Office 2013 Retail Reassignment Restored

Rescinding previous licensing terms, Microsoft will allow retail licenses for Office 2013 to be reassigned. Reassignment permits a customer to move Office from one computer to another; for example, when replacing a failed computer. This change only affects customers who purchase retail Office 2013 editions. Office suite licenses offered through volume licensing programs have long permitted reassignment, and thus the midsize and large organizations that typically buy Office through these programs are unaffected.

Reassignment Enables License Reuse

With Office 2010 and earlier versions, some retail licenses permitted reassignment under specific circumstances. In contrast, all retail end-user licenses for Office 2013, which became generally available in Feb. 2013, only permitted use on the PC where the software was originally installed. Even if the PC failed, the software could not be moved to a replacement PC.

In Mar. 2013, Microsoft announced that it is updating the Office 2013 license agreement with more liberal reassignment rights. Customers are allowed to uninstall the product from one PC and move it to a different PC, but only once every 90 days. The change applies to retail editions, including Office Home and Student 2013, Office Home and Business 2013, Office Professional 2013 suites, or any of the stand-alone Office 2013 applications, such as Word 2013, bought at retail. It does not apply to Office 2013 preinstalled on a PC by an OEM (which is consistent with the Office OEM license terms of earlier versions).