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The context: I have two active licenses purchased in my MS account, Office365 subscription and Office Home and Student 2016.

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Both allow installation and when I press the install button they start downloading the same Click-To-Run installer file that looks the same for both.

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When I run the installer it doesn't ask me anything and doesn't provide me any options to choose, it installs and activates Office 365 by default. How to make it choose the 2016 Office, not the O365?

Suncatcher
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  • If your Office 2016 license is a subscription, then 2016 and 365 are the same thing. – John Feb 19 '24 at 13:14
  • Nope, my Office 2016 is a standalone package. At least it was when I bought it in 2017 when the O365 subscription didn't even exist for consumers. And I remember it was installable with a separate installer at least couple of years ago. Was O2016 merged into O365? – Suncatcher Feb 20 '24 at 20:02
  • Here is the simple fact. If you log into your MSA which has an active Office 365 subscription within Office 2016, eventually, you will automatically be upgraded to the current Office 365 build. If you want to remain on Office 2016 you will need to download a Office 2016 installer and not log into your MSA. So, absolutely, if you have an Office 365 subscription it absolutely is the same thing. The likelihood of Microsoft not providing a download to O2016 due to support is high. – Ramhound Mar 24 '24 at 00:02
  • you will need to download a Office 2016 installer how to do that? – Suncatcher Mar 24 '24 at 00:09
  • I assume you don’t have the original email with the download link and/or the installation disk? There is also a high chance the download files should not be identical and this is entirely an error on Microsoft. Their documentation seems to circular reference from Office 20xx to Office 365. While I have many perpetual licenses to Office 2013-Office 2019, anytime I use Office 2016 or Office 2019 they automatically get upgraded to Office 365 due to my subscription – Ramhound Mar 24 '24 at 00:14
  • I assume you don’t have the original email with the download link and/or the installation disk? nope, I bought it in 2017, which is 8 years ago, so now this message is lost. Though I remember throughout this period I installed it several times and the MS portal was providing me the separate 2016 installer. This merging of O16 with O365 was made couple of years ago, I believe – Suncatcher Mar 25 '24 at 01:13

4 Answers4

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Office 2016 and Office 365 are internally marked as version 16. As they are the same version, it's hard to have both installed on the same computer.

My answer for the post Install x64(64-bit) and x86(32-bit) Microsoft Office on same pc? outlined the rules for installing multiple Office versions on the same computer. Of special interest are these rules:

  • Install the 64 bit versions first, from oldest to newest
  • Then install any 32 bit versions, again in order of oldest to newest
  • Do not try and install 32 and 64 bit versions of the same Office version (for example one should be version 2016 and the other 2013)
  • Only have one version of Outlook installed.

This means that if you have installed Office 365 64-bit, you may now only install Office 2016 32-bit on the same computer (unless you install it in a virtual machine).

Downloading an ISO for Office 2016 is not easy, as Microsoft does its best to pretend that it no longer exists. Nevertheless, there are still sources for finding it.

One source is the old and no longer maintained TechBench by WZT (v4.1.1). I have as a test downloaded from it one Office 2016 ISO, which was version 16.0.9029.2167, that according to Update history for Microsoft 365 Apps is "version 1802 (Build 9029.2167) from February 26, 2018". The TechBench downloads come as .img files that you need to rename to .iso.

Another trusted source of Microsoft ISOs is the Internet Archive which also archives older pages of microsoft.com. As a test I googled for Office 2016 site:archive.org, where the first result was Microsoft Office 2016 Professional Plus 32 and 64-bit for Windows, which I even managed to download (but in my opinion this was an Office version that was prior to Office 2016, so useless). Several downloads may need to be tried before finding a suitable one.

harrymc
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  • Note: One can hope that Microsoft won't be able to upgrade the Office 2016 32-bit installation to Office 365, because Office 365 is already installed. The only test for the viability of this setup is by trying it. – harrymc Mar 24 '24 at 11:16
  • the question was not "how to install O2016 on a PC with O365 installed", but "how to intall O2016 on a clean PC" – Suncatcher Mar 25 '24 at 01:22
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Please note that the following may be wrong, because I can't currently test it since I don't have an Office 365 subscription, and because I don't have access to Office 2016.

But in general, technically there's nothing that keeps you from installing Office 2016 on any PC. If the "Install" button you are showing in your screenshot doesn't effect what you want, simply install Office 2016 from the respective installation DVD or from the respective download link that you got from your vendor. On that PC, it would be probably best to disconnect from all Office 365 / Microsoft cloud services, at least during installation. During that installation, you then will be asked to enter your product key.

Office 2016 and 2019 haven't been "integrated" into Office 365. Rather, since quite a time, the installation method for recent Office programs has been switched to "Click-To-Run" (CTR), which I personally hate. Although the installers for the different versions look similar, the 2016 CTR installer still installs 2016, the 2019 CTR installer installs 2019, and so on. I vaguely remember that you could circumvent "Click-To-Run" with Office 2016, but the process was quite complicated, including writing a XML file by hand that controls automated installation. This mechanism was for big companies that insisted on normal installation (instead of CTR) at that time.

Additionally, if you could accept choosing the license after installation (instead of during installation), you could try the following:

After installation, start one of the Office programs; let's focus on Word here. In Word, select "Account" on the side bar left in the program window. In the screen that appears, there is a button "Switch license". If you hit it, a dialog appears with a link titled "I have a product key". If you click that link, a further dialog appears where you can enter your product key. This description is for Office 2019, but the steps should be similar in Office 2016.

I could imagine that this action effects what you want, provided you're doing it in Office 2016.

As far as I know, there is no such thing as an "automatic upgrade" from 2016 to 365. Office 365 does exist in many variations, and the smallest variant still has a lot of additional features compared to the perpetual version. If it wasn't possible to operate two installations with different licenses, that would mean that Microsoft would force you to throw away a perpetual license (that you previously have bought with your hard-earned money) as soon as you have subscribed to Office 365. I'm not a fan of Microsoft, but to my best knowledge, they won't behave like that, and I doubt that it would be legal.

Binarus
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TLDR; - in a nutshell: you can revert existing installs form an Office 365 to a standalone license, simply by signing out of the Office 365 account and inserting the license key. Read below for step-by-step instructions.

CONTEXT: This happens, because you have previously, when logging into your MS account, chosen to save such MS account on that PC. This will automatically log you in to any MS app. To do what you ask, you first need to log out of your MS account, as follows.

STEPS to take

  • Once Office has finished to install, open one office app, click on your user name on the top right, and click "Sign Out". Confirm once or twice. Then close the app. (Sometimes, you have to repeat TWICE the "Sign out").

  • Restart the app. Now, you should see the following screen "Sign in to get started". enter image description here (should you not see this screen, click on "sign in" on the bottom left corner menu).

  • On such screen, just click on "I have a product key". Insert the key from your standalone version.

  • You're done.

EDIT: Please note: should you use your MS account to sign in to other apps (Edge, Skype, Drive,...), always choose "only sign in to this app", otherwise you might be signed in again to Office 365.

1NN
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  • so you can say I can change the edition by simple entering O2016 product key. What happens with already installed apps that are not included in 2016 office edition like Publisher and so on? Are they uninstalled after entering they key or just stay on my HDD? – Suncatcher Mar 31 '24 at 01:06
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After all the answers provided I figured out there is an offline installer available in the list

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After choosing the above option the Office 2016 ISO download starts

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Thanks to all the members who provided their answers! It helped me to find the clue!

Suncatcher
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