How to Activate Microsoft Office 365 Subscription in Mac?

Microsoft offers Office 365 as a packaged application containing Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote and OneDrive. You can go to the Mac App Store and download individual apps you like to use. You have one month trial period to test the apps and then need to upgrade to yearly subscription mode. In this article, we will explain how to activate Microsoft Office 365 subscription in Mac.

Buying Subscription

Generally, Apple will send a notification on iOS app subscriptions that will renew soon. However, we didn’t get any notification from Apple for the trail purchase from Mac App Store. Therefore, you need to ensure to disable the subscription if you don’t want to purchase the yearly subscription of Office 365.

During the trial period you can use all the feature of Office applications by signing to your Microsoft account including storing documents in OneDrive. At the end of trial period, Apple will charge you $69.9 and show “Purchased” when you look at the App Store.

Activation Notice

Office application will work without any pop-up or warning during the trial period. After the trial ends, you will see a “Renew your subscription” notice inside the apps. It will show you the renewal date with a “Buy” notice that can’t be removed.

The problem is that even after you have purchased the subscription the activation notice will not disappear prompting you to buy.

How to Activate Microsoft Office 365 in Mac?

If you are struck at activation, there are two easy ways to activate your subscription.

Sign out of Microsoft account
Delete and download apps from Office.com

1. Sign Out from Your Microsoft Account

If you see the “Buy” notification even after purchasing the subscription, close your app and follow the below instructions.

Open one of the Office apps like Excel or Word.
If you have already signed into your Microsoft account, click on your picture and select “Sign Out” option.

Alternatively, go to the “Word > Sign Out…” or “Excel > Sign Out…” menu when you are inside the app.
When you sign out and open the new document, you will see a notification like below indicating you to sign into Office with the email you have used for purchasing the subscription.

Either click on the “Sign in” button inside the app or close the app and launch again. On the backstage screen, click on the “Sign in” button.

Use the same Microsoft email you have used for purchasing or logging into your apps before.

Go to next screen to enter your password and associate your Microsoft subscription to the device.
Now, check that your activation warning notice should disappear inside the apps.

2. Download and Install from Office.com

For some reasons, we could not able to activate the app downloaded from Mac App Store. If you have the same problem, then first delete all the Office apps downloaded from App Store and follow the below instructions.

Go to “office.com” and login with your Microsoft account.
Click on the “Install Office” button to start downloading the installation package.

You need to wait some time since the installation package is more than 1GB in size. Also ensure to have sufficient space on your Mac for downloading and installing the apps.
After downloading the package, double click and install the apps like any other Microsoft apps.

Open any of the Office app and login with your Microsoft account.
Now you should be able to associate Office 365 subscription and your device.

Difference Between Two Methods

Though, you can use one of the above methods to activate your subscription, it has some differences. Using the App Store apps will allow you to directly get updates from Apple. You can get updates whenever available like any other apps without the need of checking.

When you download the apps from Office.com, the installation package contains an auto component. By default, all the apps and the auto update is selected during installation. However, you can click on “Customize” button and select the apps. Ensure, you have selected and installed the auto update component when installing the apps.

Open any of the Office apps and go to “Help > Check for Updates”. You have three options for manually checking, automatically checking and automatically check and installing the updates. Select the required option and click on “Check for Updates” button. You will see the available updates for individual apps.

Conclusion

We recommend you using the Mac App Store version, since you can choose to install the app separately. Though it is possible to install individual apps from the Office.com package file, you first need to download the big package file. In addition, updating will be a problem with the Office.com apps as you may need to check manually. We don’t recommend the automatic checking as it will take time when you work on the app.

Ashutosh Kushwaha

· Reply

November 3, 2019 at 6:49 AM

There is a big problem with the activation if the subscription was purchased through Apple store. Office 365 license gets linked with Microsoft account and can be checked using the url https://office.com/myaccount or https://account.microsoft.com/services but if the subscription was purchased through Apple, you won’t find any license there on the Microsoft account page. When you would reinstall Office or if it would be deactivated after the trial, it won’t be possible to activate the product. Apple is playing this game from long time. They just charge the customer for yearly subscription and do not provide any product key or any license. Once the trial ends, they simply ask the customer to contact Microsoft and Microsoft has no idea about the customer’s license because it is not available in the customer’s Microsoft account and the order details are also not available with Microsoft because the purchase was made through Apple. So users get stuck.

How to Activate Microsoft Office 365 Subscription in Mac?