Office 2021

[JPMi]

When will Office 2021 be available for download as a software benefit?

We are setting up a couple of new PCs with Windows 11, and would like to add Office 2021 to them.

[kgoranov]

In the middle of 2022 we still not have access to MS Office 2021 , also 2021 versions of MS project and Visio are missing.

This is not acceptable. Action pack was used to give access to latest software versions, now we have 3 years old versions. Why ?

[Dingethal]

It is not solved - its a shame!! My case is also closed. But I think MS will not sell his products any more.

[C-Dryk]

Thank you JanoschUlmer for your clear answer.

Regards; Cédric.

[C-Dryk]

Hi,
Ok Windows 11 is now added, thank you to Microsoft MAPS Team, but it could be usefull to have Office 2021 at least for testing purposes.
Already, as Alescan said, the number of licenses with O365 is not the same, but morover, Project Pro and Visio Pro are *NOT* included in O365 too.

[JanoschUlmer]

@C-Dryk : Will come as well. Note that for Office 2021, each activation means a consumed license, the activation count will not be increased - while with Office 365 E3, the licensed user can install Office Apps on 5 devices with a single license. So actually, O365E3 offer 25 installs (5 users with each 5) at the same time, with the option to move installs toa new machine, while Office 2021 only allows for 10 installations in total.

[alescan]

Yes you have 25 installs, but you have to share the same accounts to 25 different employee and for many organizations that's not ideal, not to mention bad practice for security and other reasons.

[JanoschUlmer]

@alescan Primary issue is sharing of accounts is not compliant from licensing perspective - you are always licensing a person, not the user account (See definition of a "licensed user" in the license terms)

[alescan]

But in the admin interface of Microsoft 365 you can assing 1 license every user you create. Every user can install office on 5 different machines and login to the account for activate the installation.

So, as far as I can uderstand, are user or person the same thing? A person is a user with a password to access the resources.

[JanoschUlmer]

@alescan : When it comes to licensing, they are not the same. Licensing rules and technical requirements often do not align.

User Account: john.doe@contoso.com /  jane.doe@contoso.com

Person: John Doe, Jane Doe.

Now, John Doe and Jane Doe could share the account john.doe@contoso.com, the both know the username and password. While technically possible, they would need two licenses. Technically you would even only consume one license since only one user account has this license assigned, but from licensing perspective you would need two.

Other example: John Doe could use both john.doe@contoso.com /  jane.doe@contoso.com, only John knows the password, he is using both accounts in parallel. In this case, only one license would be required form licensing perspective - but for technical reasons you would need to assign one license to every user account, otherwise John could not activate Office when logging in with  jane.doe@contoso.com .

in your scenario - 5 persons can install 5 copies of the software. While you can say 5 persons each share one user account, so in total 25 persons can each work on one Office - from licensing perspective you would need 25 licenses.

[alescan]

So, was I right? I have to share the user and password (so one license) across more than one employee to install office on 25 machines. And sharing accounts is not best practice for most of IT admin.

In the meantime is an ETA available for office 2021 in MAPS?

[JanoschUlmer]

@alescan Yes, never said you were wrong that this is not a good practice 🙂 Just mentioned that sharing accounts is not even allowed from a licensing perspective for user-based licenses, since one employee = one license. So not only "against best practice", it is "no allowed practice" 

No, no new updates reg. Office 2021 I can share, unfortunately.

[alescan]

Ah sorry, I misunderstood what you wrote.

My bad, I apoligize to you, my native language is italian, not english.

[alescan]

Yes, there is the Office 365 E3 benefit, but it include only 5 license instead of 10.