What is Office 365 ProPlus Preview?

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Hopefully by now, you have heard that the new Office Preview is available to download and try out.  One of the areas of focus in this new version of Office is Office 365. 

If you aren’t familiar with Office 365, Office 365 is a cloud-based service from Microsoft that provides a monthly subscription to the Office programs that you are already familiar with, such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.  Office 365 also provides cloud-based versions of other Microsoft products, such as SharePoint and Exchange.

There are different Office 365 plans, so that you can pick the plan that best fits your needs or the needs of your company. For example, there are plans suited for home users, for small businesses, and for midsize businesses or enterprises.  For more information, see Office 365 Preview.

Office 365 ProPlus Preview is the Office client suite that is available in many of those Office 365 plans. Office 365 ProPlus Preview comes with the following Office programs:

  • Word
  • Excel
  • PowerPoint
  • OneNote
  • Outlook
  • Lync
  • Access
  • InfoPath
  • Publisher

 

Even though Office 365 is a cloud-based service, these Office programs aren’t running up in the cloud. Instead, users can download Office 365 ProPlus Preview from the Office 365 portal and install it on their local computers. And  each user can install Office 365 ProPlus Preview on up to 5 different devices. If you are the administrator who manages Office 365 for your organization, you can control which users are able to download and install Office 365 ProPlus Preview.

Office 365 uses Click-to-Run technology to make the download and installation of Office 365 ProPlus Preview fast and simple. Another benefit of Click-to-Run is that it uses virtualization technology to run Office 365 ProPlus Preview in a self-contained environment on the local computer. This allows a user to run Office 365 ProPlus Preview side-by-side an earlier version of Office that is already installed on the user's computer. So you can test this new version of Office while still using an earlier version of Office, all on the same computer.  We will be doing a blog post soon with more information about Click-to-Run (here is that post -- Using Click-to-Run to install the new Office).

Office 365 ProPlus Preview is available in 32-bit and 64-bit editions, although we recommend that you install the 32-bit edition. For more information, see 64-bit editions of Office 2013 Preview.

Want to learn more?  We suggest that you start by reading these two articles:

 

There are more articles about Office 365 Pro Plus Preview in the Office 365 ProPlus Preview library on TechNet.

If you are an IT Pro and you are looking for more information about Office 365, check out the Office 365 for IT pros TechCenter.

And when you are ready to try Office 365 ProPlus Preview, Download Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus Preview.

 Thanks.