Reinstalling Office 2013: Whose rights are you violating? If your thinking about reinstalling the 2013 edition of Word, Excel and PowerPoint its worth knowing what this software involves in terms of a license. Office 2013 is distributed through a perpetual license, which means it’s designed for installation on just one PC. This means you can’t install the software on two devices at once—e.g. a desktop and a laptop running Windows Home Server 2011. If your computer has a system failure, you are still allowed to reinstall Office 2013 on that same device so that you can have continued access to your applications.
However, you can transfer your Windows license to another computer if the hardware fails subject to some terms in Microsoft’s warranty. For example, if your first PC dies and is covered under warranty but you can’t activate Office on a replacement machine. This is done on an individual basis, which suggests there may be some wiggle room beyond warranty situations though it’s not a promise.Office 2013 Licensing (ad)
That’s in direct contrast to Office 2013, which Microsoft called out separately from its subscription-based riff as eligible for customers who wanted even greater rigidity. A subscription enables installation across multiple devices and has frequent updates at no extra charge when new versions arrive. The change is part of a broader industry shift to encourage customers away from classic perpetual licenses and toward subscriptions.
In the end, while reinstalling Office 2013 is easy on a machine for which you previously activated it—even after hardware failure—device transfers are not unlimited and should be kept in mind when weighing one’s options against subscription offerings.
