Running into version issues with Office 365 and Skype for Business

I have had a couple of people ask me about issues they are getting when attempting to install Skype for Business from the Office 365 site.
When you download software from 365 you are always getting the latest version, in this case 2016. However, if you are like me you are not running the 2016 suite on your notebook and this can cause serious issues. Office does not like it when you have different versions of its modules running together. It also does not like to mix 32 bit and 64 bit modules. I had to find the 64 bit version. In fact if you are running 2013 Home and Office you will be asked to remove Office entirely. Do not do this, you will not get it back! I run Office 2013 Pro 64 and was able to get 2016 Skype 64 installed with it but it was not exactly smooth.
You may also be asked to remove other components such as OneDrive. I had to remove my personal version of Skype to get the new one to install. There seems to be a lot of variations based on a number of factors.
Bottom line if you are running Office 2013 and possibly 2010 and you don’t want to lose things, you will need to run older versions of Skype (in fact I think these are just Lync versions).
Here are the links to the older version
64-bit English version
https://c2rsetup.officeapps.live.com/c2r/download.aspx?productReleaseID=LyncEntryRetail&platform=x86&language=en-us&source=O15O365&version=O15GA64-bit English version
32–bit English Version
https://c2rsetup.officeapps.live.com/c2r/download.aspx?ProductreleaseID=O365SmallBusPremRetail&platform=x64&language=en-us&source=O15O365&version=O15GA
Hope this helps
Written by Roger Detzler, Consultant, WAC Solution Partners New England