How to Install Office Pro Plus 2021 on 1 Windows session & install Office 365 in a separate session?

Sephirote · Feb 15, 2022

Hey everyone,

Looking for advice on how to do this without creating any conflicts on my machine.

- So I've got my personal session (admin) for personal use. I've got Office 2021 installed and activated in this session. When I installed Office, I had only 1 windows session on my system.

- I recently created a 2nd session for work purposes and Office Pro 2021 was already installed and available in that session.
I logged in Office 2021 with my work email address (which carries an office 365 license from work)
However, it didn't overwrite my personal Office Pro Plus license and therefore I'm running Office 2021 in my work Windows session.

The issue is that Office 2021 is not compatible with Autosave when working on a file saved in onedrive which is an issue since I work on a lot of shared files.

Ideally, I would like to have my Office 2021 installed on my personal Windows session.
And Office 365 installed on my work Windows session.

What would be the cleanest way to achieve that?

Option 1: Can I uninstall Office 2021 from my system, reinstall it on my personal session and choose for Office 2021 to be installed only for a specific user (my personal session)
If Office installer offers that possibility, I would then go and install office 365 on my work session. (2 separate sessions, 2 separate Office install)

Option2: If Office 2021 installer doesn't allow you to install Office for a specific user, can I have both office 2021 and office 365 installed on my system without creating conflicts?
Office 2021, I wouldn't change anything, leave it signed in with my personal Microsoft account which carries my Office 2021 license, and use office 2021 only in my personal session.
In my work session, I would install Office 365 and create shortcuts pointing to Office 365 and sign in using my work email address.
Just unsure if having office 2021 and office 365 could create some sort of conflicts in the system/registry.

Let me know what you think and if you have another option for me.

Thank you

ish4d0w · Mar 12, 2022

By sessions what do you mean? Different user accounts on the same PC?

Anyway, it should not be a problem. Recent versions of MS Office are in a container format, meaning they can co-exist and will not litter system with various "shared" files with hard dependencies on specific versions.

That said you can install these side-by-side and no need to uninstall/reinstall anything. Just make sure you know which one you launch. It might not be obvious from their name since they will be so similar. Just create shortcuts from their respective directories and you should be good to go.

Clarification:
Do not confuse this with very old versions of Office. That was different. While it is true they were also capable of parallel installation, Microsoft always recommended against it, because they used files stored at the same common/shared location, but required different versions, therefore a "repair install" was necessary each time you launched the other version, and this was painful, so was uninstalling one version but leaving the rest installed. This was in the Office 2003/2007/2010 days.
Luckily for us, these days are gone, and Office is much better now in this regard.

jimbo45 · Apr 7, 2022

Sephirote said:
Hey everyone,

Looking for advice on how to do this without creating any conflicts on my machine.

- So I've got my personal session (admin) for personal use. I've got Office 2021 installed and activated in this session. When I installed Office, I had only 1 windows session on my system.

- I recently created a 2nd session for work purposes and Office Pro 2021 was already installed and available in that session.
I logged in Office 2021 with my work email address (which carries an office 365 license from work)
However, it didn't overwrite my personal Office Pro Plus license and therefore I'm running Office 2021 in my work Windows session.

The issue is that Office 2021 is not compatible with Autosave when working on a file saved in onedrive which is an issue since I work on a lot of shared files.

Ideally, I would like to have my Office 2021 installed on my personal Windows session.
And Office 365 installed on my work Windows session.

What would be the cleanest way to achieve that?

Option 1: Can I uninstall Office 2021 from my system, reinstall it on my personal session and choose for Office 2021 to be installed only for a specific user (my personal session)
If Office installer offers that possibility, I would then go and install office 365 on my work session. (2 separate sessions, 2 separate Office install)

Option2: If Office 2021 installer doesn't allow you to install Office for a specific user, can I have both office 2021 and office 365 installed on my system without creating conflicts?
Office 2021, I wouldn't change anything, leave it signed in with my personal Microsoft account which carries my Office 2021 license, and use office 2021 only in my personal session.
In my work session, I would install Office 365 and create shortcuts pointing to Office 365 and sign in using my work email address.
Just unsure if having office 2021 and office 365 could create some sort of conflicts in the system/registry.

Let me know what you think and if you have another option for me.

Thank you

"Seemples"

You have 2 identical Windows installs but one with Office/365 and the other with Office LTSC 2021 and boot whichever one you want at the time

1) Create 2 VHDX (Virtual drives -- not Virtual Machines).
2) clone windows -- copy windows to these drives -- there's plenty of detail on this forum on how to install Windows to a "Virtual hard drive"). Doing it this way also preserves Windows activation on each of the installs -- boot one for your Work session -- boot the other for your home session.
3) install boot loader (bcdboot.exe) to the windows systems
4) install appropriate version of office on the relevant windows system.

Another but more complex way is to have 2 Virtual machines but that's a bit more complex -- also you are then breaking the EULA license if you run the windows sessions concurrently - A single copy of windows per license is only permitted to run on an individual machine -- although I doubt whether Ms would go to court over this issue - at least for an individual home user.

Cheers
jimbo