Click to Run is NOT Office 365 ProPlus

Sonia Cuff
REgarding 365
Published in
2 min readFeb 28, 2017

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Have I confused you with that headline?

There is a bit of confusion with terminology and I’ve seen several IT Pro conversations start like this:

“Does x thing apply to Office retail editions too or only to the Click to Run version?”

Here’s the thing — an Office 2013 retail DVD IS a Click to Run installation.

It’s not an old school .msi file installer package any more.

What they are usually asking though is “Does x thing apply to the Office 2013 DVD from my local retailer too or only to the Office 365 ProPlus software?”

Office 365 ProPlus gets a little lost in the Office 365 plan terminology. It’s the version of Office that’s activated with your Office 365 plan license, installed on your PC/Mac, and regularly updated. It’s the version of Office that you only get to use while you are paying for a valid Office 365 license subscription and it’s the version that you’re allowed to install & run on a Remote Desktop Server. And it’s installed via the Click to Run installation technology.

Office 365 ProPlus IS Click to Run.

Just like your retail DVD.

Microsoft Office Home and Business used to be available in a retail store as a DVD (Office 2013). Now more commonly it’s bought as a card (Office 2016), with a download link and an activation code. That’s still a delivery channel that Microsoft makes available — a one-time purchase for installation on one PC or Mac.

Just to add a little more confusion, Office Professional Plus 2013 with a volume license agreement IS an MSI installer package. Yup.

To start with, just get your head around Click to Run being an installation method, NOT a software subscription license, and it will make it easy to use the right terminology.

For more information, watch the Microsoft Mechanics episode “Who moved my MSI?”

-SCuffy

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Cloud Ops Advocate at Microsoft. Technology lover, small business champion, Azure Cloud hugger, IT Operations. Brisbane, Australia http://soniacuff.com