I’ve written a lot about how you can legally acquire Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 Setup media from Microsoft online and then use that to perform a clean install of those systems. Less well known is that you can likewise obtain Microsoft Office Setup media as well. And you can do so for the past several versions of the suite, on both PC and Mac.
For information about the Windows downloads, please refer to Clean PC: Download and Create Clean Windows 10 Setup Media and Clean PC: Download Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 Setup Media Legally. As suggested by those titles, each is part of my ongoing Clean PC series.
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For Office, things are a bit different, and for a few reasons.
First, these downloads may not be applicable to you: if you acquire and install the desktop Office suite via an Office 365 subscription, you cannot download the software and install it offline. You have to do so via the Office 365 web site. Instead, these downloads are for customers who purchased Office at retail (or online), for Windows or for Mac.
Second, there are far more versions of Office available for download than there are Windows versions. Microsoft currently lets you download the installers for Office 2007, 2010, and 2013 for Windows, for example.
And finally, in order to use this tip, you will need your Office product key in advance. (With Windows, this is not necessary.)
If you meet the requirements, you can visit the Manage, download, backup or restore Office products page on the Office web site and sign-in with your Microsoft account to begin the process.
With your Office product key at the ready, locate the correct Download button and then proceed to product key entry.
Not so oddly in retrospect, I don’t have any retail Office keys to try on this: I’ve been using Office 365 since day and my TechNet keys can’t be used on this site. Let me know if you use this to snag the Setup media, I’m curious what you get (and assume it is an ISO file).
Thanks to Thinus Swart for the tip.
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