Office 365 advice needed please

I currently have office 2007 student edition installed on 3 PCs. This includes Excel, Word, Powerpoint but no outlook. So last year I bought Outlook 2010 and was told I could use this to install on 2 PCs which I have done. However next month I plan on building two new PCs (and ditch the old ones) and from what I understand Microsoft will expect me to buy new licenses for my Office products. As far as I know you can't transfer them by deactivating one license then transferring to another PC?

I'm not overly clued up with Office products but read about office 365 and that it includes 5 licenses. You pay a certain amount every year...about £100. You can transfer licenses between PCs but have to wait 90 days to do it.

Does anyone know if Office 365 maybe the way forward for someone like me who has 3 PCs? rather than buying individual licenses to cover them? Anyone used Office 365? Will i still be able to install Word, Excel, Outlook onto My PC or is all run in the cloud? if it is run in the cloud then I can't see how this would benefit me as I need it installed on my PC. Reading the MS website gives the impression that any word, excel files i save, will be saved to the cloud(skydrive).

major security issues there imo. I don't want my stuff out there.

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Comments

RobertKaucher

You should not ask licensing questions on a forum like this one. You should always send licensing questions to the company providing the product.

That being said, see this page:
Office Frequently Asked Questions

[h=2]Managing your Office 365 subscription[/h]Office 365 Home Premium can be installed on up to five PCs, or Macs, for use by your entire household. Office 365 University can be installed on up to two PCs or Macs, for use by one person.

If you have installed Office on the maximum number of PCs or Macs and want to use Office on a different PC or Mac, you can deactivate a computer from your subscription, by logging in to www.office.com/myaccount. You can then install Office on a new PC or Mac.
The copy of Office on the PC or Mac that was removed from the subscription will revert to reduced functionality mode, but you will not lose the documents that are saved locally on the original PC.

RobertKaucher

I have an Office 365 developer account, btw. So I know a bit about it, but I am not any sort of expert. Especially when it comes to the consumer products and not the enterprise.

I do use SkyDrive for my documents. I do not have anything sensitive there, so I have no security concerns regarding it. I would not be storing financial spreadsheets there, though. But compositions for blog posts or presentations for work, I don't care. ANd the idea that I can save it on my work PC to the SkyDrive, then just fire up my Surface and it appears in Word's recent documents list on the tablet or PowerPoint or what ever.

MrXpert

MrXpert wrote: »

I currently have office 2007 student edition installed on 3 PCs. This includes Excel, Word, Powerpoint but no outlook. So last year I bought Outlook 2010 and was told I could use this to install on 2 PCs which I have done. However next month I plan on building two new PCs (and ditch the old ones) and from what I understand Microsoft will expect me to buy new licenses for my Office products. As far as I know you can't transfer them by deactivating one license then transferring to another PC?

I'm not overly clued up with Office products but read about office 365 and that it includes 5 licenses. You pay a certain amount every year...about £100. You can transfer licenses between PCs but have to wait 90 days to do it.

Does anyone know if Office 365 maybe the way forward for someone like me who has 3 PCs? rather than buying individual licenses to cover them? Anyone used Office 365? Will i still be able to install Word, Excel, Outlook onto My PC or is all run in the cloud? if it is run in the cloud then I can't see how this would benefit me as I need it installed on my PC. Reading the MS website gives the impression that any word, excel files i save, will be saved to the cloud(skydrive). major security issues there imo. I don't want my stuff out there.

Normally I would agree but the last time I spoke to Microsoft regarding Outlook 2010 and licensing for the particular version i bought, I was told 3 different things by 3 different Microsoft staff so I just wanted a 2nd opinion.

RobertKaucher

MrXpert wrote: »

Normally I would agree but the last time I spoke to Microsoft regarding Outlook 2010 and licensing for the particular version i bought, I was told 3 different things by 3 different Microsoft staff so I just wanted a 2nd opinion.

That is not uncommon. But that way you would at least have something to point to if the something went wrong.

Qord

Possibly a dum question, but have you read the eula? Generally licenses can move around. If you're licensed for three machines, you can have it installed on three machines. I've installed my copy of Office 2003 on at least six different physical machines (not at the same time) and never had a problem.