Office 2021 is sold as a one-time purchase, which means you pay a single, up-front cost to get Office apps for one computer. One-time purchases are available for both PCs and Macs. However, there are no upgrade options, so if you plan to upgrade to the next major release, you’ll have to buy it at full price. While you can download Office 2021, 2019, and Office 2016 for free from Microsoft, you need to own a license key or have a Microsoft 365 subscription to actually use the programs. In this guide, I have discussed how to complete Microsoft Office 365 Family Subscription, and how to Cancel Office 365 Family Subscription. If you wish to purchase the Microsoft Office 365 Business plan, in this guide, we have also embedded a link to the Microsoft page for more information.
Office 2019 includes significant improvements over Microsoft Office 2016 and earlier versions of on-premises Office, and it is actually different from Microsoft 365, in that Microsoft 365 is a subscription-based model that includes the most collaborative, up-to-date features in one seamless, integrated experience. Microsoft 365 includes the robust Office desktop apps you’re familiar with, like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
You can choose to pay for your subscription on a monthly or yearly basis, and the Microsoft 365 Family plan lets you share your subscription with your family for up to 6 people, and use your apps on multiple PCs, Macs, tablets, and phones. A free 1-month trial of Microsoft 365 is included with each Microsoft 365 in-app purchase. See this guide if you are unable to uninstall the OneDrive App: The item “OneDrive” can’t be moved to the Bin because it’s open on Mac.
Install Office 2019
This guide will show you how to download and install Office 2019 on a Mac device. For simplicity., here is the official download link for Office 2019 Volume license. Once the download has been completed, open Finder, and go to Downloads. All you have to do is to double-click on it “Microsoft_Office_XXXXX_Installer.pkg” as shown below.
On the first installation screen (Introduction), click on Continue to begin the installation process. Please see some other related guides: Uninstall Office: How to remove Microsoft Outlook, Teams, Words PowerPoint, and Excel apps from Mac, and how to Hide or Remove the Search Button from Windows 11 Taskbar.
Please review the software license agreement, and then click Continue
Click on Agree to agree to the terms of the software license agreement.
Choose how you want to install Office and click Continue. For me, I will be selecting the first option “Install for all users of this computer”.
Review the disk space requirements or change your install location, and then click Install.
Note: If you want to only install specific Office apps and not the entire suite, click the Customize button and uncheck the programs you don’t want.
You will be requested to enter your Mac login password. If prompted, please enter your password and click Install Software. This is the password that you use to log in to your Mac device 🙂
The software begins to install Office 2019 onto your device.
Click Close when the installation is completed as shown below.
When the installation is complete, when there are updates, you will be prompted with the following Microsoft AutoUpdate windows in order to apply the updates. Click on Update as shown below.
As you can see, the Microsoft AutoUpdate is currently checking for updates.
Found some updates and the Update is currently in progress.
As you can see below, the apps are all up to date. Next, we will have to Activate Office 2019.
Activate volume licensed versions of Office for Mac
To activate a volume-licensed version of Office for Mac, such as Office LTSC for Mac 2021 or Office 2019 for Mac, use the Volume License (VL) Serializer. You can download the VL Serializer by signing into the Volume Licensing Service Center (VLSC). You run the VL Serializer on each device. By doing this, your Mac users won’t see any activation prompts when they first open their copy of Office.
Note that Office 2019 DO NOT support activate via simple copy/paste plist license file which is the simplest way to activate Office 2016. Fortunately, you can also use the VL Serializer tool, just install Office 2019 and Serializer, then run Serializer to activate as shown below.After manually downloading the Volume License Serializer (Microsoft_Office_2019_VL_Serializer.pkg). Run through the following steps as shown below. When the activation is successful, the following window below will be displayed. Click on close.
Click on Word, and then on “About Microsoft Word” as shown below
As you can see, your office is successfully activated (licensed).
You may now sign in. You do not necessarily need to sign in unless you are storing your documents in OneDrive.
If you have 2FA set up, please type in the code displayed on your authenticator app from your device
As you can see, I am now sign-in.
How do I pin the Office app icons to the dock?
To do this, please navigate to Finder > Applications and open the Office app you want. In the Dock, Control+click or right-click the app icon and choose Options > Keep in Dock.
You may also decide to run this app and have it open at logon. To this, click also on open login. Here is a related guide: How to Enable or Prevent Reopen Windows when logging back in after Restart or Shutdown on Mac.
I hope you found this blog post helpful. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comment session.