"Free" Office for staff / teachers on their own personal devices ?

[mrstrong]

Hi,

 

teacher has asked if I can put office on her personal laptop. I think this was possible a few years ago (on up to 5 devices?) but

not sure now ? I think you used to login to outlook on the web with your school email, go to my account and there was a link

to download and install the full Office desktop apps like Word ?

 

On investigation she has a windows 11 home laptop, signed in with her personal hotmail / Microsoft account

and a version of Office for home and student 2021 that has expired (MS 365 personal). It wants her to renew the subscription 

for £££.

 

School has an OVS MS agreement and we have some Microsoft 365 Apps for Faculty licenses.

 

What would you suggest is best way forward ?

[MrEprise]

As long as your licencing allows, yes they should still be able to login, download and install Office 365 Apps. The usual caveats apply i.e. when they leave the School/Trust that their copy will de-activate and they'll need to fund re-activation themselves.

[3s-gtech]

^^Also, because she's logging on with a personal account she'll have to log in to Office periodically with her work account, and Onedrive may get very confusing if that's installed on top too.

[willtech]

Also might be able to do if they want versions for family members: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/workplace-discount-program

[Koldov]

I've had this conundrum a few times over the years...

 

We've always had OVS-ES licensing and when I first started I honestly didn't have a problem with whacking on a full-fat Office install to a personal device (or even Windows for that matter). Not sure if I have a problem with it even now, it's only ever been less than a handful over 16+ years...

 

MS licensing was so complicated to me then (still is to be honest) so I blamed them for the confusion, added to which the Work at Home (WAH) Rights, which was 'free'  but licensing wise you'd need to log on with a school account and only do school related work, and then the Home Use Program (HUP) which wasn't 'free', but could be used for work and personal use just muddied the waters and seemed a bit pointless if I could put a proper version of Office on for 'free'...

 

Then there was these two, I've put in the Gemini synopsis for the explanation:

 

Office 365 Education (A1 Plan): Institutions with an OVS-ES agreement are eligible for the free Office 365 Education A1 plan for all students and staff. This plan provides access to the web versions of Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) and other online services like Teams and OneDrive with an eligible school email address.

 

Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise: If an institution licenses Office under their OVS-ES agreement, they are also entitled to free access to the "Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise" for all their users, which allows for the installation of the full, local Office applications on multiple devices (including home use). This is a key benefit derived from having a qualifying academic license.

 

Gemini can make mistakes, including about people, so double-check it.

 

EDIT: Anyway, point is I have exactly this situation now, where a staff member has asked for Office on their personal laptop. Lately I've started to feel like I shouldn't be doing a free full Office install (even though we have plenty of spare license), so I think I'll assign a M365 apps license to them and see if that keeps them happy. Obviously I've never done it this way, so I'm not sure how it all works though...

Edited November 27, 2025 by Koldov

[drutt]

Not had this asked personally, it probably helps that all our staff get laptops.

[6Foot3]

A3 allows this.

[mrstrong]

yes I'm a bit worried of her personal stuff / ondrive getting messed up. 

I'll explain that to her best I can, problem is if it does go wrong I think we know who'll be on the hook to sort it

 

On her laptop I went to office.com which now loads copilot : but office.com/apps has "install apps" at top right

 

Would it be safer to manually uninstall the existing "Office for home and student 2021" first ? 

 

Already spent an hour on this (uninstalled mcaffe, this laptop is so slow 4GB celereon from currys !)

 

This user doesn't have Microsoft 365 Apps for Faculty license but she does have the Office 365 A1 Plus for faculty

so maybe thats why she sees option to install. I was told those A1 plus were getting removed last year but we still

seem to have ours!

[willtech]

The Office 365 A1 Plus for faculty will be going, it is working its way down tenants. 

[jmak]

I am very wary about allowing this now. It's too easy to end up with access to work data on a home device. They have to sign in to their MS account, which makes it relatively difficult to prevent access to work data through the web browser.

[KK20]

 If you have a licensed 365 logon, you can go to portal.office.com, log on, click APPS then "all apps" and there in an "install apps" button in the top right anyway, you dont need to supply anyone with an ISO or executable, they can service this themselves.  Plus a user can go the same website and access anything else they normally can with their logon.  Unless you use conditional access or similar.

[mrstrong]

I think portal.office.com re-directs to "copilot" now ?

 

anyway to update this thread I decided to take a brave pill:

 

Opened Word and clicked on Account (bottom left)
I saw the user's old/expired home Office product
Clicked switch license (I think it was called this)
Signed in with their school 365 account
Sign in for all apps: Yes
Manage device: No (that's only for intune I think?)
Now user is signed in to school account and I confirmed license as:
 Subscription product for MS 365 Apps for enterprise
 

so far it seems to have worked 🤞

and less work as no need to uninstall / reinstall.

 

[KK20]

yes is does.  click the APPS on the bottom left (just above your name) then ALL APPS and you get all the apps up, the same as the old screen.  If you are an admin, you get "Admin" under "all apps".  If you want to pin from a staff or pupil homepage (we have it on our sharepoint pages)  then  Apps | M365 Copilot