Use of Microsoft Office programs  [09.04.25]

On May 1, 2025, the new framework agreement with Microsoft will come into force. This also has an impact on the previous use of Microsoft Office programs:

• The activation server for Microsoft Office will no longer be available and therefore the use of Office 2024 LTS or older (2016, 2019, 2021) will also no longer be possible.
• The use of the Office programs Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, etc. is only possible with Microsoft 365 (M365).
• Existing installations of Office 2016, 2019, 2021 or 2024 LTS can still be used for a transitional period of presumably 6 months. Please also note that support for Office 2016 and 2019 will expire in October regardless of this.
• The use of Education 365 (software for students) will be discontinued and there will be no automatic data transfer. In the future, the KIM will provide students with licenses free of charge.

Currently, the Microsoft account is still independent of the Hohenheim user account. In the next few weeks, the Microsoft account will be linked to the Hohenheim user account. In the future, registration will then be done via the Hohenheim user account, more precisely via Shibboleth. The procedure will then be the same as for using Adobe Acrobat or Zoom X. This means that there will no longer be a separate password for the Microsoft account. We will inform users separately before the changeover. In preparation for this changeover, orphaned Microsoft accounts, i.e. accounts that can no longer be assigned to a Hohenheim user account, will first be deactivated and then deleted.

It should also be noted that the automatic deletion of personal data is activated when the Hohenheim user account is linked. This means that when employment ends or a user is no longer enrolled at the university, personal data and chat histories are deleted. As a precaution, we would like to point out once again that there is generally no data backup for M365 (cloud) data. We therefore recommend using the central storage (CIFS) for storing important data.

If you have any questions, please contact the IT service desk.

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