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Microsoft Office 2019 for Mac Will Soon Stop Letting You Edit Documents

BeatCrazy said:
It's been like this for decades. I used to 'cling' to my perpetual licenses, until I realized OS updates would invariably break. Could be 3 years, or 6... but eventually they'll stop working.
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Decades is a long time -- maybe 10 years. I believe even Office 2007/8 and 2016 still work on the versions of MacOS available at the time and a several later.

Note the issue here isn't that a future OS update breaks an old version of the software. The issue is that a legally licensed and working software on a legally licensed and working OS will stop working on an arbitrary date.

BeatCrazy said:
Life is too short to keep pushing against the tidal wave. I'll pony up for Microsoft365, or find an alternative solution (i.e. native Mac productivity suite). You're not going to win against the will of a corporate empire.
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I suppose we could just all capitulate and accept descendence into peasantry...

I agree however it does make sense to take a strategic approach to our personal (or corporate if you run those things) supply chain. I am okay with subscriptions where they are inherent: internet, search, etc. Or even a reasonable trade-off where I could own but there are many competing alternative that I could switch to without much cost (e.g. electricity or e-mail hosting as long as I own the domain and have local copies of all my e-mails). However, when it comes to tools to create and manage my IP (e.g. Word documents) then I insist on owning the tool. As in, nobody can take the tool away from me or raise the price on me unilaterally.

What caught me off-guard in this case is that a working installation could stop working. A clear violation of vendors' oft-claimed falsehood that people who legally purchased/licensed software have nothing worry about from license protection schemes.
 
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They should refund people who this affects. If they can’t be bothered ensuring their product works for a reasonable time, they can just pay people instead, they’re not short of money.
 
I've been buying the updated Office every few years. Because I have no need for Microsoft's cloud services, and I refuse to subscribe to software installed locally on my machines.

I've mostly switched over to Google Docs and Apple iWork for work and personal use, respectively; but kept paying the Microsoft tax because there have been some documents that don't open right on the alternates.

No more. The whole point of buying "permanently licensed" software was that it works even offline no matter what.

I mean, FFS, I can still run Office 2001 on my iMac G4 just fine. For that matter, it's still possible to activate Windows XP via Microsoft's phone activation line. There is zero technical reason why Office 2019 should be forced into read-only mode. "Security" isn't even a good excuse, because any security flaws will undoubtedly still be present in read-only mode.
 
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UliBaer said:
Well, my employer serves me Office 365 licenses on all my work devices, including iPhone - so it's their beer.
Privately I'm using LibreOffice since ~2012 and never looked back... 😎

[edit] Well, to be honest, Outlook is really hard to beat on functionality and ease of use! 👍 ♥️
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Outlook: when it’s not crashing every time you try to move an email, or crashing when it’s not doing anything?
 
I suspect this breaks the license agreement customers paid for. If an OS change or bug introduced an incompatibility, Microsoft could likely say the cause was beyond their reasonable control.

However, to deliberately refuse to renew a certificate knowing it would break the software - and, I would imagine, the license agreement (given they knew a certificate renewal was required when they made the original promise that it would continue working as a perpetual license in the future) - is dubious at best, and will likely lead to a class action lawsuit.

There's a video on YouTube showing evidence from WayBack Machine that Microsoft retrospectively subtly altered the wording on the relevant webpage for this product from saying the perpetual license will allow users to continue using this version of Office in the future, even after support was dropped.

PS It now says Office 2019 will stop functioning in 2026 (with no reference to the change made, aside of modifying the date the article was posted).
 
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I have been using LibreOffice and Pages, Keynote, etc ever since I moved over to the Mac many years ago. I never installed an Office 365 subscription or an Office 20yy one-time-purchase since I had no need of them.

Still, I'm very familiar with Microsoft apps because I had to use them all at my employer's. Now that I am retired, I have no further use for Office 365 or any other Microsoft application.

Some family members want to use Microsoft products, and are willing to pay for them -- at least while they are still in their careers and earning money. This will change as they retire and have to decide on what software gets prioritized on a far smaller retirement income.
 
I've been using LibreOffice for years and I think it's a great office replacement. It does not have support for pages, numbers, etc. at least without extensions, if that is an issue for you.
 
Thankfully I don't need the full compatibility of MS office, so I use Pages or Libreoffice. I would not use Office on the web because I don't want my documents in the cloud.
This is the problem these days, so much easier in the days of MS Woks, lotus 123 and Wordperfect.
 
Absolutely f**king appalling.

Microsoft needs to refresh their understanding of the word perpetual, as regards the license.

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This is just appalling. You pay for software, you expect to be able to use it for years to come. The Apple suite is just plain rubbish, looks like am on the move to Libre.
Bad decision by Microsoft, am not interested in CoPilot or security updates, just want a basic office suite.
Bring back ClarisWorks.
 
BeatCrazy said:
You're not going to win against the will of a corporate empire.
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Yet MS Word 5.1a still works (under emulation, sure). Other versions of Word still work.

For the record, I use WriteNow 4 (written in 68k assembly code) on an SE running System 6.0.8 with 4 MB of RAM and a BlueSCSI. It flies and is the perfect single-task machine. On my production Mac, I pull the file into ONLYOFFICE Desktop (https://www.onlyoffice.com/desktop) if I need to put the document in a modern file format. Yes, I do use the floppy drive to transfer files (I like the noise).

This isn't a question of “winning”—it's a question of no longer dealing with this crap and finding what works for you.

The corporate empires don't get to dictate what you need to get your work done the way you want to do it—that's up to you.
 
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The 50% price hike on Office 365 last year prompted me to ditch Office 365, and I went with the standalone Office 2024 for Mac.

Now you’re telling me that this software will “expire” in around three years… at least I will have gotten the value out of the so-called permanent license by then. I never expected to be able to use Office 2024 forever anyway, even though the license is supposedly permanent. Apparently MS only supports the “permanent” versions of Office for five years.

I can’t say that I respect Microsoft for this, though. They are forcing customers to buy new software every five years, whether it theoretically still runs or not. Very disrespectful and profit-mongering. Hope that Apple never pulls a stunt like this.
 
LibreOffice does a fine job. Just dump the "Liberation..." fonts so you don't get unexpected font substitutions when you open PDFs in the app. Did you know LibreOffice can export to ".epub"? The suite is no one-trick pony and, as it's free, you'll not have any "expired certificates" that can't be resolved without a fee. (It would be nice to contribute some $ if you find the suite valuable.)

I have no association with the LibreOffice org so I'm not shilling for shekels. I just know good software when I experience it. Haven't had MS Office on any of my Macs (or PCs) in many years.
 
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I have a perpetual license for office 2021 because I don't want the new outlook which is effectively spyware, routing all your emails through microsoft servers. I hope this results in class action lawsuits.
 
Will be interesting to see how they trigger this. If it's a "kill switch" that was delivered with a previous update or worse was there from day one I can see a PR disaster epic promotions followed by a class action lawsuit requiring them to refund every customer that purchased the software.
 
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