPivot and PowerView back into any version of Office 2013 and Office 365. BI to the masses!

re: Office 2013 and Office 365 installations and transferability

PeterOLiver — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 23:33:24 GMT

Use Ubuntu, it's not only better but also free.

Then you don't have to put up with this.

Office 2013 ahora es transferible

Microsoft En Español — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 17:11:49 GMT

--Jevon Fark, Equipo de Office Hace unas semanas, publicamos esto para clarificar los nuevos términos

Office 2013 now transferable

Office News — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 14:00:04 GMT

Effective immediately, we have changed the Office 2013 retail license agreement to allow customers to move the software from one computer to another. We made this decision based on feedback from our customers who asked for additional flexibility in this

re: Office 2013 and Office 365 installations and transferability

Disenchanted User — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 09:10:58 GMT

The BIG LIE comes to Redmond. Until now, retail licenses for MS products allowed them to be moved from computer to computer with very few limitations. Serial monogamy for a program, so to speak. This was the primary operational difference between retail and OEM licenses, which were restricted to a single machine (though once upon a time, OEM licenses could be moved, too).

Claiming that the Office 2013 license terms for the retail product have not changed from previous retail versions is completely false. If this were said under oath in court, it would constitute perjury and may even draw some time in jail.

I seriously wonder if it will even survive the class action lawsuit that I consider to be inevitable if the license is not revised. While there is a clear nexus between hardware and software that is purchased with it, what us old folks call "OEM" software, this does not exist between any hardware and the shrink wrapped box I buy at Fry's, Staples, Walmart, etc. I really think this could open the door for a successful class action law suite.

Another very gray - and contestable - area is exactly what constitutes a computer and when does its life end. Software lives on hard drives. Does the failure the hard drive mean the computer itself has reached end of life? Not to any one not in the employ of Microsoft, I think. What about the complementary issue: moving the hard drive to a new motherboard? The software is on the same hard drive, so what died? The software is still only in one place, in the hard drive, but the hard drive is now a different place. By any ethical measure, this should be perfectly within the terms of the license. I have one copy of the software and it is on one computer.

As may be, just because Microsoft wants to move everyone to a subscription, i.e. Office 365, there's no reason people have to obey. Without a doubt, Office 365 is pretty reasonably priced, but what if I don't want to keep paying for it forever? That's why people buy houses rather than renting them, buy cars rather than leasing them, etc.

Some folks will move to Office 365, but they are the ones who would have ponied up the a retail box, particularly the 3-PC Home and Student boxes. However, I think many more will now move to OpenOffice, LibreOffice, WordPerfect and some players to be named later,.

What won't happen is that all those folks running pirated copies will see the light and mend their ways. They didn't spend the money to be legal before. In what fantasy world do these far more onerous license terms mean they will suddenly go legit and buy anything from Microsoft?

Frankly, this is from the same folks who decreed that Windows 8 could not be made to boot to the traditional interface. It's a huge restriction with no perceptible up side for the folks shelling out the money that Microsoft wants to collect.

re: Office 2013 and Office 365 installations and transferability

Helinton — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:13:28 GMT

This is not fair. I think Microsoft should reconsider this policy. So I pay $399.99 for Office Pro my computer is stolen or brocked. Guess What? I need to pay again to have Office in my new computer. No way.

re: Office 2013 and Office 365 installations and transferability

briankwartler — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:30:39 GMT

I really hope for Microsoft's sake that you are indeed looking into the issues raised by your customers. Many families who are used to purchasing retail copies of Office Home & Student and getting 3 perpetual licenses, are not happy about your changing the license terms to a single non-transferable license. I suggest you retain the 3 pertpetual licenses for Office Home & Student and allow retail licenses to be transfered from a decommissioned computer to a new computer. Otherwise we will move to alternative office suites.

re: Office 2013 and Office 365 installations and transferability

seattleflyerguy — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 05:19:24 GMT

I'm currently on the verge of upgrading, both my laptop and my copy of office. Right now, my laptop is OK, but in about a year or so it will be time to upgrade. That leaves me with a range of crappy options being offered by Microsoft: 1) Pay $139 or more for a new copy of Office to use for one year. 2) Pay $99 for one year. In the olden days, when people actually *bought* software this would have been solved by simply reinstalling Office on the new machine, but as it is neither one of these is an attractive option for me as a consumer. Now, I happen to be an educator, which means that I can buy Office 365 University for $80 for 4 years. That's less than $2 a month and it solves this laptop transition business because I can deactivate the copy and move it to a new system with ease. The option to transfer is something that should come with ALL versions of Office.

In four years if I no longer have access to educator pricing there is no way I would bother buying Office again. There are simply too many alternatives that I can make work. Google documents? LibreOffice? I'm already considering biting the bullet and making the switch right now since compatibility is already good enough for these suites.

You have a problem with your business model. Yes, I'm sure there are some big scary graphs about how you are losing revenue to uncaptured sales, but you cannot take for granted that Office has to be on our machines. Most important documents get zipped around as PDFs and the most popular text editor in the world is not the e-mail inbox. Desktop word processing is simply not at primary use for computers anymore and anyone who needs to do desktop publishing is likely either willing to look at free and legal alternatives, or simply aim higher and buy a professional suite from Adobe.

re: Office 2013 and Office 365 installations and transferability

Bobbyc — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 22:36:05 GMT

You must work at Microsoft. Unfortunately Uxo22, that's the point. I'm consulting with small business owner and end users and they are opting to go with Libre Office, Open Office, Google Docs. Suggest you get use to the criticism and take Excedrin.