MS Office upgrade

[Raven]

Many, many years ago I purchased MS Office 2008. I believe it allowed me to load onto 3 devices at that time from a CD. In 2017, I downloaded version 15.33 online onto 2 devices - my MBP and my iMac but not my wife's Mac Mini.
I hate that MS program but I need it to open my customer's files.

My wife's old 2008 version is now constantly freezing. She's not happy!  Can I add v15.33 somehow to her Mac as the third device, or do we have to buy a completely new version?

I'm using OSX10.11.6 (Yeah, time to upgrade that too!)
Her Mac Mini is OS 10.13.6

[Xairbusdriver]

There are several alternate apps that can open Office files. Even Pages and can open .doc/.docx files and Numbers can open Excel files. But there are also open source apps (free) that can also do that.

You should already have Pages and Numbers. But even if you get the other free apps, always make a duplicate to open those customer files, you should never chance corrupting other peoples files.

[Raven]

She doesn't have Numbers on her Mac mini. She is familiar with MS Office from her office work and Numbers a bit from her iPad. I guess she would have to buy Page/Numbers or Word/Excel?

[jchuzi]

Libre Office is free and should be able to open MS Word files. FWIW, I reluctantly bit the bullet and subscribed to MS Office 365. Word 365 works really well for me (Word 2008 works but is a bit wonky in High Sierra). I don't like Pages at all and don't use it.

[Xairbusdriver]

Numbers, Pages and Keynote are all free for a Mac. They should have been installed when you installed or re-installed any macOS. But you can easily download it from the Mac App Store. The versions for the iPad are not free, although quite inexpensive from the iOS App Store.

As a matter of fact, when you go to the Mac App Store, you will probably notice that that there is no "Get" button, but an "Open" one instead, because the app is already installed on your/her Mac. Same goes for Pages and Keynote (whether you like them or not).

[jchuzi]

Another free option is Open Office.

[Paddy]

LibreOffice is superior to the other freebie options in my books. It can both open AND save to .docx/.xlsx - OO cannot save to .docx or any MS formats. That's usually important when trading documents back and forth, and the primary reason why OO isn't too useful to me, should I decide to dump MS in the future. (currently running Office 2016 - trying to avoid subscriptions!)

There is also a LibreOffice for iPad. (and OO)

As for your original question re: installing MS Office 2016 (which is what you are now using) on a third machine, I would say probably you won't be able to install it on a third machine, but it really depends on what you got and how. "Downloaded" doesn't tell me much. If you purchased the perpetual licensed version of Office 2016, generally that is only good for ONE install (yes, MS has changed that - it used to be that MS Office could be installed on 3-5 machines depending on what version we're talking about). That said, I have a license for MS Office Professional Plus 2016 that we got via my husband's job and it installed on both the laptop and the desktop. However, that was under a very different licensing model and can't be assumed to apply to the home/student versions which all say very clearly "ONE install"... Normal retail Office 2016 and Office 2019 perpetual licensed versions only permit installation on ONE machine (making them very pricy at $170 per person in Canada) - you can get 3 years of Office 365 for that and it can be used on up to 5 machines in a household. Note: if you stop paying, you can view but not edit your documents.

If you downloaded your version of MS Office 2016 (which, btw, is not up to date) via some third party then all bets are off - a lot of them are much cheaper, but they're not legit and whether things can be updated, re-downloaded etc. is anyone's guess. I've seen reports of major fails when any attempt is made to update software obtained this way.

[chriskleeman]

Depending on whether you trust eBay or not, the last time I went looking for Office for Mac was last year, I was able to purchase a lifetime version for under $40 that has been working well. Just a quick look today and this came up, with a 5 machine license.

Edit: link taken down to comply with Techsurvivor’s guidelines on possible fraudulent links.

It does require Sierra to run, so you'd have to upgrade on your machines that are running OS 10.11.6, but this is a relatively inexpensive way to upgrade to a newer version of Office.

[Paddy]

Sorry to pour cold water on this, but if it's ridiculously cheap and from eBay, it's not legit. What it is, most likely, is an academic license being used illegally. Or a corporate home-use (HUP) license like the one I described above. The problem with these is that while they may work - they may not, and the key may be revoked by MS at any time when/if they discover the illegal use. Or it may expire...

Microsoft Office 2016 Home and Business has no legitimate 5-license non-subscription option available to the general public via retail channels. Period.

This explains it all quite well:

http://www.softwaremedia.com/signs-of-microsoft-download-fraud
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_install-mso_win10-mso_365hp/cheap-office-keys-on-ebay/74b3fc16-6b33-4472-a023-bfd467814e86

One person's experience and the nitty-gritty about yet another way that scammers get around MS licensing...

https://www.tenforums.com/microsoft-office-365/115921-microsoft-office-2016-installation-msdn.html

And some sample BBB reports from some of these cheaper-than-dirt MS Office sellers who come up when you Google "Microsoft Office 2016 cheap" or similar:

https://www.bbb.org/us/fl/tampa/profile/computer-software/pcdestination-llc-0653-90292343

[Xairbusdriver]

Please note that TS has always been anti-fraud. Please verify any links posted that may be from sites that promote soft/hardware theft. We don't seem to have the 'user-behaviors' page from the old site, but we may get that back, if it helps prevent theft.

[chriskleeman]

I’ll take the link down, and leave the rest of the post so that there is a reference to your reply and Paddy’s. 

[Paddy]

Of course, we have no idea if the eBay seller is selling something legit or not, but I suspect that the likelihood is pretty low given the price. It's like those cheapo sites; it's all fun and games until it's not, and then these idiots have a habit of disappearing - and your "warranty" is worthless. The interesting thing to note with many of these resellers is that if you look them up in Whois, very few have been in existence longer than 2 years.

While I'm as annoyed with MS' and Adobe's attempts to force us all into endless subscriptions as anyone else, I'm not going to advocate buying from a less than solid source for the sake of saving money. Better to find alternatives to MS and Adobe - which I am now doing. Vote with your feet, people.

[chriskleeman]

Of course, we have no idea if the eBay seller is selling something legit or not, but I suspect that the likelihood is pretty low given the price. It's like those cheapo sites; it's all fun and games until it's not, and then these idiots have a habit of disappearing - and your "warranty" is worthless. The interesting thing to note with many of these resellers is that if you look them up in Whois, very few have been in existence longer than 2 years.

While I'm as annoyed with MS' and Adobe's attempts to force us all into endless subscriptions as anyone else, I'm not going to advocate buying from a less than solid source for the sake of saving money. Better to find alternatives to MS and Adobe - which I am now doing. Vote with your feet, people.

So just to be clear... These are European, international multi-lingual versions of Office for Mac. I do not pretend to know what might differ between those and and the U.S. versions. However, I rarely deal with anyone on eBay who does not have a slew of positive feedback or who has not been around for very long. And this seller has over 800 positive Feedback posts, and has been around since 2008. I certainly do not want to support any pirated software or fraudulent listings or sites. Not my style by any means. But I suspected at first that these may be bulk licenses being sold off at a discount because Office 2019 seems to be widely available at this point. However that being said, on further investigation of the listing, it would appear that this listing may not be all above board, as there is this in the product description: "This software does not come with a product key as the product key is integrated in to the software."

Now according to the link you posted in an earlier reply Paddy, this may signify a red herring with this listing, even though the seller may have 800 listings at 100% Positive Feedback, and has been around since 2008. The last version of Office I bought did have a product key, but even then, according to your link, may not be legit. I bought it last year from a different seller with similar credentials.

So, buyer beware, and thank you for the info, I certainly will need to be more cautious about what I buy from Microsoft.

ck
 

[Xairbusdriver]

800 "100% Positive Feedback" may be fine, but they may not apply to this particular product either. I think "Buyer Beware" is eBay's byline. I cannot say I've ever been "burned" from any seller there, but I rarely even check results in a product search. But I have purchased items from there, even this year. They may be the only place for things like out-of-production hardware.

I've never even owned a Microsoft product since I used Microsoft Basic on the first Macintosh!

My wife has always had good luck editing Word files and sending them back in the same format by using Pages. Same with the few Excel spreadsheets and Numbers. But the interfaces with the other third-party apps will be more familiar to Word/Excel users.