Office Home & Business 2024 Perpetual

[HCHTech]

/rant
I wish MS would just quit selling the perpetual versions of Office. They must be contractually obligated or something. The links to buy it are hidden in new, inventive ways every time I look, the purchase process is buggy and times out with a blank screen, and the installation has inevitable issues.

I had 5 installs of the 32-bit version (I hate you, Chirotouch) to do yesterday for a client after failing to convince them to switch to M365. After trying 3 different times over 5 days using multiple browsers to purchase the licenses online with their MS account and failing, we finally purchased boxed licenses from our distributor. All computers were Win11 25H2, and previously had Office Home & Business 2019 installed. Using the same procedure on each of the 5 workstations, I had 3 work ok, and 2 that completed the installation fine (and things appear to work), but for some reason the banner that displays when you open an application still says Office 2019. The About dialog shows Office 2024, so this is some kind of registration issue. The only recommendation I found was to do an uninstall with the SARA tool (now discontinued), or do a manual "rip it out by the roots" uninstall. I'm just leaving it for now.
/rant off

 

[britechguy]

@HCHTech

Because M365 does not, at least as of the moment, have a way that many state agencies that buy "the Office suite" for clients can do so with only the initial one-year, or some limited term commitment from the agency, most of the Office I deal with is either Office 2021 or Office 2024.

I have to say that I have not had any issues with installing either (and now it's 2024) when sourced from Microsoft or "boxed."

Also Microsoft has always recommended a complete uninstall of any existing Office version prior to installing a new one. I've always intentionally uninstalled any existing version prior to installing its replacement. That doesn't get rid of any of the user's APPDATA stored stuff.

 

[HCHTech]

Also Microsoft has always recommended a complete uninstall of any existing Office version prior to installing a new one. I've always intentionally uninstalled any existing version prior to installing its replacement.

Yes, that's part of what we did - Reboot, uninstall Office 2019, reboot, check to make sure it's gone, install Office 2024, activate, reboot & check for updates. None of the installs failed and all show the correct 32-bit version in the About dialog, but 2 of the 5 still show "2019" in the app's splash image while loading. Not sure why. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[britechguy]

@HCHTech

Then very, very strange indeed. Clearly a non-tidy uninstall, which is no fault of your own.

 

[fincoder]

ESD license keys can be purchased from distributors here in Aus (e.g. Synnex).

 

[Sky-Knight]

ESD license keys can be purchased from distributors here in Aus (e.g. Synnex).

Yes, it's easy to do outside of the US... it's near impossible inside the US... because you guys have these little things called "consumer protection laws".