Office 365 for business FAQs
Office 365 works best with the latest version of Office, Office 2010, and Office 2011 for Mac. Office 365 works with slightly limited
functionality with Office 2007. If you have an earlier edition of Office, you will need to update to a newer version of Office in
order to use Office 365; or you can subscribe to one of the many Office 365 plans that include the latest version of Office.
In addition to getting the latest version of Office as part of your subscription, you will also get automatic updates, so your
Office will always be up to date. Compare plans.
“The cloud" is a friendly way of describing web-based computing services that are hosted outside of your organization. When you use
cloud-based services, your IT infrastructure resides off your property (off-premises), and is maintained by a third party (hosted),
instead of residing on a server at your home or business (on-premises) that you maintain. With Office 365, for example, information
storage, computation, and software are located and managed remotely on servers owned by Microsoft. Many services you use every day are
a part of the cloud— everything from web-based email to mobile banking and online photo storage. Because this infrastructure is located
online or “in the cloud,” you can access it virtually anywhere, from a PC, tablet, smartphone, or other device with an Internet connection.
Office 365 is highly scalable and can support everything from a one-person business to companies with tens of thousands of users:
- Office 365 for Small Businesses is best for companies with up to 10 employees,
and can accommodate up to 25 users.
- Office 365 Midsize Business is best for companies with 11 to 250 employees, and
can accommodate up to 300 users.
- Office 365 Enterprise plans fit organizations ranging in size from a single employee to 50,000-plus users.
You can compare all the options here.
Office 365 is offered in a number of countries and languages. If your country’s name doesn’t appear in the list, we have not currently
launched a version of Office 365 for your market. We’re continuing to launch Office 365 in new markets and will publicly announce when
we launch Office 365 in any new market.
You don't need to install anything in order to use Office 365.
To help you easily connect your desktop version of the latest version of Office, Office 2010, or Office 2007 to Office 365, Microsoft
provides Office 365 customers an installable piece of software—called “Office Desktop Setup”—at no charge.
Office Desktop Setup provides many benefits, including:
- Automatically detecting necessary updates.
- Installing updates and components upon approval or silently from a command line.
- Automatically configuring Outlook and Microsoft Lync for use with Microsoft Office 365.
- Uninstalling itself from the client computer after running.
You can find and install Office Desktop Setup in your Office 365 administration center.
If your plan includes a subscription to Office, you will also be able to install that directly from the
Office 365 administration center.
You need to purchase only one Office 365 seat license.
Yes. If you purchase Office 365 licenses for the accounts you create during your free trial, the information and configuration for
these users' accounts will remain intact. Once your free trial expires, you won't be able to continue using Office 365 for free.
You will have an additional 30 days to purchase Office 365 before your account information is erased. Once your trial account
information has been erased, it cannot be retrieved.
For PC users:
The minimum systems requirements for Office 365 are: Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 2008 R2 with .NET 3.5 or later; Office 2007+ or later; and Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, 9, or 10; Mozilla Firefox 10.x or a later version; or Google Chrome 17.x..
For Mac users:
The minimum system requirements for Office 365 are: Mac OS X 10.6 or later; Apple Safari 5 or above; and Office 2011 for Mac and Outlook 2011 for Mac.
Office 365 works best with the latest version of Office, Office 2010, and Office 2011 for Mac. Office 365 works with slightly limited
functionality with Office 2007. If you have an earlier edition of Office, you will need to update to a newer version of Office in order
to use Office 365; or you can subscribe to one of the many Office 365 plans that include the latest version of Office. In addition to
getting the latest version of Office as part of your subscription, you will also get automatic updates, so your Office will always be
up to date. Compre plans.
You can find license requirements for Personal Archive and retention policies here.
To add your organization’s custom domain to Office 365, you must have access to the DNS records for that domain. If you do not
have access, you should contact the person at your company that manages the company domain account.
Find more domain information.
You can pay with all major credit cards, and your subscription amount will appear on your monthly credit card statement. For Office
365 Enterprise, Midsize Business, and standalone plans, you have the option to receive an invoice and, depending on your choice of
services, you will be billed monthly or annually. You receive an email message when your invoice is ready to be viewed and, if a
purchase order (PO) number is entered when you buy your subscription that number is included in your invoice.
Yes, discounts are available for Office 365 enterprise agreement customers (typically 250+ licenses) who want to purchase volume
licensing. Learn more.
You cannot migrate between an Office 365 Small Business and an Office 365 Enterprise plan. In order to change from a Small Business plan
to an Enterprise plan or vice versa, you must first cancel your account with the plan you currently have, and then sign up for a
different one. You can migrate your account within plan families, for example, from Small Business to Small Business Premium, or
from one Enterprise plan to another.
You can cancel your subscription at any time. However, depending on the product and the type of subscription you have, there may be
a penalty for canceling before the end of your contract. For subsciptions with a month-to-month commitment there is no penalty for
cancelling your contract at any time. Subscriptions with an annual commitment may incur some penalties if canceled early.
Read the complete Microsoft Online Subscription Agreement.
Your data is yours. If you decide to cancel your Office 365 subscription, you can download your data—for example, your email and
documents on team sites—and save it to another location. You should save your data before you cancel. All the data associated with
your Office 365 account is deleted 90 days after cancellation.
Go here to change your password.
Microsoft Partners are trained IT and development companies that can help you move to Office 365 or develop custom solutions for
your business. You can find a listing of all of our Microsoft Partners in Microsoft Pinpoint.
For VAT purposes, sales of Office 365, Windows Azure, and Windows Intune by MIOL are regarded as
the supply of services from Ireland, and the place of supply, that is, where the VAT liability arises, depends on where the customer
is located and the VAT status of the customer. Such sales are subject to the following VAT rules:
- If the customer is located in Ireland and does not hold a VAT 13B exemption certificate, Irish VAT at the current rate
of 23% will be applied to all invoices. VAT-exempt Irish customers will be invoiced at 0% Irish VAT on receipt by MIOL of a valid
customer VAT 13B Certificate.
- If the customer is located outside Ireland but within the EU and is VAT registered, 0% Irish VAT will be applied under
the reverse charge procedure, but only on receipt of the customer’s valid local VAT number during the purchase process.
- If the customer is located outside Ireland but within the EU and is not VAT registered or is VAT registered but does not
provide MIOL with a valid VAT number during the purchase process, Irish VAT at the current rate of 23% will be applied.
- If the customer is located outside the EU (except Switzerland), 0% Irish VAT will be applied.
- If the customer is located in Switzerland or Liechtenstein, Swiss VAT at the current rate of 8% will be applied.
- If the customer is located in the Channel Islands and chooses to sign up in the UK, Irish VAT at the current rate of 23% will be applied.
To add, edit, or remove a VAT ID, log in to your account, click Manage, select Subscription to edit,
and then select the appropriate action under VAT ID.
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