Office 365 Licenses

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Office 365 subscriptions include the Free edition, but Office 365 E1, E3, E5, F1 and F3 subscriptions also include the features listed under the Office 365 apps column. The Premium editions are available through your Microsoft representative, the Open Volume License Program,. The Office Licensing Service, a part of Microsoft 365, keeps track of which users are licensed and how many computers they've installed Office on. Assign and manage licenses. To use Microsoft 365 Apps, your users will need the appropriate license. To assign licenses, do one of the following. Buy Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise, formerly Office 365 ProPlus, or Office 365 E1, E3 or E5 enterprise software for security and device management.

You can assign licenses to users on either the Active users page, or on the Licenses page. The method you use depends on whether you want to assign product licenses to specific users or assign users licenses to a specific product.

Note

As an admin, you can't assign or unassign licenses for a self-service purchase subscription bought by a user in your organization. You can take over a self-service purchase subscription, and then assign or unassign licenses.

Learn how to add a user and assign a license at the same time.

Before you begin

You must be a Global, License, or User admin to assign licenses. For more information, see About Microsoft 365 admin roles.
You can assign licenses to user accounts with Office 365 PowerShell.
To use group-based licensing, see Assign licenses to users by group membership in Azure Active Directory
Some services, like Sway, are automatically assigned to users, and don't need to be assigned individually.

Use the Licenses page to assign licenses to users

When you use the Licenses page to assign licenses, you assign licenses for a specific product to up to 20 users. On the Licenses page, you see a list of all the products that you have subscriptions for. You also see the total number of licenses for each product, how many licenses are assigned, and how many are available.

In the admin center, go to the Billing > Licenses page.

In the admin center, go to the Billing > Licenses page.

In the admin center, go to the Billing > Licenses page.

Select a product.
On the product details page, select Assign licenses.
In the Assign licenses to users pane, begin typing a name, and then choose it from the results to add it to the list. You can add up to 20 users at a time.
Select Turn apps and services on or off to assign or remove access to specific items.
When you're finished, select Assign, then select Close.

If there's a conflict, a message displays, tells you what the problem is, and tells you how to fix it. For example, if you selected licenses that contain conflicting services, the error message says to review the services included with each license and try again.

Change the apps and services a user has access to

In the admin center, go to the Billing > Licenses page.

In the admin center, go to the Billing > Licenses page.

In the admin center, go to the Billing > Licenses page.

On the Licenses page, select the row for a specific user.
In the right pane, select or deselect the apps and services that you want to give access to or remove access from.
When you're finished, select Save, then select Close.

Use the Active users page to assign licenses

When you use the Active users page to assign licenses, you assign users licenses to products.

Assign licenses to multiple users

In the admin center, go to the Users > Active users page.

In the admin center, go to the Billing > Active users page.

In the admin center, go to the Billing > Active users page.

Select the circles next to the names of the users that you want to assign licenses to.
At the top, select More options (...), then select Manage product licenses.
In the Manage product licenses pane, select Add to existing product license assignments > Next.
In the Add to existing products pane, switch the toggle to the On position for the license that you want the selected users to have.
By default, all services associated with those licenses are automatically assigned to the users. You can limit which services are available to the users. Switch the toggles to the Off position for the services that you don't want the users to have.
At the bottom of the pane, select Add > Close.

Assign licenses to one user

In the admin center, go to the Users > Active users page.

Office 365 Business License

In the admin center, go to the Billing > Active users page.

In the admin center, go to the Billing > Active users page.

Select the row of the user that you want to assign a license to.
In the right pane, select Licenses and Apps.
Expand the Licenses section, select the boxes for the licenses that you want to assign, then select Save changes.

Assign a license to a guest user

You can invite guest users to collaborate with your organization in the Azure Active Directory admin center. To learn about guest users, see What is guest user access in Azure Active Directory B2B?. If you don't have any guest users, see Quickstart: Add guest users to your directory in the Azure portal.

Important

You must be a Global admin to do these steps.