Install Office Home & Business on a Mac

Office Home & Business for Mac contains Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook as a one-off purchase for one device. Installation runs through your Microsoft account; there is no disc. The process differs in several respects from the Windows installation, so here are the steps for macOS.

Is this the right guide for your licence? It describes Office Home & Business on the Mac – a retail licence set up through a Microsoft account. It does not apply to Office 2024 Standard for Mac: that is a volume licence. It is installed without a Microsoft account, and no licence key is typed in anywhere – for that we have a separate guide for Office Standard on the Mac.

Requirements

• A supported version of macOS. Microsoft supports the current major version of macOS and the two before it.
• Around 10 GB of free space – the Mac installation is considerably larger than the one on Windows.
• An administrator account on the Mac.
• A Microsoft account and the 25-character licence key.

Both Macs with an Apple silicon chip and older Intel Macs are supported by the current Office versions; the installer picks the right variant automatically.

Step 1: Redeem the key

1. Open setup.office.com in Safari or another browser.
2. Sign in with your Microsoft account or create a new one. The licence is permanently tied to this account.
3. Enter the licence key and select your country and language.
4. Once you have confirmed, Office appears in your account under Services & subscriptions.

Step 2: Install

1. Go to account.microsoft.com and open Services & subscriptions.
2. Click Install next to your Office licence. The download is a PKG file and afterwards sits in the Downloads folder.
3. Double-click the PKG file and follow the installation assistant.
4. When prompted, enter the password of your Mac administrator account.
5. When it has finished, you will find Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook in the Applications folder.

Step 3: Activate

1. Open Word. The first time it starts, the Get Started window appears.
2. Click Sign in and use exactly the Microsoft account you redeemed the key with.
3. Accept the licence terms. The activation then applies to all Office programs on this Mac.
4. Use Word → About Word to check which licence was detected.

A note on Outlook

The first time Outlook for Mac starts, it asks you to set up an email account. The account with your email provider has nothing to do with the Office licence – you can skip this step for now and come back to it later.

If something goes wrong

• “The file is from an unidentified developer”: This message appears with downloads from the browser. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security and allow it to run. Only ever download the file from your Microsoft account.
• Office asks for a subscription: A different account is signed in. Sign out under Word → About Word → Sign out and then sign back in with the right account.
• The installation stops because there is too little space: During installation, more space is needed temporarily than is taken up at the end. Free up 15 GB.
• The programs crash after starting: Sign out, restart the Mac and start Word again. If that does not help, remove Office completely via the Bin and reinstall it.
• An old Office version is present: Move the old programs from the Applications folder to the Bin before you reinstall.

If a step does not work as described, write to us via the contact page – with your order number, macOS version and the error message.