Microsoft has announced their own virtual machine version of Windows and Office desktop that you can run from anywhere called Windows Virtual Desktop. WVD is a virtual Windows machine which runs on Microsoft’s Azure cloud servers. Users access that machine from their own computer using Remote Desktop software. Many organizations
Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other Office apps for Windows 10 have been sidelined by Microsoft with no new features planned. Bad news for anyone still using a Windows Phone. The Windows 10/Mobile apps will continue to work but no more features are planned. This ‘no more features’ decision appears to
From today, 1 October 2018, Office 365 licencing rules change in a way Microsoft has never done before. Redmond announced the change a few weeks ago but now we can see the new Office 365 licence rules working, with a few unanswered questions. The change won’t affect your current Office
Office 2019, the new non-cloud version of Office for Windows and Mac, is now available to volume licence and commercial customers. This is the ‘cloud free’ or, as Microsoft call it the ‘on-premises’ version of Office desktop. It has no cloud related features and is ‘feature fixed’ with no future
Officially, Office 2019 will be sold to consumers ‘in a few weeks’ but a leak gives us the probable release date, bundles and prices. Two Office 2019 Bundles Office 2019 will be sold to consumers in two packages: Home and Student or Home and Business. That’s much the same as
Office 365 ProPlus customers can keep running older versions of Windows longer after a change of heart by Microsoft. Windows 8.1 will be supported for Office 365 ProPlus through January 2023. That means both Windows 8.1 and Office 365 ProPlus now have the same end of support date for Windows
Microsoft is extending availability of cloud services like OneDrive, Skype for Business and MS hosted Exchange for Office 2016 perpetual licence customers including Office 365 ProPlus At the moment, Office 2016 single-payment and Office 365 ProPlus would be blocked from OneDrive, Skype for Business and Microsoft supplied Exchange Server after
The upcoming license changes to Office 365 Home, Personal and University is another step in Microsoft’s move to selling services not software. From 1 October, Office 365 Home, Personal and University users can install Office software on unlimited machines. For full use of the software you’ll have to sign-in to
The new Office 365 licence system makes you sign-in to Office software from each device. How can that work if your computer is offline and can’t connect to the Internet? See Significant improvements in Office 365 Home, Personal and University and Office 365 now counts your sign-ins not installs Several Office Watch subscribers
The upcoming changes to Office 365 mean a big boost for Office 365 Personal customers. They’ll get a lot more for their annual fee to Microsoft. At the moment, Office 365 Personal allows a single user to install Office on (quoting Microsoft). “1 PC or Mac, 1 tablet and 1
Lots of praise for Microsoft’s changes to Office 365 Home, Personal and University allowing anyone to use up to five Office instances at any one time. As usual, there’s a downside that’s lost in all the hype. These changes are another example of why Microsoft is pushing annual rental for
The Office 365 licensing change should let virtual machine users try out more test versions of Office than in the past. From 1 October 2018, Office 365 customers can install Office on as many computers/devices as they like. The licence limit switches to the number of Microsoft account logins from
Microsoft has announced some truly important improvements in what you get with Office 365 Home, Personal and University plans. The Home plan will be available for six family members instead of five. How Microsoft calculates use of Office software is changing and for the better. All these changes apply from
Microsoft is rearranging, rerouting, it’s ‘Roadmap’ for the future of Office into a merged ‘Roadmap’ for Microsoft products including Windows and Office. The Office 365 Roadmap is joining with Windows, Azure and other products to become the Microsoft 365 Roadmap (more like a multi-lane superhighway with complex interchanges) Artists impression
If you get an error message when trying to activate Microsoft Office, settle in for a difficult time. Microsoft doesn’t make activation easy to understand, let alone fix activation problems. Office activation is where newly installed Office software is authorized by Microsoft’s servers. Without activation the software only has very
When you buy Microsoft Office there’s no CD or DVD with the software to install. The vital thing you’re getting is the Product Key. The Product Key is that the 25 character code which unlocks or activates the software. This applies to both Office 365 ‘subscriptions’ or single-purchase Microsoft Office packages.
After the report of buying illegal Microsoft Office via Amazon (and Amazon’s initially poor response) here’s what to do if you’ve bought an illegal, pirated or at least non-working Office Product Key. Credit Card as separate transaction Whenever possible, pay by credit card. The MS Office purchase should be a
Here’s the sad tale of a Californian woman who bought a pirated copy of Microsoft Office from an Amazon retailer and the hassle she had getting Amazon to do the right thing. There’s a happy ending but only because a local TV station intervened. That’s not an option for all
Microsoft has announced a 10% price increase for the Office 2019 commercial / volume licences. Sorry, it’s not an increase it’s a ‘price adjustment’ <sigh>. Office 2019 client, Enterprise CAL, Core CAL, and Office 2019 server products are all up 10% from 1 October 2018. These are all single-payment /
A North Carolina woman and her son are accused of sharing their discounted Microsoft Office access with her ex-husband, a clear breach of the Home Use Program. Source: WLOS, “your Western Carolina News Leader” We’ve been talking about the Home Use Program for many years. It’s a heavily discounted Microsoft
We’ve said for a long time that buying direct from Microsoft is the most expensive way to buy their hardware or software. Redmond has found another way to trick more money from customers buying a Surface product. When you choose a Surface Go from the Microsoft Store, Microsoft adds TWO
Let’s have a hype-free look at Microsoft’s new Surface Go tablet, Microsoft’s pricing tricks, how to buy and which model. Also your Microsoft Office options with the Surface Go. What is it? Surface Go is clearly targeting the Apple iPad with the advantage of being able to run ‘real’ Microsoft
A private April 2018 Gartner report confirms what Office-Watch.com has been saying for years. Microsoft is forcing customers away from perpetual licence/one-off software purchases and into software rental like Office 365. As reported by Gregg Keizer at Computerworld, Microsoft will continue ‘encouraging’ customer to annual fees by limiting access to
The ASUS Zenbook Pro series comes with a snazzy touchpad which doubles as an extension toolbar for Microsoft Office. Source: ASUS Instead of a blank touchpad, it’s a small high-res touchscreen that can display icons or even full videos (play Lawrence of Arabia on a tiny, tiny screen!). For Microsoft
