I'm reposting my previous post -
I have good news and some bad.
Good News: I now have a free upgrade to a perpetual license of Visio 2016. So I'm eating my words. MS did the honorable thing. My sincere apologies to Bill.
Bad News: Office 2013 is fundamentally incompatible with 2016 and it does not look like it ever will be.
Here's the process that (finally) worked.
- Tech support called me back and 90min later I have a free upgrade. The (only) number that worked was 866-452-4755.
- Ask for a Visio specialist
- I worked with Pankaj
- I had to allow remote access (make sure you create a restore point prior to doing this!!!!!)
- I was assigned a case number.
- Make sure that you expect them to call you back if you are disconnected
- Oddly, I had to create an entirely new MS user account. I have no idea why, but he said there was no other choice. So, now I have two.
- He assigned the free 2016 Visio Standard license to my new account.
- If you've installed the free trial of Visio 2016 (as I did), you do not need to uninstall first. The new install overwrites it.
- Once installed, you can use your old MS account. The new account is necessary only for the new perpetual license.