Office 2016 Licensing (VL vs o365)

[mapurcel]

My company is now an o365 customer, but we are still in the process of shifting to that model. The VL edition of Office 2016 appeared in VLSC and I would like to deploy this, especially after all of the great contributions here on jamf nation. But so far I haven't received a clear answer from Microsoft as to whether we are truly licensed for this or if we need to use the o365 version where every install counts against the five allotted to each user...my fear is that I deploy the VL version but then Microsoft asks for a true up based on what we've installed.

Any other o365 customers received a good answer from Microsoft on this? thanks!

[bpavlov]

I'm not a customer, but understand the process. Basically it all comes down to how Office is licensed on the computer. If you deploy the Volume installer and remove the volume license located in /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.licensingV2.plist then you've effectively made it so that the end user has to either enter a product key or use their Office 365 credentials.

I've tested this out and you can too. You'll notice when you launch any of the Office apps the next time that in the Word menu (top menu bar) you will see "Activate" which will ask you to sign in using your 365 credentials.

Once you sign in with your Office 365 credentials, the computer then gets assigned to the 365 user's account and takes up 1 of the seats which keeps Microsoft happy because the computer is now properly licensed.

[bpavlov]

Forgot to add that once a computer is licensed using 365 a new license key is generated in each user's home directory: ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/com.microsoft.Office365.plist

I'm not sure what happens from a licensing point of view if you push out a Volume license copy (and don't delete the volume license key) and an end user signs in using their Office 365 credentials (if they even can).

[mapurcel · Accepted solution]

thanks, thats interesting that you can remove the license file then login with o365 to activate. My question was more around licensing however and I think I've received my answer from Microsoft. We now have Office 365 licensing and so cannot use the Volume License version of the software. We need to use the subscription per user model where each user has an o365 login and can see how many computers they have activated on the o365 portal.

Would have been nice to use the VL version.

[BenDenham]

@mapurcel I am wondering what did MS say to you exactly?
We use O365 in our organisation but i was under the impression it would be fine to use the VL version for our users just like Office 2011.
This being so users don't have to log in to activate. - Our users email addresses are user@domain.nsw.edu.au as far as they know but the addresses are actually user@domain.com.au that they need to use to sign into Office 365. - That plus having to put the DomainUsername and Password after entering the email address since they aren't joined to any domain. Users get confused.

[bpavlov]

@BenDenham They are different two licensing models. I would definitely speak to your reseller or Microsoft rep/contact. It is possible to be paying for both. But I would confirm that with your rep.

[Simmo]

We're a 365 customer and have the VL version deployed.

[BenDenham]

I will be deploying the VL version. Cheers

[mapurcel]

@BenDenham MS told us that as part of the E Suites we license all of our Office client software via subscription, and for that reason it is important we deploy subscription software, not volume license. The VL version requires a per-device license that is not included in our plan.