Adding a user or sending download link

[Scott Mackay]

Hi,

Simple question.

Got Office 365 under a charity license. I want to let a user download the office product to their PC but not have access to any of the files/cloud etc. I have 4 more slots available for download.

If I send a download link, does the user get the complete office on their PC without having any login details or access to my documents? 

Thanks.

[#2]

What version of Office 365 are we talking about? Also, are you trying to share the benefits from a single Office 365 licence/plan to multiple users, like 5 users install Office?

You can do that with an Office 365 Home subscription for example - Share your Office 365 Home subscription with up to four people, where each person gets separate OneDrive storage as well and can install Office.

It doesn't work this way for Office 365 business and enterprise plans though.  Each user with an assigned licence can install the desktop Office apps on up to 5 devices, that doesn't permit sharing the Office apps between users with a single licence.  You have to activate Office and that requires signing in and those detail would permit access to files and email. 

This article goes into more detail - Understand subscriptions and licenses in Office 365 for business.

[#3]

Thanks for reply. Pretty sure it's nonprofit business premium (I'm doing this on behalf of someone else so not in front of their PC)

So they have 4 people listed as users with one of them labelled as "unlicensed". 

When trying to add a new user, it will only allow an email address associated with the charity address (the domain section is locked to the charity domain name). They have already assigned all the working email addresses to the other users, so what does this new user get if I can't just add them with their own personal email?

Secondly, I don't want this user to have access to documents - so obvious thing is not to add them as a user, but share download link. (it says there are 4 shares left)

My question is, when you send someone a share link and they download office - do they need login details, or have they got the fully working application without needing logins? I ask because the secretary swears that when they sent a share link before, the person was unable to use Office without "logging in".

Thanks.

[#4]

Scott, I believe as a charity you are assigned an E3 licence. As @Cian Allner points out the licence is indivisible so provisioning a user provides the Office 365 service. If you co-workers needed Outlook they will need access to Exchange for example. They will not get automatic access to your documents unless you have permissioned this. If you are using this simply to provision Word, Excel, PowerPoint as products this is not going to work imo.

[#5]

Thanks John,

Still confused. So you're saying I need to "add user"? but it also gives me the option to send download links to install too. If I go to 'add user', in the email field I can choose any name, but the domain field is charity.com and can't be changed.

When the initial users were added, we had 3 different email addresses connected to the charity, so no problem. We don't have any more addresses, so what do we put in the email field now?

[#6]

Thanks for the additional info.  @John Wynne has added some useful points, I'll just say, could it be all the available licences have been used already.

When assigning a licence it will say how many are still available, you can also control which services are permitted, for example turning off unneeded services.  Office 365 Business listed below is what allows a user to activate Office, you could take away anything else undeeded.  This discussion has some info on disabling OneDrive for Business by the way.

Downloading or installing Office won't do any good unless the user has a licence assigned and is configured in the tenant.  Activation may happen automatically or the user may get prompted as mentioned here - Activate Office 365, Office 2016, or Office 2013.

[#7 · Accepted solution]

I think I'm starting to understand. It's taken awhile :)

So I need to add a user in order for them to then be able to download the software using the 'send download link' onto their computer and then sign in with the assigned login details.

So that brings me to my other point. When I go to add a new user, what do I put in the email field? I'm not able to put that user's personal email account because it won't let me. The @ domain is a drop down menu with just the @charity.com domain. Do I just make up anything?

[#8]

Then you have to give them a username with the charity domain, assign a licence, assuming there are some available, their personal email address doesn't come into as far as I can see.  If you don't want the user to have access to email, just make sure not to assign them an Exchange Online licence, one of the options in that screenshot above.  That way a mailbox shouldn't be provisioned. 

Not sure about this send download link option but usually they can go to office.com and there is an Install Office apps option on the front page, if they have admin rights on their PC, they can proceed to install Office and if they get prompted they can activate Office with the charity details in this case.   This is the direct link as well to get to the Office download.

[#9]

Right, think I've got it. I'm going to try this.

Yes, each licensed user (we have 4 licenses I believe) can install office on 5 devices. You can email a link to someone's email straight to the install.

If you don't hear from me again then it's worked. So thanks to you and John. Much appreciated.