How to migrate from Office 365 to office 2019?

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How to migrate from Office 365 to office 2019?

Thomas Woo 40

I am using Office 365 from school. Now, I've graduated. I no longer have Office 365 access. How do I migrate from Office 365 to Office 2019?

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Answer 1

Marcin Policht 109.6K MVP Volunteer Moderator

Moving from a school-provided Microsoft 365 installation to Office 2019 is mainly a matter of preserving your data, removing the Microsoft 365 license and apps, then installing and activating Office 2019.

If you still have access to your school account, first save any files stored in your school OneDrive to a local folder or a personal OneDrive account. If you used Outlook with your school email, export your mailbox to a PST file before access is removed.

Next, uninstall the Microsoft 365 Apps installation that was licensed through your school. Open Settings > Apps > Installed Apps (or Apps & Features on older versions of Windows), locate Microsoft 365 Apps, Microsoft Office 365, or a similarly named Office entry, and uninstall it.

After the uninstall is complete, install Office 2019 using the installer that came with your Office 2019 license. If you have a retail license associated with a Microsoft account, sign in to that account and obtain the installer from https://account.microsoft.com/services. Run the installer and allow it to complete.

Once installed, open Word or Excel. If prompted, sign in with the Microsoft account that owns the Office 2019 license, or enter your Office 2019 product key if required. After activation, verify the license by opening an Office application and checking Account under the File menu. It should show Office 2019 as the activated product rather than Microsoft 365.

Your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files do not need to be converted. Office 2019 can open standard .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx files directly.

If your school account has already been disabled and you no longer have access to OneDrive or your school email, any data that was stored exclusively in those services may no longer be recoverable without assistance from the school's IT department.

If the above response helps answer your question, remember to "Accept Answer" so that others in the community facing similar issues can easily find the solution. Your contribution is highly appreciated.

hth

Marcin

Thomas Woo 40 Reputation points

2026-05-26T14:57:29.38+00:00

Marcin, it does help. Thanks for the detailed instructions. However, since Microsoft stopped supporting Office 2019 last year, I think I should migrate from Office 365 to Office 2024. Currently, I also have data from OneDrive and OneNote for Office 2019. Do I need to do the same thing as those in Office 365, backing them up and moving them to Office 2024?
Thomas Woo 40 Reputation points

2026-05-26T15:07:58.5266667+00:00

Thanks, Marcin and Stefan, for your help. I understand that for OneDrive, I can copy and paste. How do I do it for OneNote? Each notebook has a link. To move them over, do I reestablish the link and move each tab over one by one? Let me know whether there is an easier way. Thanks again.
Marcin Policht 109.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2026-05-26T19:09:43.9333333+00:00

If you still have access to the school account and the notebooks are syncing correctly, open OneNote using the version that has access to the notebook. Then sign in with both your school account and your personal Microsoft account. Create a new notebook in your personal OneDrive. In many versions of OneNote, you can move or copy entire sections from the school notebook to the personal notebook by right-clicking a section and choosing Move or Copy. That is faster than moving individual pages, although you may still need to repeat the process for each section.

This is easier f you are using the desktop version of OneNote. Open the notebook stored in the school account, then use the notebook-sharing or notebook-properties options to locate the notebook folder. If the notebook is stored in OneDrive, you can sometimes export the notebook and then import it into a notebook owned by your personal account. The exact availability of export features depends on which OneNote version you are using.

The key point is that OneNote notebooks are not just links. The link simply points to where the notebook is stored. You need to move the notebook content itself from storage controlled by the school to storage controlled by your personal account. Recreating the link alone will not transfer the notebook data.

Regarding your comment about supportability - you're correct. It would be recommended to use a more recent, supported version of Office...

If the above response helps answer your question, remember to "Accept Answer" so that others in the community facing similar issues can easily find the solution. Your contribution is highly appreciated.

hth

Marcin
Thomas Woo 40 Reputation points

2026-05-27T02:33:34.8966667+00:00

My school has granted temporary access to OneDrive for two weeks. Do you have any suggestions on moving the data between notebooks? When right-clicking the section that I want to move, selecting the target notebook, and clicking the move button, I got a pop-up message "the following section hasn't finished downloading. If you continue, some of its contents may not be copied to the new location." Do you have any way to trigger the download?
Marcin Policht 109.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2026-05-27T11:08:23.07+00:00

AFAIK, that warning usually means OneNote has not fully downloaded that section from the school's OneDrive to your computer yet. Before moving anything, you want the notebook completely synchronized locally.

Try opening the notebook and manually clicking through every important section and page. Stay on each page long enough for images, PDFs, attachments, and handwritten content to fully load. OneNote often downloads notebook content only when you open it, so sections that have not been viewed recently may still exist mostly in the cloud.

Then right-click the notebook name and choose “Sync This Notebook Now.” From what I recall, you can also press Shift + F9 to sync the current notebook or F9 to sync all notebooks. After starting the sync, give it time. Large notebooks can take a long time to fully download.

You should also check whether there are sync errors. In OneNote desktop, go to File > Info > View Sync Status. If there are authentication issues, failed uploads, or partially downloaded sections, they will appear there. Sometimes simply resolving a sync error and waiting several minutes allows the section to become fully available for moving.

Another approach is to leave OneNote open overnight while connected to reliable internet and power. OneNote continues caching notebook content in the background even when you are not actively using it.

If the warning continues appearing, create a local backup before moving anything. In the desktop version of OneNote, go to File > Options > Save & Backup and enable notebook backups if they are not already enabled. Then trigger a manual backup. This creates local backup copies on your PC, which is safer than relying entirely on cloud synchronization during the migration.

Once synchronization is complete, moving whole sections between notebooks is usually the fastest. Moving page by page might be necessary if some sections continue failing to sync correctly.

If the above response helps answer your question, remember to "Accept Answer" so that others in the community facing similar issues can easily find the solution. Your contribution is highly appreciated.

hth

Marcin
Thomas Woo 40 Reputation points

2026-05-27T14:01:28.9433333+00:00

Thanks, Marcin. I tried all the options you provided. It still gave the same message. I'm going to let it run for 24 hours and try again tomorrow.
Marcin Policht 109.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2026-05-28T12:56:13.5266667+00:00

If all sections still report “hasn’t finished downloading” even after syncing, you might want to try copying the content into a brand-new section rather than moving the original section itself. Create a new notebook under your personal account, create a new section there, then open the old section, click inside the page list, press Ctrl + A twice to select all pages in that section, right-click the selected pages, choose Move or Copy, and copy them into the new section in the personal notebook. This should bypass the incomplete-section metadata that blocks full section moves. Another approach is to open each page so all content visibly loads before copying. If embedded files or printouts still fail, you might resort to exporting critical pages to PDF as a fallback.

If the above response helps answer your question, remember to "Accept Answer" so that others in the community facing similar issues can easily find the solution. Your contribution is highly appreciated.

hth

Marcin

Answer 2

Stefan Blom 353.7K MVP Volunteer Moderator

You will have to download any files that you want to save from your school account.

To install and activate a version of Office which you have purchased for yourself, use your associated account at https://account.microsoft.com/services . Sometimes, just switching accounts in Office may switch to the proper license. However, it isn't unusual that you have to uninstall the now unlicensed school product, and then install the desired version.

Thomas Woo 40 Reputation points

2026-05-26T15:04:33.6133333+00:00

Thanks for your help, Stefan. I understand that for OneDrive, I can copy and paste. How do I do it for OneNote? Each notebook has a link. To move them over, do I reestablish the link and move each tab over one by one? Let me know whether there is an easier way. Thanks again.
Stefan Blom 353.7K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2026-05-26T19:32:03.7133333+00:00

@Thomas Woo

As far as I know, your OneNote files are stored in the OneDrive "cloud" as well. You will have to look for them in your educational account, of course, and see if you can download them to your PC. If you have lost access to that account, talk to the school.

If you need further assistance with the OneNote files in particular, you may want to ask in the OneNote category of Q&A at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/tags/1361/m365-office-office-onenote-education-platform-windows .