0

We have quite an old fashioned setup at home and are very happy with it. Rather than 100s of devices, we have one main computer that we use for most non-online tasks. We share this between two of us but we have kids getting older that'll need to use this too.

I've been looking into buying an Office 365 subscription and all of their agreements are geared towards lots of devices so I got very confused. I will only be installing office on one device but I intend for multiple users to use it on that device. I don't really need multiple microsoft accounts for everyone so I'm happy for all the users to use the same microsoft account to login into the office products but I'm not sure if this will work.

Can I get away with saving the money and getting a personal subscription or do I have to get a family subscription?

Improve this question

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

Your description of intended use ("I'm happy for all the users to use the same microsoft account to login") is a direct reference to a single user. Microsoft has only the account sign-in to determine user count. To the licensing system, O365 has one user.

A personal subscription will work.

Improve this answer
3
  • This is great but does this one user have to be the user you log into the machine with or can you have sepearate system logins tied to the same microsoft account just for office?
    – CCarter
    Commented Jan 26, 2021 at 8:01
  • Your additional user logins will have separate microsoft accounts associated/created when the logins were established, negating the "same microsoft account" aspect.
    – fred_dot_u
    Commented Jan 26, 2021 at 19:04
  • Thanks - that was what I was worried would be the case but at least I understand now!
    – CCarter
    Commented Jan 30, 2021 at 19:40
0

I believe @fred_dot_u's answer was correct but the comment was not. I can see nothing technical preventing all the users with their different computer logins from using the same microsoft account. It is the same effect as if I have 3 different computers and am using my same Microsoft account on all 3. (I see nothing on a Mac anyway in which Microsoft information is leaking across all the accounts.)

Microsoft may prefer you not do that (share one license by multiple users), in fact I expect Microsoft has created the 5-account plan just so you will not do that. And I would expect the legalese says you are not permitted to do that. But I bet they won't go find you and do anything bad to you if you do.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .