Office 365, Windows XP and Office 2010 availability

Windows 7 is a requirement for Office 2013, so what if you want to connect a Windows XP or Vista user to Office 365?

You may have come up against the problem of signing up or wanting to sign up to Office 365 but having some users stuck on Windows XP or Vista. As Office 2013 is not supported on Windows XP or Vista you may feel like you are stuck.

Office 2010 does  work with Windows XP and Vista but it can be difficult to get hold of and buying an old version of Office if you can even find it is not ideal.

This has been a small stumbling block for me with a few customers until recently when I realized that Office 2010 is actually available to download and install from the Office 365 portal!

Download Microsoft Office 2010 for Windows XP or Vista from the Office 365 portal

This option is actually quite well hidden.  To download Office 2010 from Office 365 do the following:

1. Login to the Office 365 Admin Center at https://portal.microsoftonline.com
2. Click on “service settings”
   
3. Click on “User Software” and you under the section “software for PC” you should see a “previous versions” heading.
   

Although support for Windows XP is ending soon, this may still be very useful for some environments. This option enables users in mixed environments to connect to 365 platform during the transition to newer operating system platforms. This is a very handy feature which is too well hidden in my opinion and actually very useful.