Microsoft Office Licence Types Explained: Retail, OEM, Volume and Microsoft 365 (2026)

Most people only discover their Office licence type when something goes wrong. They buy a new laptop, try to reinstall Word, and Office says the key has already been used. Or a cheap “Professional Plus” key activates today and stops working six months later.

Both problems come down to the same thing: not knowing what kind of licence you bought. This guide explains every Microsoft Office licence type in plain English, shows you how to check the one on your PC in about two minutes, and helps you pick the right one before you pay.

Licence type, edition and version are three different things

Product names like “Office Home & Business 2024” squeeze three separate facts into one line. Untangling them is the quickest way to make sense of every Office listing you’ll ever see.

Here’s why it matters. Two listings can both say “Office 2024 Professional Plus” and still be completely different purchases, because the licence type behind them is different. The apps are identical; the rules are not.

Windows works the same way. If you’ve read our guide to the Windows 11 Pro key, the retail-versus-OEM idea below will feel familiar.

The four Microsoft Office licence types

Retail licence (FPP)

A retail licence, sometimes called FPP (Full Packaged Product), is what you get from the Microsoft Store, Amazon or a high-street shop. You pay once and it’s linked to your Microsoft account, so you can see it at account.microsoft.com.

Its big advantage is freedom. A retail Office licence works on one PC or Mac at a time, but you can move it when you replace that machine. Right now Microsoft sells two retail editions: Office Home 2024 ($149.99) and Office Home & Business 2024 ($249.99).

OEM licence

OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer. It’s the licence a PC maker installs before the laptop leaves the factory. It’s genuine and fully featured, but it’s tied to the first device it activates on.

Picture a Dell laptop that shipped with Office Home & Student. Four years later the motherboard fails, the repair shop fits a new one, and Office refuses to reactivate: as far as Microsoft is concerned, that’s a new PC. OEM licences are cheap precisely because they live and die with one machine. Note that Office for Mac has no OEM version at all.

Volume licence (MAK and KMS)

Volume licences are made for organisations that need Office on dozens or thousands of PCs. One agreement covers every seat, and IT installs the same build everywhere. Office LTSC 2024 Standard and Professional Plus are sold this way, and they activate in one of two ways:

• MAK (Multiple Activation Key): one key with a set number of activations. Each PC activates once online with Microsoft and stays activated.
• KMS (Key Management Service): PCs activate against the company’s own KMS server and must check in again at least every 180 days. Take the laptop away from that network for good, and activation eventually lapses.

That KMS detail explains a common complaint. If a “lifetime” key needed a small activator program and Office stopped working months later, it was almost certainly KMS activation pointed at someone else’s server.

Microsoft 365 subscription

Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) is a subscription tied to your Microsoft account, not to a device. You always get the latest apps and 1 TB of OneDrive storage per person. Stop paying and the apps drop to read-only: you can open your files but not edit them.

Current US prices are $99.99 a year for Personal, $129.99 for Family (up to six people) and $199.99 for Premium. Microsoft also offers cheaper “Classic” plans without Copilot AI, at $69.99 (Personal) and $99.99 (Family) a year.

What happens when you change PC? Transfer rules by licence type

This is the question that matters most, and the one most product listings skip. Here’s what happens in the four situations people actually run into.

To move a retail licence, uninstall Office from the old PC, then go to account.microsoft.com › Services & subscriptions on the new one and click Install. If activation fails after a hardware change, the phone activation option in Office’s activation wizard usually sorts it out in a few minutes.

Which Office versions are still supported (November 2026)

Support decides whether Microsoft still patches security holes. An unsupported Office still opens your documents, but every new vulnerability found from now on stays open for good. That’s a real risk for anything that touches email or downloaded files.

Office 2021 is the one that catches people out. Its support ended on 13 October 2026, as Microsoft confirmed in its Office 2021 end-of-support announcement. Many “best Office licence” articles still recommend it.

Does that make older versions useless? Not quite. A PC that’s offline, or only used to open old spreadsheets, can run Office 2021 Professional Plus for years without trouble. For anything that sends email or opens attachments from strangers, buy Office 2024 or Microsoft 365.

Office editions compared: Home, Home & Business, Standard, Professional Plus

Once the licence type is settled, the edition decides which apps you get. Here’s what’s inside the current 2024 line-up.

Two details are easy to miss. First, Publisher is gone: Microsoft retired it in October 2026 and left it out of Office 2024. Second, Office Home 2024 is licensed for personal use only, so a freelancer billing clients technically needs Home & Business.

On a Mac, the choice is simpler. Office 2024 Home & Business for Mac gives you Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook. Access has never been made for macOS.

How to check which Office licence you have

Word’s own File › Account screen shows your edition and whether it’s activated, but not the licence type. For that, you need a script Office installs on every Windows PC. It sounds technical; it takes two minutes.

1. Press Win + S, type cmd, then choose Run as administrator.
2. Type cd "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16" and press Enter. If you get “path not found”, you have 32-bit Office: use C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16 instead. Office 2019, 2021 and 2024 all use the Office16 folder.
3. Type cscript ospp.vbs /dstatus and press Enter.
4. Read the LICENSE NAME and LICENSE DESCRIPTION lines.

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.26200.6899]
(c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Windows\System32>cd "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16"

1C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16>cscript ospp.vbs /dstatus
Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.812
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

---Processing--------------------------
---------------------------------------
PRODUCT ID: 00485-40000-00000-AA582
SKU ID: 8d368fc1-9470-4be2-8d66-90e836cbb051
2LICENSE NAME: Office 24, Office24ProPlus2024VL_MAK_AE edition
3LICENSE DESCRIPTION: Office 24, VOLUME_MAK channel
BETA EXPIRATION: 01/01/1601
4LICENSE STATUS:  ---LICENSED---
5Last 5 characters of installed product key: 7KQ4B
---------------------------------------
---------------------------------------
---Exiting-----------------------------

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16>

Now match what you see to this decoder:

On a Mac, it’s even easier: open Word, click Word › About Microsoft Word, and the licence type is printed under the version number.

Office or Microsoft 365: which costs less over 5 years?

“Subscriptions are a rip-off” and “perpetual licences are outdated” are both half-true. The honest answer depends on how many devices you use and how long you keep them. Here’s the running total at Microsoft’s US list prices:

The numbers point to a simple rule. One PC, kept for three years or more, and no need for cloud storage? A perpetual Office 2024 licence wins clearly. Two or more people or devices? Microsoft 365 Family is the better deal, because $129.99 covers six people and each gets 1 TB of OneDrive.

Example: a student who only writes essays on one laptop spends $150 on Office Home 2024 and is done until 2029. A family of four with two laptops, a tablet and four phones would need four separate perpetual licences, and still wouldn’t get Office on the phones.

Office for businesses: volume licensing, CSP and Microsoft 365 Business

Small businesses no longer sign the old Microsoft “Open Licence” agreements. That programme was replaced by CSP (Cloud Solution Provider) partners, who sell both Microsoft 365 subscriptions and perpetual Office LTSC licences.

Microsoft raised its business prices on 1 July 2026. Per user, per month:

Office LTSC 2024 makes most sense where PCs must stay unchanged for years: a factory floor terminal, a lab instrument PC, or a reception desk that never needs new features. For a typical five-person office, Business Standard is simpler to run.

How to choose the right Office licence (and avoid the wrong one)

Whichever you choose, run through this checklist before paying. It takes 30 seconds and prevents almost every licence problem we hear about.

• The licence type is stated before you buy: retail, OEM, volume or subscription. “Lifetime” alone tells you nothing.
• The version is still supported: in November 2026, that means Office 2024 or Microsoft 365.
• You get an invoice with the product name and key. Every Digitlogs order includes one, emailed with the key.
• Activation is explained: online, by phone, or by signing in. Be wary of anything that needs extra software to activate.
• The edition matches your use: Home for personal use, Home & Business or higher for work.

Frequently asked questions

Still unsure which Microsoft Office licence type fits you? Start from the version: in late 2026, that means Office 2024 or Microsoft 365. Then pick the licence type that matches how long you’ll keep your PC.