Office 365, the purchase method Microsoft's now pushing most aggressively, is a subscription service, so payments are made monthly or annually. One-time purchases include Office Professional Plus 2016 (Windows) and Office Standard 2016 for Mac (macOS), the enterprise-grade SKUs available only via volume licensing and retail packages such as Office Professional 2016 (Windows) and Office Home and Business 2016 for Mac (macOS). Periodicals: Seven secrets of Windows Task Manager every computer user should know Pay for Office 2016 this year and use it for the next eight years? Fine. In other words, the license has no expiration date, and users may run the suite as long as they want. That purchase, actually of a license to legally run the software, gives the buyer the right to use Office 2016 in perpetuity. Microsoft defines the term as when '.you pay a single, up-front cost to get Office applications for one computer.' Up-front is the key adjective there Office 2016's entire purchase price must be laid out before receiving the software. Office 2016, whether bought one copy at a time in retail or in lots of hundreds via volume licensing, has been dubbed a 'one-time purchase' by Microsoft to spell out how it is paid for (the kind of license is tied to whether it was bought outright or simply 'rented').

Office 2019 standard vs pro plus