Office Licencing Issue

[Rawns]

I'm not overly familiar with the whole licencing process in schools or the law behind it, however I would like to know if a school has bought licencing for Office 2010, is it architecture specific, ie. 32-bit or 64-bit edition? Or does it entitle them to install the 32-bit or 64-bit edition?

[synaesthesia]

It is not specific to architecture.

[Michael]

I can confirm one license covers one instance of either Office 2010 32Bit or Office 2010 64Bit at any one time, but of course you need different media for each version.

 

I would recommend Office 2010 Standard 32Bit which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Publisher, on Windows x86 or Windows x64.

[teejay]

Office 64-bit is best avoided, there are loads of compatibility problems with plugins etc. See Word to the wise: Avoid 64-bit Office 2010 | Desktop productivity - InfoWorld

[Rawns]

Thanks for the feedback. The reason I ask is our LA offers a texting service that requires a DLL file on the users machine. It only works with a 32-bit version of Office, and some bigger schools have started reporting problems as they are upgrading their workstations to 64-bit devices with 64-bit Office. One school says they have specifically ordered Office 2010 64-bit licences and I was not sure if the licence allows them to install 32-bit Office instead.

[synaesthesia]

nngh that sort of thing makes my blood boil - it's not like 64bit systems are new, and I've said since about the year 2000 that 32bit should have been dead and buried back then.

[Rawns]

To clarify, it does work on 64-bit operating systems, it just wont work on them if Office 64-bit is installed. Office 32-bit on a 64-bit O/S and it works without issues.

 

Also, this DLL file has been created by an external third party so our hands are tied.

[SYNACK]

We just use Offce 2010 32bit on all our stations, 64 bit or not as even MS does not recommend the 64bit version of Office for anything but Excel when used on truely massive spreadsheets.

[m25man]

Ha Ha....

i recently had a large spreadsheet from Microsoft as part of a SAM Audit and Licensing application.

 

I couldn't open or run any of the Macros and some of the links didn't work. I asked the guy @ Microsoft why none of them worked and he re-iterated the same story they all use 32bit and I had 64bit and that I needed to rollback to 32bit Office in order to use the Microsoft Licensing Forms

 

What do Mac users do? If they use Office for Mac they must be snookered.

Edited April 27, 2012 by m25man