Office 365 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Office 365 is the newest version of Microsoft Office. It is only available by subscription, and Microsoft appears to have ceased releasing standalone retail versions that you pay for once and use forever. Current Andrews employees and students will be able to use Office 365 as long as they are affiliated with the University.

The benefit of an Office 365 subscription is that you are guaranteed to always have the latest version of Office. It also allows you to use Office across a wide range of devices, rather than 1 or 2 computers as it behaved previously. Retail licenses have a limited support life. For example, Office for Mac 2016 support from Microsoft ended in October of 2020. The software will continue to function for those that leave it installed, but it will no longer receive new features, bug fixes or security updates.

Office 365 includes the Office apps that you are familiar with, such as Word, Powerpoint, Excel and Outlook, but also includes OneNote for note-taking, OneDrive for online cloud storage, Access for managing databases (Windodws only) and Publisher for designing special graphical items like posters (Windows only).

There are three main license types for Office 365 in an education environment. They are A1, A3 and A5. Andrews students and employees have access to A3. A detailed list of the different features for students and faculty/staff can be found at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/academic/compare-office-365-education-plans

You can log in to office.andrews.edu with your existing Andrews email and password. (if you have made a personal Microsoft account with your Andrews email in the past, be sure to select “Work or School Account”). You can then use the available apps in a web browser (much like Google Docs) and can also download and install them on your computer as you are normally used to from this website.

You may install Office 365 apps on up to five (5) Windows PCs or Macs, 5 tablets, and 5 mobile devices. You can count hybrid Windows devices, such as the Microsoft Surface Pro, as either a PC or a tablet.

Retail licenses of Office may exist alongside Office 365, but it is also possible that it will automatically convert the retail installation to a 365 installation. This will grant full 365 functionality, but when a user’s affiliation with Andrews ends (i.e. graduation for students or leaving Andrews employment for faculty/staff), Office 365 will drop to limited functionality. Please see below for securing any existing retail licenses you may have to reinstall later?

We have long offered retail versions of Microsoft Office for free for students and at a significant discount for faculty and staff at andrews.onthehub.com . We expect that this service will no longer be available past calendar year 2020. If you have obtained a copy of Office before the service disappears, you may continue to use it. We recommend that you either tie the license to a personal Microsoft account (required on Macs) or maintain the product key in case you need to re-install on a Windows PC. If you tie the retail license to a personal Microsoft account, it will thereafter be available to download from your personal Microsoft account.  Sign-in at office.microsoft.com under “Services and Subscriptions”.