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Office-sharing arrangement

BY J. CARLTON COLLINS, CPA

Please note: This item is from our archives and was published in 2014. It is provided for historical reference. The content may be out of date and links may no longer function.

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Q: I subscribe to Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus, which includes five product licenses. I’ve installed three of those licenses on my office, home, and mobile laptop computers, and I am wondering if I can allow other family members to use my remaining two unused licenses. I don’t want to do anything illegal, but I also don’t want those two licenses to go unused. Can I legally allow others to use these licenses?

A: No problem. Microsoft allows you to share your unused Office 365 licenses with other members of your household. Your subscription includes five computer licenses and five additional mobile device licenses. Further, each person you share your license with receives 20 gigabytes of free online OneDrive storage. The following steps guide you through the process of sharing an unused license with another user.

1. Log in to My Account. From any of your Office 2013 applications, click on your name in the upper-right corner, and, from the dropdown menu, select Account settings, and then in the resulting screen, click the Manage Account button (as pictured below).

 


 

 

 

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2. Add a user. On the My Account screen, click the Add user option, enter the family member’s email address, and then click Send Invite (as pictured below).

 


 

3. Installing Office. Upon receiving the email invitation, your household member will be prompted to set up his or her Microsoft OneDrive account (or log in if he or she already has an account), just as you did. This action will display his or her My Account screen where he or she can select the various installation options and click the Install button to complete the installation.

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J. Carlton Collins (carlton@asaresearch.com) is a technology consultant, CPE instructor, and a JofA contributing editor.

Note: Instructions for Microsoft Office in “Technology Q&A” refer to the 2013, 2010, and 2007 versions, unless otherwise specified.

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