Office install doesn't seem correct

Question

Hello. I bought Office Home 2024 for £120 from Currys UK online, using the one time purchase method as I don't need the OneDrive cloud service. I mostly bought Office for Excel.

I can open Excel, but features like Conditional Formatting, Charting, Freeze Panes and drawing shapes are all greyed out. I can't save anything locally on my C drive and those options are greyed out too. I went to Options, Save and the box to store locally is greyed out there too.

I copied an old Excel file from memory stick onto my C drive as a test and it says to 'edit files in this free version of Excel they must be saved to OneDrive'. This is not a free version and should work.

When I log into my Microsoft account where I entered the 25 digit key, it confirms I bought the correct thing and I've uninstalled and re-installed three times and its always the same.

Please help and tell me what I'm doing wrong. I bought Office 2016 years back and it worked fine.

Answer 1

You need to uninstall the pre-installed o365 Family trial then repair Office

And

Restart the PC, once fully loaded, repair Office,> Apps & Features>Select Office your version>Modify /Repair, once the repair completes re-test (Quick repair)

 

O365/Office when installed under a Win user admin account, and run from that admin account, auto logs in when the PC is started. There is no separate login for any component.

 

Win search for Word > Resulting shortcut > Rt click > Pin to task bar > start Word from that shortcut (hover mouse over the shortcut gives access to the 10 most recent docs)

Same for other core components.

Start eg Word open an old doc via recents/search

Answer 2

Hello! Greg. Thanks for the details.

From what you’ve described, you didn’t get the full desktop version of Office installed.

Try to confirm what’s installed

• On your PC, go to Settings → Apps → Installed apps (or Programs & Features on older Windows).
• Look for Microsoft Office Home & Student 2024 (or similar wording).
  • If you only see Microsoft 365 (Web), Office App, or “Microsoft Office Desktop Apps” (~2 MB), then the full desktop suite never got installed.

Next, fully remove leftover Office versions

Old trial or web-based versions can override your proper license.

• Download Microsoft’s Office uninstall tool: https://support.microsoft.com/office/uninstall-office-from-a-pc-9dd49b83-264a-477a-8fcc-2fdf5dbf61d8
• Run it, select all Office versions, let it clear them out, and reboot.

Then install the correct version from your Microsoft Account

• Sign in at https://account.microsoft.com/services
• Under “Services & subscriptions”, you should see Office Home & Student 2024 tied to your purchase.
• Click Install, download the proper desktop installer, and run it.
  • This will install Excel/Word/PowerPoint as full apps on your machine.

Lastly, verify activation

• Open Excel → go to File → Account.
• It should say Product Activated and show Microsoft Office Home & Student 2024.
• If it still says “View Only” or “Office for the Web,” then it’s not activated correctly, sign in with the same Microsoft account you redeemed the key on.

See if this helps. If you need further assistance, just let me know.

Best regards,

Kimberly