Download an unlicensed Office 2016 full installer which is up-to-date with the latest Office 2016 software I have an existing process which can be used to build a combined Office 2016 installer using Packages, so I decided to apply the same process to building an Office 2016 15.8.0 installer. Simply head to the Office 2016 Preview page and download the executable for either the 32-bit or 64-bit version of Office. Once it’s downloaded, click the program icon to begin the installation.

When I started writing this story, I thought it was going to be a rant. Instead it's more testimony to unnecessary hassle. Obviously, we're talking about Microsoft. Most of you know that a few years ago. Although I had Office 2013 licenses as an educator through school, I moved to Office 365 to gain access to Office 365-hosted Exchange. Then, just about a year ago,, and haven't looked back. Although I cancelled my Office 365 Midsize Business plan, I still have my Office 2013 license for my PCs and my Office 2011 license for my Macs.

Yep, there it is. That's the start of this story. I get downloadable Office from the school where I teach, but they only have Office 2011 for Mac.

As you probably know,, and it's much more in line with the PC version of Office 2013 we're all used to. Office 2011 for Mac is so bad that I have a Parallels install of Windows on most of my Macs, just to run Office 2013 in a Windows virtual machine. Yesterday afternoon, I caved. I do a tremendous amount of work in Word and PowerPoint, and I just wanted them to run natively on my Macs.

I wanted to use Office 2016 and stop all the weirdness that I have to go through when running a Windows instance to edit a Word file. Unfortunately, while the university has an Office 2011 for Mac license, they haven't yet updated to Office 2016 for Mac, which will probably be sometime this fall. So, at only $89 for the year (with a ten buck academic discount), I bought my own license. You can see my receipt right there, in the screenshot below.

Are you starting to feel the dread? After a year or so away from doing Microsoft installs, I'd forgotten just how much of a DMV-like experience dealing with Microsoft products can be. Let the runaround begin. One note before I begin. You don't have to read all of this if you don't want.

It's just the account of the hassles I went through attempting to do what should have been a very simple process. The tl;dr of Microsoft is often the same: the hassles you go through in an attempt to do what should have been a very simple process. And with that, the hassles.

The first install Look at that 'Thank you for your order' screenshot carefully. Do you see the nice blue 'Install Office' button? Yeah, so did I. I even clicked it. The result was a downloaded installer package, which I then ran.

After a little whirring and blinking, the installer ran and Office 2016 for Mac was on my Mac. Clicking Done resulted in the installer launching Word, with a nice blue intro screen. Then came the sign in screen.

I dutifully typed in my email address and then cut and pasted my password. A prompt showed up asking if I wanted to use my Office account or my company account. That was, admittedly, a bit baffling because I bought Office Home edition, but hey, I'm tough, I can handle it. After thinking on it a bit, I ascertained that the message came up because my email address is a custom domain, not something like @gmail.com or @live.com, etc. Since I wasn't using an @live.com or an @outlook.com account, I selected the company option. It wouldn't let me go any further.

The Sign In button had been replaced by a Cancel button. I still had my receipt page open in my browser, with a nice 'Contact Us for help' button available, so I opened up a chat conversation with a Microsoft support rep: DG: I am trying to sign in to activate, and it recognizes my email and password, but asks if I want to use Microsoft Account or Work Account. Which one is associated with this purchase? Microsoft: Okay no worries, as I'd be happy to assist you with anything regarding Microsoft products! You will want to select Microsoft Account. At this point, I should point out two things.

First, my Microsoft rep was 'Paris H' (yeah, not kidding) and after selecting Microsoft Account, it asked me for my username and password again. I tried logging in and was greeted with the unable to activate message below: DG: It says unable to activate Office. Paris H: What email address are you trying to use? Nero dvd burner for mac free download. (I answered with my personal email address) Paris H: Just a moment while I look into that for you. Please click here for Office Account Sign In. Sign into your account from there and you should be able to locate the install button. Let's take a moment to get sidetracked about the use of, you know, the English language.

Microsoft calls its product 'Office' and with that comes some linguistic responsibility. I knew what she meant by using my Office Account instead of my Work Account, but seriously? That stuff can make you crazy pretty quickly. 'Click here' was a page off of stores.office.com/myaccount/. It turns out, there was an Install button there as well. So, having already installed Office 2016 and failed in activating it, I asked the obvious question: DG: I'm signed in, but do I need to install Office again? Should I delete it first?