
If you want VL Excel 2013, you have to buy five of them, right? At least, that's what I thought, until I went through Jelen's podcast. Most people think of volume licensing as a high-volume deal, with a minimum of five copies required to get a VL contract. I've seen the VL version of Excel 2013 listed for as little as $173, but few individuals in pursuit of PowerPivot will have the wherewithal to qualify for a Microsoft volume license. 27, when the corporate versions of Office 2013 ship. The volume licensing version of Excel 2013 has PowerPivot - or more accurately, it will have PowerPivot on Feb. It's someone else, high up, who puts the packages together, who made what I believe to be the world's worst mistake. I appreciate those products, you've seen me rave about those products. My friends, who create Excel, did not do this. Even Office 2013 Professional, with a $399 list price, doesn't include PowerPivot. PowerPivot is freely available to anyone with a copy of Excel 2010, but Microsoft took PowerPivot out of almost all versions of Excel 2013 - apparently as an incentive to force PowerPivot users to rent Office 360 E3 at $240 per year.

I've already written about the way Microsoft has buried PowerPivot, "the best new feature to hit Excel in 20 years," according to "Mr.
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It turns out there's a trick that people in the know have been using for years to comply, quite precisely, with the rules and pick up any VL software they might want for a song.

VLs are expensive, cumbersome, and not for the faint of heart, the story goes. Most people think of Microsoft volume licenses as the province of big companies - as Microsoft's way of keeping the hoi polloi from buying some of its fancier products.
