Using Office 365 on a server running Terminal Services

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Assume that you install the Click-to-Run version of a Microsoft Office program or suite on a terminal server. When you open the Office program or suite, you receive the following error message depending on your version of Office:

“This copy of Microsoft Office 2013 cannot be used on a computer running Terminal Services. To use Office 2013 on a computer running Terminal Services, you must use a Volume License edition of Office.”

“This copy of Microsoft Office 2016 cannot be used on a computer running Terminal Services. To use Office 2016 on a computer running Terminal Services, you must use a Volume License edition of Office.”

We see this error because Microsoft does not allow us to install Click-to-Run versions of Office programs or suites on a server that’s running Remote Desktop Services (formerly known as Terminal Services). This is by design.

Depending on your license for Microsoft Office, there are several options to address this. You can drop us a quick note if you’d like to discuss. It’s easy to have Umzuzu (or any other Microsoft Partner) take a look. Any Global Administrator can grant Umzuzu delegate access with this link. We can help make sure your license is optimized as well as help with nuanced issues like the one described above.

What’s in a name? Terminal Services and Remote Desktop Services are often used interchangeably.

Terminal Services has been renamed Remote Desktop Services.

In Windows Server 2008 R2, all Remote Desktop Services role services have been renamed. The following table lists both the former name and the new name of each Remote Desktop Services role service.

Previous name	Name in Windows Server 2008 R2
Terminal Services	Remote Desktop Services
Terminal Server	Remote Desktop Session Host (RD Session Host)
Terminal Services Licensing (TS Licensing)	Remote Desktop Licensing (RD Licensing)
Terminal Services Gateway (TS Gateway)	Remote Desktop Gateway (RD Gateway)
Terminal Services Session Broker (TS Session Broker)	Remote Desktop Connection Broker (RD Connection Broker)
Terminal Services Web Access (TS Web Access)	Remote Desktop Web Access (RD Web Access)
Terminal Services Virtualization	Remote Desktop Virtualization Host (RD Virtualization Host)

Also, please note that a server that has the RD Session Host role service installed is now called a RD Session Host server, instead of a terminal server.