tech, simplified.

Convert Your Office 2011 Install to Office 365

If you already owned Office 2011 for Mac or individual copies of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint for Mac, and also have an Office 365 subscription (perhaps so you could use Office for iPad), you can actually go ahead and switch your currently installed copy of Office for Mac to Office 365 if you want. That way, you can get all of the Office apps and features—Outlook, say, if you had the Home edition, or all the other apps if you only owned one of them—on your Mac. Plus, you could free up that original license to perhaps install on an older Mac you've handed down.

Here's what you need to do. Just make sure you've installed the latest updates, then open any of the Office apps you have installed, click their app name in the menu, and select *Upgrade Office...

Then, in the Getting Started dialog that'll open, select Sign in to an existing Office 365 subscription. Sign in with your Microsoft account, and seconds later your license will be switched to an Office 365 account. Interestingly enough, the Product ID will be "11111-111-1111111-11111" after you switch to an Office 365 license, instead of the typically random number you'll see after activating with a traditional license.

You'll now have access to every app included with Office 2011. There's no extra features right now, and the online sharing still says that you'll share documents to SkyDrive instead of the newer OneDrive, but at least you'll have everything on one license. And, of course, if you're making documents on your iPad, you'll want to have OneDrive for Mac installed to keep everything in sync.

Now, Microsoft will surely ship a new version of Office for Mac this year, hopefully with an overhauled UI like we've seen in OneNote for Mac, and with some of Office 2013's features like the new Flash Fill in Excel. It's hard to say how Office 2014 will ship for the Mac, but it's certain to be tied to Office 365 subscriptions and having yours on your Mac now can only make the transition easier.

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