With the introduction of Microsoft 365, Microsoft has transformed its historic work suite into a subscription service; a service that you pay for on a monthly basis and which includes all the standard Office applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook plus the mobile versions of these and some very famous online services, such as Skype and OneDrive (with, respectively, 60 min/month of free calls and 1TB of space on the cloud).
The transition to this new service began a few years ago, in 2011, but has not yet been completed definitively. On the market, in fact, it is still possible to find the standard version of the suite (the one that is paid on a one-off basis and includes only the basic Office applications) and this has created some confusion among less experienced users, especially with regard to the procedure for purchasing and activating the product.
If you are also part of this group of users a bit “bewildered”, you are about to buy Office but do not know how to move in front of all these new features, let me give you a hand. Let me tell you how to purchase and activate Office 2016 on your PC. I assure you that it’s much easier than you imagine. Below you’ll find everything you need: a brief summary with the main differences between the various versions of the suite and the directions necessary to install Office on Windows and Mac. Enjoy your reading!
Microsoft 365 or Office 2016?
Let’s start by figuring out what the differences are between Microsoft 365 and Office 2016: which apps does one include and which does the other? How much do they cost? Which one is more convenient? You can find everything explained below.
Microsoft 365 is the subscription service that includes the latest version of Office (in this case Office 2016) + 1TB of space on OneDrive, 60 minutes of Skype calls per month and access to all the features of the Office apps for smartphones and tablets (which are free but have some extra features that can only be unlocked by subscribing to a Microsoft 365 plan). Going into even more detail, there are two full Microsoft 365 plans currently available.
Microsoft 365 Family, which costs 10 euros/month (or 99 euros/year) and includes: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access + 1TB of space on OneDrive for up to 5 users, 60 min/month of Skype calls for up to 5 users and access to all the features of the Office apps for smartphones and tablets. The plan allows you to install Office on up to 5 PCs/Macs and use Office apps on up to 5 devices. You can try it for free for 30 days.
Microsoft 365 Personal, which costs 7 euros/month (or 69 euros/year) and includes: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access + 1TB of space on OneDrive for 1 user, 60 min/month of Skype calls for 1 user and access to all the features of the Office apps for smartphones and tablets. The plan allows you to install Office on up to 1 PC/Mac and use the Office apps on a single device.
Microsoft 365 Personal, which costs 7 euros/month (or 69 euros/year) and includes: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access + 1TB of space on OneDrive for 1 user, 60 min/month of Skype calls for 1 user and access to all the features of the Office apps for smartphones and tablets. The plan allows you to install Office on up to 1 PC/Mac and use the Office apps on a single device.
Office Home & Student 2016 is the “traditional” version of Office. It costs 149 euros and can be used on a single PC/Mac. It only includes the basic applications of the suite: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Also, unlike Microsoft 365, it does not allow free upgrades to later versions of the suite.
Office Home & Student 2016 is the “traditional” version of Office. It costs 149 euros and can be used on a single PC/Mac. It only includes the basic applications of the suite: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Also, unlike Microsoft 365, it does not allow free upgrades to later versions of the suite.
As you can easily guess, Microsoft is doing everything to “push” us towards Microsoft 365. By now, the standard version of the suite offers very little and requires a hefty one-time payment, so I too would recommend the new subscription version.
Note that the versions of Word, Excel, etc. included in Microsoft 365 are identical to those included in the standard version of Office 2016. In a nutshell, Microsoft 365 is the name of the subscription service that includes Office 2016, cloud services and apps for mobile devices. From a software perspective, nothing changes.
Note: If you are a business user, you can subscribe to one of the Microsoft 365 plans dedicated to the professional sector. Learn more here.
How to buy Office 2016
To activate Office 2016 you must necessarily be in possession of a regular license. If, therefore, you want to take advantage of the Microsoft 365 subscription, find out how to activate it – perhaps on a free trial – by reading the dedicated chapter of this guide.
To activate Office 2016 you must necessarily be in possession of a regular license. If, therefore, you want to take advantage of the Microsoft 365 subscription, find out how to activate it – perhaps on a free trial – by reading the dedicated chapter of this guide.
This is possible due to the fact that the site buys and then resells unused licenses from companies and corporations that have moved to the cloud or subscription services (the practice, in case you were wondering, has been declared perfectly legal throughout Europe).
In addition to the price, there are several advantages to buying licenses on Mr Key Shop: first of all, everything is done digitally (after purchasing from the site, you receive the original license and activation instructions via e-mail; which also has a positive impact on the environment, as physical shipments are avoided), then you can take advantage of free specialized Italian assistance (a rare commodity for services of this kind, which are almost always foreign) and the money back guarantee.
So, if you want to know how to buy Office 2016 on Mr Key Shop, connect to this page of the site, select the edition you are interested in, add it to the cart, go to checkout and complete the payment by choosing one of the supported secure payment methods (PayPal, Amazon Pay or card).
So, if you want to know how to buy Office 2016 on Mr Key Shop, connect to this page of the site, select the edition you are interested in, add it to the cart, go to checkout and complete the payment by choosing one of the supported secure payment methods (PayPal, Amazon Pay or card).
Activate Office 2016 with a Microsoft 365 subscription
If you had subscribed to the Microsoft 365 service in the past and had downloaded Office 2016 through it, you can renew your subscription and download/activate the suite again. If you’re a new user, however, you’ll only be able to download the most recent version of Office.
That said, log in to this website and log in to your Microsoft account. After that, go to the Installations tab, click on the Install Office button and choose the item related to Office 2016 in the menu that pops up (you may have to click on More Options).
Download times vary depending on the operating system in use: on Windows an .exe package of a few MB is downloaded to launch the actual Office download, while on Mac a .pkg file of over 1 GB is downloaded that already includes all the suite’s programs.
The Office language should be automatically set to Italian, otherwise you can change it by clicking on the Installation and language options (next to the Install button) and selecting the language of your choice from the dropdown menu on the page that opens. From the same menu you can also choose to download the offline installation package for Office.
In case you can’t download Office 2016 from Microsoft’s official website, you can do it using Windows ISO Downloader: a free and open source program for Windows (not official) that lets you choose the versions of Office (or even Windows) you want to download and get their ISO files from Microsoft’s servers. Using it is very simple: after downloading it, launch it and select the version of Office you’re interested in from the side menu; then indicate the edition and language you’re interested in using the drop-down menus and click the Download button.
In any case, when the download is finished, double-click on the file you just downloaded to your computer and follow the procedure best suited for your operating system.
If you are using a Windows PC, click the Yes button and wait patiently for the Office applications to be downloaded from the Internet first and then installed on your computer. The operation may take quite a few minutes, it all depends on the speed of your connection.
At the end of the procedure, click on the Close button and start any of the applications included in the suite, for example Word. At this point, log in to your Microsoft account (if required), accept the Office terms of use and choose which file format to use as the default format for saving your documents: Open XML (docx, xlsx etc.) or OpenDocument (odt, ods etc.).
Mission accomplished! Now you should be able to activate Office 2016. To make sure everything went smoothly, click the File button at the top left corner, select the Account item from the left sidebar and check the activation status under the Office logo (it should say Subscription Product – Microsoft Microsoft 365).
If you use a Mac, install Office 2016 on your computer by opening the pkg file you downloaded from Microsoft’s website and clicking in sequence on the Continue, Continue and Accept buttons. Then select the destination disk of the suite, click on the Continue and Install buttons and type the password of your macOS user account (the one you normally use to log in to the system) to complete the setup.
At this point, launch Word (or any other application in the Office package), click on the Start and Sign In buttons and log in to your Microsoft account to activate the suite. When you’re done, choose the graphic theme you want to use in Word, Excel, etc., click on the Start using [application name] button and you’re done.
Activate Office 2016 with product key
Have you purchased the standard version of Office? Then connect to this web page and enter the product key of your copy of the suite. The product key is the 25-character alphanumeric code that you find printed in the Office package or in the confirmation email of your purchase (if you bought Office online).
Once you’ve typed in the code, click on the Start button and log in to your Microsoft account (if you don’t have one yet, fix the problem by following my tutorial on the subject). After that, click the Install button twice in a row and the Office version you purchased will be automatically downloaded to your computer.
When the download is complete, install Office following the instructions I gave in the previous chapter of the guide and start any of the applications included in the suite (eg Word). In the window that opens, type your product key in the text field, click the Continue button and the copy of Office should be activated in a few seconds.
To verify that everything went smoothly, go to File > Office Accounts menu and check the activation status under the Office logo (it should say Product Activated – Microsoft Office 2016).
Common problems
Still couldn’t activate Office 2016 because of a strange error? Would you like to change the Office 2016 product key but don’t know how to do it? Don’t worry. Now let’s try to analyze the most common problems concerning the activation of the Microsoft suite and find out together how to solve them.
If you can’t activate Office 2016 – log in to this web page and check, via the panel at the top, that you have not exceeded the maximum number of installations allowed on your account (5 if you have subscribed to a Microsoft 365 Family plan or 1 if you have subscribed to a Microsoft 365 Personal plan). If there are “unnecessary” Office installations, deactivate them.
If you can’t activate Office 2016 – log in to this web page and check, via the panel at the top, that you have not exceeded the maximum number of installations allowed on your account (5 if you have subscribed to a Microsoft 365 Family plan or 1 if you have subscribed to a Microsoft 365 Personal plan). If there are “unnecessary” Office installations, deactivate them.
If you want to change the Office 2016 product key – uninstall the suite and reinstall it. Alternatively, open the Command Prompt with administrator privileges and give one of the following commands (Windows only).
If you want to change the Office 2016 product key – uninstall the suite and reinstall it. Alternatively, open the Command Prompt with administrator privileges and give one of the following commands (Windows only).
cscript “C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice16OSPP.VBS” /inpkey:XX (where instead of “XX” you have to insert the new product key) if you use 64 bit Office on a 64 bit system.
cscript “C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice16OSPP.VBS” /inpkey:XX (where instead of “XX” you have to insert the new product key) if you use 64 bit Office on a 64 bit system.
cscript “C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice16OSPP.VBS” /inpkey:XX (where instead of “XX” you have to insert the new product key) if you use 32 bit Office on a 32 bit system.
cscript “C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice16OSPP.VBS” /inpkey:XX (where instead of “XX” you have to insert the new product key) if you use 32 bit Office on a 32 bit system.
cscript “C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft OfficeOffice16OSPP.VBS” /inpkey:XX (where instead of “XX” you have to insert the new product key) if you use 32 bit Office on a 64 bit system.
cscript “C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft OfficeOffice16OSPP.VBS” /inpkey:XX (where instead of “XX” you have to insert the new product key) if you use 32 bit Office on a 64 bit system.
If you want to switch Microsoft accounts in Office 2016 (Windows) – open any of the Office applications (e.g. Word), click on the File button located at the top left corner and select the Account item from the bar that appears on the side. After that click on the Disconnect item (on the left), click on the Sign In button that appears in its place and log in with your new Microsoft account.
If you want to switch Microsoft accounts in Office 2016 (Windows) – open any of the Office applications (e.g. Word), click on the File button located at the top left corner and select the Account item from the bar that appears on the side. After that click on the Disconnect item (on the left), click on the Sign In button that appears in its place and log in with your new Microsoft account.
If you want to switch Microsoft accounts in Office 2016 (Mac) – open any of the Office applications (e.g. Word), click on your photo in the top left corner and select Disconnect from the menu that appears. Confirm the account disconnection and log in with your new account using the menu at the top left.
If you want to switch Microsoft accounts in Office 2016 (Mac) – open any of the Office applications (e.g. Word), click on your photo in the top left corner and select Disconnect from the menu that appears. Confirm the account disconnection and log in with your new account using the menu at the top left.
If you want to deactivate your Microsoft 365 subscription – log in to this webpage, go to Manage Subscriptions, select Cancel Subscription and confirm, choosing to turn off recurring billing.
If you want to deactivate your Microsoft 365 subscription – log in to this webpage, go to Manage Subscriptions, select Cancel Subscription and confirm, choosing to turn off recurring billing.
Article made in collaboration with Mr Key Shop.