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Manage Licenses in the Microsoft Store for Education
The Microsoft Store for Education is where you manage licenses for Minecraft: Education Edition if your organization is an eligible educational institution who:
- Have the free Office 365 A1 plan and purchased licenses through the Microsoft Store for Education.
- Purchased an Office 365 A3 or A5 agreement and purchased Minecraft: Education Edition licenses as an add-on to your plan (non-unified SKU).
Note:
- If you aren’t sure which licensing plan your school purchased, contact our support team to confirm your license type.
- For more information on who qualifies as an eligible educational institution, see the Licensing Terms and Definitions page.
An IT administrator manages licenses for your organization's users in the Store for Education. This article provides information on how to set up users at your organization to access Minecraft: Education Edition.
View available licenses
Follow these steps to view the Minecraft: Education Edition licenses you have available.
- Sign into the Microsoft Store for Education with your Office 365 account credentials.
- From the top menu, select Manage.
- From the left-hand menu, select Products & services.
- Locate your Minecraft: Education Edition licenses in the Products & services list.
- Click the Minecraft: Education Edition license you want to view.
Note: You may see multiple lines for Minecraft: Education Edition. This indicates many different purchases of Minecraft: Education Edition have been made. Additionally, one line for Minecraft: Education Editions shows "Unlimited" licenses available. This indicates the trial version of Minecraft: Education Edition is available to an unlimited number of users in your organization.
Assign a license
Minecraft: Education Edition licenses purchased through the store can be automatically assigned to users in your school, assigned manually, or assigned in batches.
Auto-assign licenses
Auto-assigning licenses automatically assigns a license to a user in your school when they sign into Minecraft: Education Edition with their Office 365 credentials. This is especially useful when there are many users, for example a school district that has purchased licenses for all the faculty and students.
By default, the auto-assign feature is turned off. Follow these steps to turn on the auto-assign feature,
- In the Microsoft Store for Education, locate your Minecraft: Education Edition licenses in the Products & services list, see the steps in View available licenses for more information on accessing your licenses.
- Next to Auto-claim a license, click Edit.
- Select On.
Result: The auto-assign feature is on and licenses are automatically assigned to users when they sign in. - Once all your licenses have been claimed, students or teachers who haven’t been assigned licenses yet are automatically assigned to the trial version of Minecraft: Education Edition. Users of the trial version are limited to the number of times they can sign in - 25 times for teachers with an Office 365 Education account and 10 for all other users.
Manually assign a license
Licenses can be managed manually on an individual or group level. To be able to manually assign licenses, you must add users in the Microsoft Admin Center before they appear in the Microsoft Store for Education, see the Add users and assign licenses at the same time article in the Microsoft 365 admin center help page for information on how to add users.
Follow these steps to manually assign licenses,
- In the Microsoft Store for Education, locate your Minecraft: Education Edition licenses in the Products & services list, see the steps in View available licenses for more information on accessing your licenses.
- Ensure that Auto-claim a license is off.
- Click Assign to Users.
- Enter the name or email address of the student or teacher or enter the name of the group to whom you are assigning the license.
- When you have finished entering the names, click Assign.
Result: The license is assigned to the user.
Assign licenses in batches
The Microsoft Store for Education provides a PowerShell module to allow an administrator to manage Minecraft: Education Edition license assignment in batches.
Unassign a license
Licenses can be reclaimed from users so that they may be reassigned to other users.
Follow these steps to reclaim a license and remove it from a user.
- In the Microsoft Store for Education, locate your Minecraft: Education Edition licenses in the Products & services list, see the steps in View available licenses for more information on accessing your licenses.
- Next to the user, click the ellipses and click Reclaim license.
Result: The license is removed from the user.
Note: It can sometimes take up to 30 days for the license removal to reflect for the user. Once a license is reclaimed from a user, it can immediately be assigned to a different user. If you're unassuming a faculty Office 365 license and assigning a student Office 365 license (or vice-versa), the change will only take up to 7 days.
Additional resources
Video overview of the Minecraft Store for Education