Multiple office users on same machine

Question

I have an Office365 E3 licence at work. I have used one of my MS Office downloads to install MS Office on a computer at home. This computer runs Windows 10 Professional and I log on to it using Azure AD.

My wife is also a user on the home machine and logs on using a personal MS account. She has an Office 365 Personal subscription and has installed MS Office on the home computer from her Office 365 account. (We weren't sure if this was the right thing to do since Office was already installed through my E3 licence, but did it so she could use Office legitimately on the home machine.)

When she attempts to use Office on the home machine she gets this error:

"The products we found in your account cannot be used to activate Office in shared computer scenarios."

The only advice we can find is that she should "Contact her admin and ask to be assigned a license for Office 365 ProPlus". But she's a personal home user and doesn't have an "admin".

Is it really the case that she can't use her Personal Office licence on the home machine because I also have an account on the same machine? This seems very odd.

Is there anything we can do so that both can use the licences we have paid for?

Answer 1

Nothing odd, one's a business account the other a home account. You can't mix them.

What you should do is have her install upgrade to Office 365 Home, assign your home account (not business account) an Office 365 Home license (using one of the 5 she can share). That way you and she can use Word, Excel, Etc.

Then in Outlook just add your business email account to access it.

It's how my setup at home works with home users and my work account.

Yes, the root problem is that Office 365 "Business" and "Consumer" (like 365 Personal) do not "play well together".  

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365 Personal and 365 Home are the same thing except that 365 Home allows more people to share it. So I don't see how "upgrading" to Home from Personal is going to help with this problem.

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The root of the problem is that Windows is trying to let her use the Office Business installed programs with her Personal license.  MS is really lazy when it comes to Office installations. They put everything into the same place (which causes problems if you tried to mix 32 and 64 bit installations).  But it is also a problem if Windows gets confused to tries to have your wife run the "wrong" Office installation.

Did you install Office Business using the Windows Admin account?

You could try having your wife re-install Office Personal inside her personal Windows account.  If you are lucky, she will have access to her 365 Personal installation and you will still have access to 365 Business.  If you are not so lucky, you'll start having problems.

Another option would be to have your wife run a "virtual machine", a "VM", like Windows Hyper-V which is part of Windows Pro (or Enterprise), or the free "VirtualBox".  The VM creates a "virtual computer" inside of Windows that is isolated from Windows. That would allow you to run the 2 conflicting versions of Office.  It is a big gun to deploy, but welcome to "Windoze" and MS world.

Answer 2

Hi Neha

thanks. It was useful to confirm that the problem is about mixing business and consumer and is unresolvable as such.

Rather than having to give up on using my office account at home we are experimenting with using a spare F1 business licence for my wife instead of her Personal Office account, which seems to give her access to Office at home, and, critically, MS Exchange so she can sync a calendar with IOS devices.

It was all so much easier when software came in cellophane-wrapped plastic boxes..

Answer 3

Hi Jonathan,

I am writing to follow up on this case. Did you check above replies? If you still need help, please update us when you have time.

Regards,

Neha

Answer 4

Nothing odd, one's a business account the other a home account. You can't mix them.

What you should do is have her install upgrade to Office 365 Home, assign your home account (not business account) an Office 365 Home license (using one of the 5 she can share). That way you and she can use Word, Excel, Etc.

Then in Outlook just add your business email account to access it.

It's how my setup at home works with home users and my work account.