Office 365 for business FAQ

Top questions

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Office 365 is an integrated experience of apps and services, designed to help you pursue your passion and grow your business. Get apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more, updated monthly with the latest features and security updates.

Use cloud-powered email to reach customers and coworkers wherever work takes you.

Collaborate in Microsoft Teams, the new hub for teamwork where you can chat, organize meetings, and share files.

Save files to OneDrive with one terabyte of online storage, allowing access across devices and on the go.

Run your business with the Business Apps, empowering you to manage customer scheduling, invoicing, referrals, and more, all from one place.

Visit our website to learn more about how Office 365 can help you securely run and grow your business.

All Office services are available with a 99.9% uptime, financially backed, service guarantee.

Office 365 Business, Business Premium and ProPlus subscribers can install Office on up to 5 PCs or Macs, 5 tablets, and 5 smartphones. You can count hybrid Windows devices, such as the Microsoft Surface Pro, as either a PC or a tablet.

Getting started

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You can add the domain name you own to Office 365 to create domain-based email addresses. Find your domain registrar or DNS hosting provider. Compare domain management in Office 365 subscriptions.

Yes. If you purchase Office 365 licenses for the accounts you create during your free trial, the information and configuration for these users' accounts will remain intact. Once your free trial expires, you will have an additional 30 days to purchase Office 365 before your account information is erased. Once your trial account information has been erased, it cannot be retrieved.

Office 365 Setup provides step-by-step guidance. In just a few quick steps you can sign up for Office 365, set up your organization's domain name and add user accounts, install Office, and move your existing email to Office 365.

Support and pricing

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Office 365 business subscriptions offer 24/7 phone and web support. There are additional support options depending on what stage of the decision to upgrade to Office 365. See all of support options at Office 365 Support.

The Office apps that you install on your PC or Mac such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook are available to you when you are not online. With OneDrive in Office 365, you get 1 TB of file storage that you can use to sync your files to/from your computer. When you make changes while offline they will be sync’d to OneDrive and across the rest of your devices when you reconnect.

We take strong measures to help protect customer data from inappropriate access or use by unauthorized persons, either external or internal, and to prevent customers from gaining access to one another’s data. See Who can access your data and on what terms for more details.

You can pay with all major credit cards, and your subscription amount will appear on your credit card statement. For Office 365 business plans, you have the option to receive an invoice and, depending on your choice of services, you will be billed monthly or annually. You receive an email message when your invoice is ready to be viewed and, if a purchase order number is entered when you buy your subscription, that number is included in your invoice.

To provide customers with the greatest amount of flexibility, different payment options are available.

Office 365 Business, Business Essentials, and Business Premium plans are available for monthly commitment payment or annual commitment payment.
  • Monthly commitment payment: You pay month by month, and you can cancel at any time.
  • Annual commitment payment: You sign up for a one-year subscription, but you can choose to pay month to month or pay for the entire year at the time you sign up. There is a discount for using this payment option.
The Office 365 Enterprise plans (including standalone plans such as Exchange Online) and Office 365 ProPlus are available for annual commitment payment.


Yes. If you need to upgrade, you can transition your account to a different plan. For example, you can upgrade from an Office 365 Business plan to an Office 365 Enterprise plan.

Yes, you can mix and match Office 365 plans. Please note that there are some license limitations at the plan level. The Office 365 Business, Business Essentials, and Business Premium plans each have a limit of 300 users, while the Enterprise plans are for an unlimited number of users. For example, you can purchase 300 Business Premium seats, 300 Business Essentials seats, and 500 Enterprise E3 seats on a single tenant.

Many customers purchase a business SKU and then depending on their need they can choose to buy any number of add-on Office 365 Services to round out their Office 365 implementation. Available add-ons include Advanced Threat Protection, Advanced Compliance and Audio Conferencing. 1

Additionally customers may choose to purchase functionality from one of the thousands of third party vendors available in the Office store.

You can cancel your subscription at any time. However, depending on the product and the type of subscription you have, there may be a penalty for canceling before the end of your contract. For subscriptions with a monthly commitment payment, there is no penalty for canceling your contract at any time. Annual commitment subscriptions that are paid month to month may incur some penalties if canceled early. Annual commitment subscriptions that are paid up front do not receive a refund if canceled prior to the full contract period. Read the complete Microsoft Online Subscription Agreement.

Your data is yours. If you decide to cancel your Office 365 subscription, you can download your data—for example, your email and documents on team sites—and save it to another location. You should save your data before you cancel. After you cancel your subscription, data associated with your Office 365 account will be available to your administrator(s) in a limited function account for 90 days.

Microsoft has an excellent ecosystem of partners who are experts in the setup, onboarding, and deployment of Office 365. They can also work with you to develop custom solutions for your business. You can find a Microsoft Partner in your area.

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1 Availability of Audio Conferencing and Calling plans varies by country/region. See countries and regions that are supported for more information.