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Do I have to buy an annual subscription to Microsoft 365 ?

Katharina Burtt 20 Reputation points
2026-03-31T17:43:23.49+00:00

In December 2025 I bought Microsoft Office Professional 2021 and digitally downloaded it on my PC. When I recently tried to open a word or excel document for the first time, I am asked to buy Microsoft 365. Do I have to buy an annual subscription to Microsoft 365 in order to use excel and word? I have an Outlook account associated with my email address. I thought I bought the subscription when I purchased the digital download of Microsoft Office Professional 2021.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Other

Answer accepted by question author

Ron Barker 1,965 Reputation points
2026-03-31T20:17:08.79+00:00

Hi, I doubt that you purchased Microsoft Office Professional 2021, it cost $439.99 or £419.99. It is a perpetual licence so there is no subscription. You need to uninstall the free Microsoft 365 Office, which comes with all new computers. You have probably purchased an illicit Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2021. It may work for a long time or a short time or not at all. You may be able to reinstall it or maybe not. See if you can see it at: https://account.microsoft.com/services Sign in with the Microsoft Account that you used to redeem your Office. If you can see it at https://account.microsoft.com/services you probably will be able to reinstall it, and a better chance of it working for longer.

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  1. AI answer

    2026-03-31T17:57:10.6933333+00:00

    Office Professional 2021 is a one-time purchase (non-subscription) product. It does not require an annual Microsoft 365 subscription to keep using Word and Excel on the PC where it is installed.

    The prompts to “buy Microsoft 365” appear because the apps are detecting a Microsoft 365 subscription state (for example, a trial, expired, or not-activated subscription) and are showing subscription notices. In this situation:

    • The existing Office Professional 2021 license remains valid as a non-subscription license.
    • A Microsoft 365 subscription is only needed if choosing to move to the subscription service (for ongoing feature updates, cloud services, and Copilot features), not to use the Office 2021 product already purchased.

    To continue using Word and Excel without buying Microsoft 365, ensure that Office Professional 2021 is correctly installed and activated on the device, rather than signing in or activating with a Microsoft 365 subscription. The subscription notices can then be cleared by following the steps for subscription messages that appear when opening Microsoft 365 apps.

    If at some point an upgrade is desired beyond Office 2021, that would require either:

    • Purchasing a Microsoft 365 subscription, or
    • Purchasing a newer one-time purchase version of Office.

    But neither is required just to use the Office Professional 2021 license already bought.

    References:

    AI-generated content may be incorrect. Read our transparency notes for more information.

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  2. Katharina Burtt 20 Reputation points
    2026-03-31T18:00:46.6966667+00:00

    If I have an Outlook account from the original Office 2021 purchase, I assume that I correctly installed and activated the product key or license on my PC. When I try to use the product key to open excel or word, I receive an error message. I have copied the product key from my original purchase email and I have manually entered it and I receive an error message. How can I find out if the product key or license for Office 2021 was correctly installed and activated on my PC?

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