Office 365 ProPlus FAQ



  • Frequently asked questions

    Hide What is Office 365 ProPlus?

    Office 365 ProPlus is one of the subscription service plans in the new Office. It is productivity software (including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher, Access, and Lync) that is installed on your desktop or laptop computer. Office 365 ProPlus is a user-based service that allows people to access Office experiences on up to 5 PCs or Macs and on their mobile devices. Traditional Office installations were tied to the computers they were installed on. Office 365 ProPlus enables flexible new deployment options that IT and/or individual users can choose from to install Office.

    Hide What is the difference between Office 365 ProPlus and Office Professional Plus 2013?

    Both Office Professional Plus 2013 and Office 365 ProPlus deliver the same application experiences. However, Office Professional Plus 2013 is a traditional Office installation that is tied to the computers it is installed on, and it is available through volume licensing only. A user-based service, Office 365 ProPlus is available as a subscription.

    Hide Why would I choose Office 365 ProPlus over Office Professional Plus 2013?

    Office 365 ProPlus offers several advantages compared to Office Professional Plus 2013.

    • Office Professional Plus 2013 uses Windows Installer Package (MSI)-based installation. Office 365 ProPlus uses Click-to-Run installation and software update management. With Click-to-Run, you can:
      • Have Office up and running fast—often in under two minutes.
      • Run existing Office 2010, Office 2007, and Office 2003 applications while you install the new Office, so you don't have to interrupt your users' work.
      • Keep older versions of Office side by side on your PCs to mitigate any potential file or add-in compatibility risks.
      • Get updates delivered to users without interruption. Updates are cached in the background and the next time a user closes and re-opens the Office application, it is up to date.
    • Office Professional Plus 2013 is connected to the hardware or device it is installed on. Office 365 ProPlus is connected to the user, which offers these advantages:
      • Users can install Office on up to five PCs or Macs concurrently and they will have access to mobile Office experiences across smartphones, tablets, and other devices they use.
      • Your organization may also have the flexibility to treat Office as an operational cost instead of a software asset.
      • If you are implementing a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) strategy, Office 365 ProPlus lets you de-activate Office on user-owned devices when people leave the organization, or if their devices are compromised.

    Office 365 ProPlus includes all the great Office application experiences you expect, with added flexibility for modern users and IT needs.

    Hide Do I need an Internet connection to use Office 365 ProPlus?

    Office 365 ProPlus is designed to run locally on PCs, so a persistent connection to the Internet is not required. IT administrators can also deploy Office and Office software updates using software distribution tools and infrastructure in more traditional private cloud environments. Because Office 365 ProPlus is pivoted on an active user account, the Office desktop applications perform a daily check for user account status using the Internet. This gives your organization the ability to de-provision Office from user-owned devices if they leave your organization. Office 365 ProPlus can be easily configured to use your email, collaboration, and directory services infrastructure, if you prefer to manage those services on-premises.

    Hide Do I have control over software updates if I use Office 365 ProPlus?

    Yes, you can configure Office 365 ProPlus to apply only the software updates you have tested and validated. You can manage software updates completely in-house, either by using familiar software distribution tools or by directing Office 365 ProPlus to check for updates at your file shares or URLs.

    Hide Can I cancel my subscription at any time?

    You can cancel your Office 365 subscription at any time. However, depending on the product and the type of subscription you have, there may be a penalty for canceling before the end of your contract. Read the complete Microsoft Online Subscription Agreement.

    Hide What happens to my data if I cancel my subscription?

    Your data is yours. If you decide to cancel your Office 365 subscription, you can download your data—for example, your email and documents on team sites—and save it to another location. You should save your data before you cancel.








 Professional Plus 2013?
Office 365 ProPlus = $12.00 per month Office Pro Plus 2013 = $399.99 to buy

Both Office Professional Plus 2013 and Office 365 ProPlus deliver the same application experiences. However, Office Professional Plus 2013 is a traditional Office installation that is tied to the computers it is installed on, and it is available through volume licensing only. A user-based service, Office 365 ProPlus is available as a subscription and............................................

You can download and run the Office 365 ProPlus  on up to 5 computers, including Macs and PCs. 
You can change which 5 they are at any time.  User based VS computer based. 


If/When you move past your trial 
Payments are Made DIRECT to Microsoft with a Credit Card  


Office 365 ProPlus Administrator Series: Addressing Compatibility Concerns with Office 365 ProPlus

Author: Jeremy_MSFT
Originally published to the Office 365 Preview blog.

Office 365 ProPlus is designed to be compatible with existing Office files, add-ins, dependent applications and other customizations. It includes new tools to help IT organizations maintain configuration, performance and health characteristics of Office programs and adopt new versions of Office quickly. New tools for Office telemetry allow administrators to quickly troubleshoot issues at the endpoint level or monitor and manage Office programs centrally in an organization. Side-by-side support allows users to have more than one version of Office installed, giving a valuable tool to assist with transitions from older versions of Office to Office 365 ProPlus. If for any reason there are dependencies on an older version of Office, users can always go back to that version.

Office Telemetry

Telemetry is new to Office and provides the primary functions of maintaining the health of Office programs in a managed IT environment and helping with migrations from previous versions of Office. Telemetry is native to Office desktop apps and can be accessed via the Office Telemetry Log, an Excel-based spreadsheet that reports Office events in a sortable and filterable way. The Office Telemetry Log will allow IT admins to quickly troubleshoot issues local to that PC. The events from the Office Telemetry Log are also optionally sent to a central location and data processing service in order to provide a consolidated view across an organization. This is important for maintaining performance and compatibility characteristics when using Office and also when assessing customizations and compatibility of previous Office versions and the files created with those versions. The intent of the new Office is to maintain compatibility at the file level across Office versions, but when inconsistencies do surface, Office telemetry is designed to alert IT admins and allow them to make proactive decisions to correct and prevent issues.


 

The Telemetry Dashboard guide explains telemetry capabilities and how it is implemented

Telemetry in Office 365 ProPlus consists of five key components:

  1. Inventory Agents
  2. Shared folders
  3. Telemetry Processor
  4. Database
  5. Telemetry Dashboard

The inventory agent is integrated as part of the new Office 365 ProPlus Preview and Office Professional Plus 2013 Preview. By default, the inventorying function is turned off, but can be enabled post installation or using Active Directory Group Policy controls. Inventory agents will also be available for Office 2003 and newer clients, but they are intended for use in migration projects and not as a part of ongoing health and performance management. The inventory agent collects information from the Office Telemetry Log and will detect customizations such as add-ins, custom code (COM and Browser Helper Objects) and Apps for Office. It also reports on product version and architecture.

 

The Office Telemetry Log collects Office events stored in Windows and displays them in Excel

When inventory agents are enabled, the IT admin also specifies a shared folder location to save the inventory agent’s output files. A data processing service then processes the output files and adds entries into a SQL Server database. Finally, the Telemetry Dashboard displays reporting views from the SQL database in Excel to provide an aggregate view of Office versions, commonly used files, errors and events, plus add-ins and related solutions.

Side-by-Side Version Support

While it has traditionally been possible to install Office side-by-side with other older versions of Office, there have been several side-effects with having this configuration. These side-effects include prompting for and performing Office installation repair when loading the older program, removal of older Outlook versions and Start Menu shortcuts in the same folder among other issues highlighted in KB2121447.

Office 365 ProPlus is designed to allow side-by-side version support with older versions of Office. As a compatibility tool, this means the user is able to keep older versions of Office installed and in the unlikely event that a user encounters a file that does not function properly in the new Office program, they can open the older Office program and open the file from within that program.

Office 365 ProPlus running alongside Office 2003 on the same system

Default file associations for Office file formats (DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PPT, PPTX, etc.) will be assigned to the last version of Office installed in Windows 7 and align with how Windows 8 assigns default file associations in the operating system. To assign default file associations to the older Office version an installation repair of the older Office version will assign default file associations to the older version. Likewise, an installation repair on Office 365 ProPlus will reassign default file extensions back to the newer version. These approaches may be automated when an IT administrator pre-installs Office 365 ProPlus and wished to retain default file associations on older version until the user is trained. See Best practices for maintaining Office 2010 or equivalent articles from previous releases for more information about required command line scripting to automate the repair command.

Existing Customizations with New Click-to-Run Installs

Office 365 ProPlus was designed to support existing extensibility models for Office programs, including Object Model APIs, Web services and protocols, VBA, Office Add-ins and document-level customizations. In fact, in side-by-side installations, Office 365 ProPlus will examine desktop application customizations existing from previous installations of Office and load those when Office 365 ProPlus programs are executed. Customizations found in %AppData%\Local\Microsoft\Office such as OFFICEUI custom ribbon extensions and CUSTOMUI files.

In the example below, I have customized Microsoft Word in Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 with a “Touch” ribbon tab and installed a third party add-in called “DYMO Label.” After installing Office 365 ProPlus and launching Word 2013, both the “Touch” tab and “DYMO Label” add-in are available.  

 

Office Professional Plus 2010 customizations automatically applied to Office 365 ProPlus in side-by-side configuration

This functionality also extends to the Office on Demand applications. If your organization is using Office 2007 or newer, file compatibility combined with familiar ribbon controls and applied pre-existing customizations should help ease user transition to the new Office.





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