New Office 2013 Licensing May Put PowerPivot, Power View Out of Reach for Some Microsoft Dynamics Users

If the powers that be at Microsoft are looking for dessert, they'd do well not to ask Mark Polino, one of their own MVPs.

"Bad, bad, bad idea. Bad Microsoft, no cookie," Polino said in response to news that the company has decided take PowerPivot and Power View out of most versions of Office 2013.

Polino and other partners are not amused that the only way to have access to PowerPivot and Power View now is to buy the Pro Plus edition of Office 2013 - Professional is just not enough, according to this blog post.  And to complicate matters, upgrading to Pro Plus is only available through volume licensing or when bundled with specific Office 365 subscriptions.

The post is written by Rob Collie, one of the founding engineers behind PowerPivot at Microsoft during his 14 year career in Redmond, and formerly CTO at Pivotstream LLC.

But Polino, a proponent of using Excel and PowerPivot with Microsoft Dynamics GP, is not taking this decision lying down.

"With the MS MVP Summit coming up...perhaps we can make it abundantly clear that this was a bad idea," he wrote.

Collie wrote that he's been getting a ton of questions about this issue - in email, twitter, on forums, etc.

"The questions all go something like this: ‘Hey Rob ,I just bought Office 2013, went to enable PowerPivot, and it's not there! It was supposed to be included in 2013 right?'

It's a fair question, of course. And yes, my original expectation was precisely that - it would be in 2013 for everyone."

Collie said the question ...