Is Office for mobile devices free?

Is Office for mobile devices free?

As soon as I saw today’s news, I thought that there would be confusion about what “Office for tablets and smartphones going free” would mean. There certainly has been.

Office for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets is indeed free, within certain bounds. I’m going to attempt to succinctly delinate the cases under which it is, and is not, free.

Office is free for you to use on your smartphone or tablet if, and only if:

  1. You are not using it for commercial purposes
  2. You are not performing “advanced editing“.

If you want to use the advanced editing features of Office for your smartphone or tablet as defined in the link above, you need one of the following:

  • An Office 365 Personal or Home subscription
  • A commercial Office 365 subscription which includes Office 365 ProPlus (the desktop suite.)*

If you’re using Office on your smartphone or tablet for any commercial purpose, you need the following:

  • A commercial Office 365 subscription which includes Office 365 ProPlus (the desktop suite.)*

For consumers, this change is great, and convenient. You’ll be able to use Office for basic edits on almost any mobile device for free. For commercial organizations, I’m concerned about how they can prevent this becoming a large license compliance issue when employees bring their own iPads in to work.

For your reference, here are the license agreements for Excel for iOSPowerPoint for iOS, and Word for iOS.

*I wanted to add a footnote here to clarify one vagary. The new “Business” Office 365 plans don’t technically include Office 365 ProPlus – they are more akin to “Office 365 Standard”, but appears to have no overarching branding. Regardless, if you have Office 365 Business or Office 365 Business Premium, which include the desktop suite, you also have rights to the Office mobile applications.

Learn more about how to properly license Office for smartphones and tablets at a Directions on Microsoft Licensing Boot Camp. Next event is Seattle, on Dec. 8-9, 2014. We’ll cover the latest info on Office 365, Windows Per User licensing, and much more.

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