How to install Microsoft 365 on a new PC: download, sign in, activate

You unboxed a new computer and Word is not on it. Or it is on it, but it is a trial nagging you for a credit card. Neither is what you want.

Here is how to install Microsoft 365 on a new PC properly, using the license your company already pays for. It takes about fifteen minutes, most of which is the download running while you do something else.

Before you start: two things have to be true

You need the work email address and password, not a personal Microsoft account. These look identical at the sign-in screen and they are not the same thing. If your work email is you@yourcompany.com, that is the one. A @outlook.com or @gmail.com address will sign you in to something, just not to your company’s Microsoft 365.

Your plan has to include the desktop apps. Microsoft 365 Business Basic does not. Per Microsoft, Basic gives you “web and mobile versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote” and no desktop install. Business Standard and Business Premium include the desktop apps. If you are on Basic, stop here: there is nothing to download, and you use Office in a browser tab instead.

If you do not know which plan you are on, whoever administers your Microsoft 365 tenant does.

Install it

1. Go to microsoft365.com/apps in any browser on the new PC and sign in with your work account. Microsoft has also started serving this at m365.cloud.microsoft/apps; either lands in the same place.

2. Top right, select Install apps, then Microsoft 365 apps. That drops you on the My account page.

3. Under Office apps & devices, select Install Office.

4. OfficeSetup.exe downloads to your Downloads folder. Open it when the download finishes.

5. Windows asks “Do you want to allow this app to make changes to your device?” Select Yes.

6. Wait. This takes several minutes and the progress bar is a liar for part of it. When it finishes you get a You’re all set! window. Select Close.

7. Open Word from the Start menu and accept the license agreement. That is the step that actually activates the install against your subscription. Skip it and the apps will start counting down at you.

The apps land in the Start menu: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Teams.

Signing in inside the apps

Opening Word usually picks up the account you used on the website. If it does not, or if it grabbed the wrong one, the fix is the same in every Office app: File > Account, check the name under User Information, and sign out and back in if it is wrong.

Outlook is the one people get stuck on. Launch it, and it should offer your work address already filled in. Confirm it, enter the password, and complete the multifactor prompt if your company requires one. Outlook builds the profile and starts downloading mail. On a large mailbox that runs for a while in the background, so a half-empty inbox in the first ten minutes is normal, not broken.

OneDrive is worth doing at the same time while you are already holding the password. Sign in, pick the folders to sync, and let it run. This is the step that decides whether the next new PC takes fifteen minutes or two days.

When the Install button is not there

This is the most common call we get on a new machine, and there are three usual reasons.

No license is assigned to you. Microsoft’s own wording: you will not see the option to install unless someone in your organization assigned a license to your account. Buying the seat and assigning it are two separate actions in the admin center, and the second one gets forgotten. Your admin fixes this in about thirty seconds.

You are on Business Basic. Covered above. No desktop apps to install.

You signed in with a personal Microsoft account. Sign out completely, close the browser, and start again. A private or incognito window saves you the fight.

Other things that go wrong

A trial version of Office shipped on the PC. A lot of consumer machines come with Microsoft 365 Family preinstalled, and it will fight your business install for the file associations. Uninstall it from Settings > Apps > Installed apps before you run OfficeSetup.exe.

Everything installs, then says unlicensed. Almost always the wrong account inside the apps. Check File > Account in Word first.

You run out of installs. A business license covers installing the apps on up to five desktop computers, five tablets, and five mobile devices. If someone has been recycling laptops without deactivating anything, that ceiling arrives eventually. Deactivate old devices from the same My account page.

The download crawls. It is a large install. If your office internet is the bottleneck and you are setting up six machines at once, that is a scheduling problem, not a Microsoft problem.

When to hand this to somebody

Do it yourself for one machine, for a user who already exists, on a plan you know includes the apps.

Get help when you are setting up several machines at once and want them configured the same way, when the new PC has to replace one that still holds local files, when the user needs mailbox access to a shared inbox or somebody else’s calendar, or when you want new hires deployed without an admin walking each one through this. Device setup that is repeatable rather than improvised is a large part of what managed IT buys you, and it is worth doing before you have twenty machines each set up slightly differently. If you are still in the middle of a move to Microsoft 365, our migration guide covers the order to do things in.

Setting up a batch of new machines, or want new-hire onboarding to stop eating an afternoon? Get in touch.

Steps in this article were verified against Microsoft’s own current installation documentation in August 2026.