Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
Downloadable Office trial
wraith808:
Does a MS Office trial still exist? It certainly used to - and not just at Technet or MSDN - but Googling 'Office trial' seem to all now end up at Office 365 pages, at least the handful or two results that I clicked on. The official office.com site requires a key to install or reinstall. Can one not download Office trials for a self built computer anymore?
-rgdot (December 04, 2017, 01:36 PM)
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https://products.office.com/en-us/try
It's not offline, however. You just have to have a Live account. Even in my MSDN account, it's not a download of a completely offline version, but they are offline applications- just require an active subscription.
IainB:
@tomos: I don't think the sky is falling down just yet.
If one follows through the instructions before committing any $$: (I've numbered them below)
* Promo Code: SKvip12%
* GET IT HERE!! : <https://goo.gl/h7Hm92>
(That shortened link takes you to SCDkey: <https://www.scdkey.com/office2016-professional-plus-cd-key-global_1530-20.html?b> but please use the shortened link in case it benefits Britec.)
* Download and activate product key here: <https://setup.office.com/>
* Office Professional Plus 2016 For $30 : <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHgBDZSgePk>
- then one will be able to observe that at STEP 3 the product key is validated by Microsoft prior to Microsoft actually downloading the software from the Microsoft site at <https://setup.office.com/>/ That is, the software is only downloaded by Microsoft if the key is valid. The download of the Office 2016 installation package was uneventful and took a couple of hours on a slowish connection, by the way.
EDIT: The download was (from memory) an ISO file of about 2.9GB, which needed to be mounted as a CD-ROM in a virtual drive, and the installer run from that. (All dead easy on Win10.)
SCDkey Appears to be a legit and trusted vendor of discounted software and game keys, including, for example, for Steam, Xbox, MS Office. I could not find that this site had/has a bad rep as a fraudulent site - and presumably, neither could Britec, who does not anyway intentionally link to fraudulent/dodgy sites AFAIK.
EDIT: SCDkey operate an affiliate program: <https://www.scdkey.com/affiliate-program.html>
Thus the only risk might seem to be that the key one buys at STEP 2 might not be deemed valid by the time one gets through the validation by Microsoft at STEP 3.
In that case (i.e., if the key was invalid), then one would go back to either request a new (valid) key, or reclaim one's purchase cost of the licence from SCDkey (they also have an online chat window for support).
If they (say) refused to help or pay up, then one could reverse the transaction via the standard disputes procedures of PayPal/Visa etc. - and one's rights to avail oneself of those procedures last for about 180 days, as I recall. If PayPal/Visa etc. received information/complaints that SCDkey was flogging dud/illegal keys and not refunding, then they would freeze and ban SCDkey's merchant accounts - which would presumably kill SCDkey's business.
There would thus seem to be little (if any) financial risk, together with a strong incentive for SCDkey to be as helpful as possible to customers - and they do seem to be. For example, I was very impressed with how secure and efficient their EFT-POS website was - so was my friend who was sat next to me as we proceeded through the steps above (it was her money that was being spent). Like I said - it worked a treat.
However, I'll let you know (via this thread) in what would seem to be the unlikely event of it suddenly turning to custard.
rgdot:
Thanks IainB, might try it if all else fails EDIT: Reading your last reply, thanks for the extra details
Thanks wraith808, yes want to see if I can install full 2016 offline trial but will see what happens
wraith808:
Thanks IainB, might try it if all else fails EDIT: Reading your last reply, thanks for the extra details
Thanks wraith808, yes want to see if I can install full 2016 offline trial but will see what happens
-rgdot (December 05, 2017, 08:43 AM)
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I might not have been as clear as I should have. I'm not sure if they have a version that's not web enabled with 0365.
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/How-do-I-upgrade-to-Office-2016-ee68f6cf-422f-464a-82ec-385f65391350
The only versions of office that I've seen that still use a key are the ones from MSDN. And even with those, I have to tie into to my MSDN account (I have a personal O365 but use Visio and such from my MSDN). I don't think you're going to find what you're looking for, and agree with Tomos... that buying keys seems sketchy at best.
rgdot:
Well there are ebay sellers with close to or even full 100% rating selling 'unused keys sourced from genuine authorised Microsoft re-sellers' (I googled and saw this earlier) but with or without this or what IainB posted I am mildly surprised they have taken down offline version trials, pushing 365 is their policy I suppose .... the main impetus of this thread is for a pc built for a non techie until she can decide to come up with full Office $$ or forget it and ask me to install Libre, Free, or other.
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