Surprised at finding Office applications bundled in with Windows 10 Pro

[TonyC]

My new home PC was built by an OEM and came pre-installed with Windows 10 Pro 2004.

When I looked at the list of applications in the Start menu, I was surprised to find so many Office type applications. There are 16 in total, although one of them is Microsoft Office Tools which contains multiple tools.

When I queried this with the OEM’s technical support, I was simply told that all the applications come with Windows 10 Pro on a 30 day trial period. I find this difficult to believe. Surely, if I bought the retail edition of Windows 10 Pro, it wouldn’t come with all these Office applications?

Does anyone know why I have all these Office applications? For example, does Microsoft bundle all these applications in with OEM editions of Windows 10 as a means of encouraging customers to buy them?

If I look in Control Panel > Programs and Features, I see the following installed programs:

• Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus
• Microsoft OneDrive
• Microsoft Teams
• Microsoft Visio Professional 2016
• Teams Machine-Wide Installer

I am tempted to uninstall all of these unless anyone can give me a good reason why I shouldn’t. All I really need is Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word and I am planning to buy Office Home and Business 2019 for these applications.

I presume that I would be advised to uninstall at least Office 365 before installing Office 2019 in order to avoid possible conflicts?

And, if I did uninstall Office 365 (and possibly all of the other programs listed above), is the system left in a clean enough state to install Office 2019? Or is there any further clean-up work advised?

• This topic was modified 1 week, 5 days ago by TonyC.
• This topic was modified 1 week, 5 days ago by TonyC.

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[Alex5723]

TonyC wrote:

if I bought the retail edition of Windows 10 Pro, it wouldn’t come with all these Office applications?

No. Windows 10 doesn’t come with Office package. It does come with 10s of bloat store apps.
The OEM installed trial Office as part of Microsoft paying the OEM to do so.

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TonyC

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[ScotchJohn]

TonyC wrote:

I am tempted to uninstall all of these unless anyone can give me a good reason why I shouldn’t. All I really need is Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word and I am planning to buy Office Home and Business 2019 for these applications. I presume that I would be advised to uninstall at least Office 365 before installing Office 2019 in order to avoid possible conflicts? And, if I did uninstall Office 365 (and possibly all of the other programs listed above), is the system left in a clean enough state to install Office 2019? Or is there any further clean-up work advised?

In your shoes, I would use Revo or some similar uninstall analyser to remove these trial versions of Office, rather than relying on their inbuilt uninstallers.

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

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TonyC, doriel

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[TonyC]

I’ve done nothing productive with my new Windows 10 Pro system yet, so I might just take it back to the vendor and ask them to do a clean reinstall of Windows 10 Pro without all the Office type applications. The PC has a hardware problem as well (see #2353367), so it needs to go back to have that fixed under warranty.

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[joep517]

The OEM may not be able to install a clean version of Windows 10 Pro. If the OEM is being compensated by Microsoft for pre-installing Office, the OEM may be contractually required to install it on all systems. Can’t hurt to ask though.

--Joe

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[doriel]

TonyC wrote:

Does anyone know why I have all these Office applications? For example, does Microsoft bundle all these applications in with OEM editions of Windows 10 as a means of encouraging customers to buy them?

Because you should buy them, thats the bait what you found in your start menu. Its trial version. Windows 10 does not come with Office for free.

@Alex5723 is correct.

TonyC wrote:

I find this difficult to believe.

Wellcome to the greedy world of today!

I presume that I would be advised to uninstall at least Office 365 before installing Office 2019 in order to avoid possible conflicts?

And, if I did uninstall Office 365 (and possibly all of the other programs listed above), is the system left in a clean enough state to install Office 2019? Or is there any further clean-up work advised?

I think you should do some cleaning before installing Office 2019. It SHOULD be enough to remove it through contol panels. Or you can unistall the package from start menu. Find the office icon and there should be “unisntall” on the right pane of start menu.

If you want to get rid of it completely, here is how to do it. It depends what is your case. Try this link:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/manually-uninstall-office-4e2904ea-25c8-4544-99ee-17696bb3027b?ui=en-us&rs=en-us&ad=us

Dell Latitude E6530, Intel Core i5 @ 2.6 GHz, 4GB RAM, W10 1809 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

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TonyC

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[Alex5723]

TonyC wrote:

so I might just take it back to the vendor and ask them to do a clean reinstall of Windows 10 Pro

You don’t need your vendor for that.
Download Windows 10 ISO and install from that or use Microsoft’s MCT to clean install Windows 10 Pro.

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TonyC

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[TonyC]

joep517 wrote:

… If the OEM is being compensated by Microsoft for pre-installing Office, the OEM may be contractually required to install it on all systems. …

Yes, that thought had already crossed my mind.

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[TonyC]

Alex5723 wrote:

You don’t need your vendor for that. Download Windows 10 ISO and install from that or use Microsoft’s MCT to clean install Windows 10 Pro.

Good point. I hadn’t thought of that. I have already used the MCT to create a USB flash drive with Windows 10 Pro 20H2 on it. I currently have 2004 but, as far as I can tell by reading the forums, there appears to be little risk in using this opportunity to upgrade to 20H2.

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[Alex5723]

TonyC wrote:

there appears to be little risk in using this opportunity to upgrade to 20H2.

The only risk is when doing a clean install you may be asked to create a Microsoft account (which can be worked around digging into the setup menu).

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[TonyC]

Alex5723 wrote:

The only risk is when doing a clean install you may be asked to create a Microsoft account …

When I powered up my new PC for the first time and went through the Windows 10 Pro OOBE (out of box experience), my PC had no connection to the Internet. This was detected by the OOBE and I was allowed to create a local account – no problem. Isn’t it going to be the same if I perform a clean install with the PC having no means of connecting to the Internet?

In fact, my new PC still hasn’t connected to the Internet. I even activated Windows 10 by telephone using the slui.exe 4 command.

I’m more concerned about finding out how to perform a UEFI install and what device drivers I need. This was all done for me by the vendor for the preinstalled system, so I am hoping that their technical support people will be able to help me.

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[doriel]

Or you can reset the computer to factory settins. It can be done through new control pannel (settings app).
Just open the Start menu and type “Reset this PC”. It should lead you to this section of new control panels.

But after this done, your preinstalled “Office preview app” (or how can I call it) will be reinstalled again. Dont hesitate to ask more questions. Cheers.

Dell Latitude E6530, Intel Core i5 @ 2.6 GHz, 4GB RAM, W10 1809 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

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