Microsoft Office 365 Home Update: More Users And More Sign-ins
by Brett Howse on September 3, 2018 9:15 PM EST- Posted in
- Software
- Microsoft
- Office
- Office 365
For those that are subscribed to Office 365 Home, Microsoft has announced that they are updating the contract to allow more users to access the subscription, and they’re updating the installation limits as well.
When Office 365 Home was first announced, it was $99/year and gave access to Office applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more, plus additional OneDrive storage for each user. Although the amount of OneDrive space has changed, it’s currently 1 TB of OneDrive per person on the subscription. So in theory, you could have up to 5 TB of file stored in the cloud as well as the Office applications for up to five people.
Office was limited to 10 device installs total, and you could manage which devices were activated through the Office.com portal, but this is changing as well. Five of the devices could be PCs and the rest could be tablets or phones.
| Office 365 Home Users | |||||
| Office 365 Personal | Office 365 Home (Previous) | Office 365 Home (New) | |||
| Office 365 Users | 1 | 5 | 6 | ||
| Office Apps | Word Excel PowerPoint OneNote Outlook Publisher Access |
||||
| Office Installs | 1 PC/Mac, 1 tablet, and 1 phone | 5 PCs/Macs, 5 tablets and 5 phones | Unlimited devices, 5 signed in to Office per user | ||
| OneDrive | 1 TB x 1 user | 1 TB x 5 users | 1 TB x 6 users | ||
| Skype minutes | 60 x 1 user | 60 x 5 users | 60 x 6 users | ||
| Microsoft Support (Phone/Chat) | Included | ||||
| Price (USD) | $69.99/year $6.99/month |
$99.99/year $9.99/month |
$99.99/year $9.99/month |
||
With the new terms, Office 365 Home is now going to cover six people instead of five, and the 1 TB of OneDrive of course extends to that sixth person, increasing the total cloud storage to 6 TB. The device limit has changed as well, with no limits to the number of devices Office is installed on, but each person will only be able to be signed into Office on five devices at a time. This is a big jump though from 10 total for all 5 people.
These new changes come with no additional cost. Office 365 Home still costs $99/year, or $9.99 per month.
Source: Microsoft
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PeachNCream - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
It does still have formatting issues crossing over from MS Office. I'd never, for instance, use it to write a resume unless I was exporting it as a PDF so the format wouldn't change when a MS Office user opened it. However for casual use where the formatting doesn't matrer, it does a really good job. It's also widely used outside of the US as a standard office suite. Check the wikipedia page in the users section and you'll see a number of governments and businesses have switched over.That said, there's nothing wrong with MS Office. It simply costs a bit more and accomplishes essentially the same tasks so cheaper alternatives are sometimes worth the trouble.
SquarePeg - Wednesday, September 5, 2018 - link
LibreOffice saves documents in ODF file format by default so any modern office suite will open these documents without breaking the formatting. Word on the other hand uses a non compliant version of Microsoft's own OOXML format by default. Meaning Microsoft created an open interoperable standard in it's OOXML format then used a version of OOXML that doesn't comply with the standard that they themselves created. Plus Microsoft uses proprietary fonts for the sole purpose of making Word documents only open correctly in Word. Always save your docs as an ODF in Word and then anyone can open them without breaking the formatting.neogodless - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
Unfortunately, I deleted the email. But my point is - I have Office 365 Personal, and my email said that as of October 2, 2018, I will be able to install it on up to 5 computers. So it's almost as good as the old "Home" plan! But I don't see that reflected in the chart above.See this update - https://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2018/09/...
"And the Personal subscription limits users to only one PC or Mac and one tablet. However, subscribers will be able to install Office on an unlimited number of devices and be signed into their accounts across up to five devices at the same time starting October 2nd."
heffeque - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
It's not almost as good as "Home".Home is 5 devices + 1 TB multiplied by 6 people = 30 devices + 6 TB. It's a steal IMO.
trparky - Wednesday, September 5, 2018 - link
Yep, you can't that much cloud storage for that much cash from others.