Articles in this section
Store for Education Migration FAQ
The Microsoft Store for Education will be retired at the end of March 2023. This migration will impact customers who currently use the Store for Education for license purchase, management, and deployment. The migration team is working very hard to provide an experience that will have the least impact for affected customers.
Q: What is being migrated, and where will it go?
A: Most licenses bought and/or managed on the Store for Education will migrate to the Microsoft 365 admin center. After the subscription expiration date, new licenses can be bought by a Global Administrator or Billing Administrator for your organization.
Q: How will the migration affect my organization?
There will be a brief period of downtime while migration is in progress for your tenant. This downtime may affect the ability to manage licenses. The downtime won’t last more than a few minutes for most customers but could last a few hours for tenants that own many licenses.
After the migration, you’ll manage all your licenses in the admin center. You will no longer be able to use the Store for Education for license management.
Q: When will the migration happen?
A: The migration will happen in phases, starting in mid-March 2023.
Q: Will my subscription change after migration to the admin center?
A: For customers who buy directly from the admin center, the subscription price for individually purchased academic licenses will increase slightly, from US$5.00 per license to US$5.04 per license. This price change will be applied at the renewal date of your current subscription. If your subscription expires before April 1, 2023 the renewal date will be extended to this date.
Q: Will I have to re-assign licenses to my users in the admin center?
A: No. The license assignments will be applied to all currently licensed users during the migration to the admin center.
Q: How can I find out more about the migration?
A: The administrative contact of each tenant will receive an email with specific instructions about what to expect and what actions they might need to take to complete the migration. The migration team will also publish information in the Microsoft 365 Message center, and we will continue to update information here in the Minecraft Education Community Hub.
Q: I’m a teacher who bought licenses through the Store for Education. What will happen to these licenses?
The admin center doesn’t offer the ability for non-Admin users to buy or assign licenses for a tenant, so we aren’t able to migrate licenses bought by users that aren’t Admins.
Starting on April 1, 2023:
- We will honor all current subscriptions to their expiration date, however subscriptions owned by non-admins will not renew.
- All organizations with subscriptions that have an expiration date before June 30, 2023 will have access to Minecraft Education until June 30, 2023. Organizations with subscriptions that have an expiration date of July 1, 2023 or later will have access to Minecraft Education until their subscription expiration date.
- Only users with a Global Administrator or Billing Administrator role will be able to buy or renew subscriptions for Minecraft Education in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
After the access dates specified in the former section you will have a few options to continue using Minecraft Education:
- It’s possible that your school already has access to Minecraft Education licenses through other license bundles. Reach out to your Information Technology Lead to see if this is the case.
- A Global Administrator or Billing Administrator for your organization can buy new licenses in the admin center. Reach out to the Information Technology Lead for your school to have them purchase new licenses or ask them to grant you a Billing Administrator role in your tenant.
- If your tenant does not have an owner, you can follow these steps to become the administrator for your tenant.
Learn more about purchase options for Minecraft: Education Edition
Q: I bought my Minecraft licenses through volume licensing, but I manage them in the Store for Education. What will happen to these licenses?
You’ll be able to manage all your licenses in the admin center after the migration, including licenses bought through volume licensing.
Q: I use the auto-claim feature in the Store for Education to automatically assign Minecraft Education licenses to my users. Will I lose this functionality in the admin center?
After the migration, you’ll be able to assign auto-claim policies to Minecraft Education in the admin center. Read more about creating auto-claim policies in the admin center.
Q: How will I deploy apps to my devices after the Store for Education is retired?
A: The Minecraft Education app will be available in the Microsoft Store. We are targeting early 2023 for this availability. The app will be available in both locations to give customers time to adapt to the new Windows Store deployment model and its associated tools.
Q: What will happen to the Minecraft Education app (Store for Education version) that was already deployed through Intune, will it get further app updates after the Store for Education is retired?
A: Apps that were installed via the Store for Education will continue to update no matter how they were deployed, as long as your organization does not block store updates.
Q: How can we set up new deployments from the Microsoft Store for Windows?
A: New deployments will need to use one of the new methods (i.e. install via store manually, Intune store app, download via website, MSI/exe). We'll be updating our deployment documentation soon so check back for more information.