Windows 365

missile

Hi, I do not want to renew Office 365. How can I re-install older Word, XL etc without subscription?

flaneurs_lobster

Have you tried the free, online versions of Word, Excel etc

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/free-office-online-for-the-web

It will nag you to upgrade to the paid version and it's not full-featured but it works pretty well for day-to-day stuff.

The coupon sites have numerous offers for very cheap MS Office/365 licences, often "lifetime licences" (which don't actually exist). Most of these will work, at least for a while, but none are official. supported MS subscriptions.

Newcad

I've used Softmaker FreeOffice for years and never had any compatability issues with Mictosoft Office reading files created in it or vice-versa.

https://www.freeoffice.com/en/

Other free office options are available eg. LibreOffice.

https://www.libreoffice.org/

QrizB

How can I re-install older Word, XL etc without subscription?

Do you already have a license for the standalone versions and want help with installation? Or are you asking where you can buy such a license?

Exodi

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6688961/windows-365

You mean Microsoft 365 (previously known as Office 365). Windows is the operating system, please don't give them ideas to start offering that on subscription! I've also never seen someone refer to 'Excel' as 'XL' before, though admittedly it works well!

Microsoft allow you to use online versions of the apps for free through the Microsoft 365 online portal.

I'm not clear what you mean about using the older ones 'without [a] subscription'? These aren't free - they were just usually licensed through a one-off cost as opposed to an ongoing subscription. If you have a license key for these, then there's no reason you couldn't reinstall the old software and enter your license key to activate it. Alternatively you can still buy license keys for older versions (e.g. Office 2016), though not officially. You can also buy license keys for newer versions, either officially or unofficially, with the latter carrying the risk that your license could be cancelled at any moment as these are at best excess volume licensed keys from businesses, or at worse stolen.

missile

I did have Office Professional Plus 2021 and have code. I am struggling to find where I can download this. My Microsoft Account just gives me option to re-subscribe to 360.

Is https://officecdn.microsoft.com/db/492350f6-3a01-4f97-b9c0-c7c6ddf67d60/media/en-us/ProPlus2021Retail.img a safe download link for Microsoft office 2021 Professional plus.

QrizB

That's the right sort of link, yes.

outtatune

Office Pro Plus is not available to buy separately. It's what companies with volume licenses get. Presumably you bought a dubious key that was stolen from one of those companies? In which case it may still work, or it may not.

Exodi

missile

Is https://officecdn.microsoft.com/db/492350f6-3a01-4f97-b9c0-c7c6ddf67d60/media/en-us/ProPlus2021Retail.img a safe download link for Microsoft office 2021 Professional plus.

It is, but to help understand why, it's important to understand the constituting parts of a URL.

Let's consider the URL is made of three parts, separated by full stops (the bits before and after the slashes aren't as important):

officecdn.microsoft.com

The end bit .com is known as the Top Level Domain and this shows the organization type. While it's not usually useful in understanding if a website or link is legitimate or not (anyone can create a .com or .co.uk web address), it does help identifying one particular type of scam (where scammers are impersonating government departments but don't have a .gov.uk address).

The middle bit microsoft is known as the domain, and can be combined with the top level domain to form the domain name microsoft.com. This is very important to be aware of as this part can't be copied. I can't create a website with the domain name microsoft.com, nor can I send an email from the domain microsoft.com as Microsoft already owns it. You can effectively rule out 99% of phishing scams by just checking the domain name. You should however double check the domain name is as you expect (e.g. not micros0ft or deliberately misspelled mircosoft).

The first bit officecdnis known as the subdomain, and this is usually the part scammers take advantage of as they can change it to whatever they like on domains they own. As we said earlier, it's not possible to create a website with the domain name microsoft.com (or likely any similarities as I expect Microsoft likely own those too as a precaution), however if I were a bad actor, what I could do is register a cheap domain name (e.g. dwnldfilez.com), and then create a subdomain called microsoft-download or something, so the URL would be microsoft-download.dwnldfilez.com. You can identify this is fraudulent as the domain name is not what you expected.

In your example, you can see that the domain name is correct, which is why we know it is trustworthy. 'officecdn' just stands for Office Content Delivery Network and is used to distribute and update office applications.

There are exceptions (e.g. email spoofing, where websites use third parties to serve content, etc) - but that would double the length of this content and over complicate things. In this example, at least, we can use easily see that the domain name is genuine, so the link is safe.

Whether it is the correct file or not for your system is a different question entirely!

missile

Hi,

Thanks for all your comments. I am pleased to confirm the link worked and I am now up and running without paying another subscription for office 365