Share your office 365 home subscription

If you've purchased Microsoft 365 Family, you can share your subscription benefits with up to five other people. You do this by sending each person an invitation or by adding them to your Microsoft family. After each person accepts the invitation, they can sign in (using their own Microsoft account) to www.office.com to install Office on their devices and access their own 1 TB of OneDrive storage.

How to invite someone to share your Microsoft 365 Family subscription benefit

Notes: 

• If you just need to install Office on your other devices, you can do that from your Microsoft account, Installs page.

• Product keys aren't meant to be used for subscription sharing. Instead, please use the steps below to send an email or link to each person you want to share with.

1. Sign in to your Microsoft account, Sharing page. Be sure to use the same Microsoft account that you used to set up your Microsoft 365 Family subscription.

2. Select the Start sharing button.

   Notes: 

   • If you don't see the Start sharing button, you may not be the owner of the Microsoft 365 Family subscription. If you're using a Microsoft 365 Family subscription that someone else shared with you, or if you have another type of Microsoft 365 subscription, you can't share your subscription with other people.

   • You may also not have a Microsoft 365 Family subscription. Check your product name on the Services & subscriptions page. Microsoft 365 Personal doesn't include subscription sharing.

3. On the Share your subscription pop up, choose one:

   Invite via email

   Enter their email and select Invite.

   The email you use to invite them should also be the email they use for their shared Microsoft 365 subscription.

   Invite via link

   Select the Copy button to send the link via email, text, or other message to the person you want to share with.

   When they click the link and sign in with their Microsoft account, they'll be added to your subscription. If you want to share with more than one person, create a separate link for each person.

4. If you chose to invite via email in step 3, select Invite if you want to add this person to your Microsoft family. You can always add them later too. For more about the benefits of creating a Microsoft family see, What is Microsoft family?

5. After they accept your invitation, they can sign in (using their own Microsoft accounts) to www.office.com to install Office on their devices and access their own 1 TB of OneDrive storage.

How to use Microsoft family to share your subscription with family members

The Microsoft family feature enables you to easily share calendars with family members, limit screen time, enable safer browsing, and share your Microsoft 365 Family subscription with other members of your household.

1. To add someone to your Microsoft family, go to your Microsoft account, family page, scroll down, and select Add a family member. Repeat this for each family member. You can have up to twenty people in your family, although you can only share your Microsoft 365 subscription with five of them.

2. If there are available licenses, then Office will be automatically shared with your family member after they're added to your Microsoft family.

3. After you add them to your Microsoft family, your family members can sign in (using their own Microsoft accounts) to www.office.com to install Office on their devices and access their own 1 TB of OneDrive storage.

Subscription benefits

At no extra cost, each person you share with gets:

• The latest version of the Office apps for PC, Mac, tablets, and smart phones.

  Each person can install Office on all their devices and be signed in to Office on five devices at the same time. To install Office, they sign in to www.office.com using their own Microsoft account. If they don't already have a Microsoft account, they can create one when they accept your invitation to share. It's free.

  Note: Before someone installs Office, make sure their computer meets the system requirements. For example, the latest version of Office can't be installed on Chromebooks, or computers running Windows 7.

• OneDrive: 1 TB of free OneDrive storage. To learn more, see "About OneDrive" in Microsoft 365 frequently asked questions.

  Anyone you share your subscription benefits with, will get their own OneDrive storage. Don't worry: They can't access files or folders on your personal OneDrive storage, though you can share files with them if you want. To learn how, see Share OneDrive files and folders

• Skype: 60 Skype minutes per month to mobile phones in eight countries and to landlines in 60+ countries (only in markets where Skype is available). To learn more, see "About Skype minutes" in Microsoft 365 frequently asked questions.

• Outlook.com: Advanced email security tools help protect each person's inbox from phishing and malware with real-time warnings about malicious websites and by scanning attachments for the latest viruses. People you share with will also get an ad-free experience and 50 GB of storage per mailbox.

  Note: Anyone sharing your subscription will NOT have access to any files you create using Office, and you will not have access to theirs. All files and service usage information remain private—as though they had purchased their own subscription.

How to manage who you've shared with, invitations, and devices

Over time, you may want to share with different people or sign in to Office on new devices. You can learn how to stop sharing with someone or sign out of Office from a device below.

Manage people you've shared Office with

On the Microsoft account, Sharing page, under the section Other people, you can view and manage the people you're sharing your Microsoft 365 Family subscription benefits with.

For example, if you you're already sharing your subscription with five other family members and would like to share with someone new, you'll have to stop sharing with someone before you share with the new person.

Stop sharing your subscription with someone :
When you stop sharing your subscription with someone, they lose all their Microsoft 365 Family subscription benefits, including extra OneDrive storage and the ability to use Office. They can still view and print their Office files, but they can't edit them or create new ones.

Manage invitations to share Office

On the Microsoft account, Sharing page, under the section Other people, you can view and manage invitations you've created. You can check the status of an invitation, resend, or delete invitations.

If the person you sent an invitation to can't find it, see Can't find an invitation to share Microsoft 365 Family. And if someone hasn't accepted an invitation, and you don't care, you can simply delete the invitation.

Manage your Office devices

You can install Office on all your devices and be signed in to Office on five devices at the same time. If you have more than five devices, Office will sign you out of devices automatically to stay within your sign-in limit. To use Office on a device where you've been signed out, just sign back in. To learn more, see How sign in works in Microsoft 365.

Help for the people you've shared your subscription with

When you share your subscription with someone, they get an email from Microsoft telling them that you've shared your Microsoft 365 Family subscription with them. All they need to do is click the Accept button in the email and go to their Microsoft account, Overview page where they can install Office, access their OneDrive storage, and more.

As mentioned above, if they don't receive the invitation, ask them to read Can't find an invitation to share Microsoft 365 Family. And if they have trouble installing Office, ask them to see Troubleshoot installing Microsoft 365, Office 2019, Office 2016, and Office 2013.

See Also

Install Office on your PC or Mac

Set up Office apps and email on a mobile device