New Version of Microsoft Office Coming Next Year That Won't Require a Subscription

[jtaylor673]

I have had a Microsoft 365 subscription for the past 4 years and like it. This is the $99 per year version. Of course it depends on how much you use any of the software programs that are included.
Pros:
6 accounts can be created (so why not split the cost with your friends and family?)
Each account gets 1 TB of cloud storage
OneDrive is a great backup alternative / addition to iCloud which costs $3/m for 200GB or $10/m for 2TB
Master account holder cannot access other users accounts.
Software programs stay up to date
OneDrive Sync of all the documents on my laptop is comforting. If laptop breaks / lost / stolen all the important files
can be synced to the new laptop.

 

[posguy99]

I had thought the next release would coincide with the release of Big Sur so Office was a native app. Looks like I might be wrong!

How is it not a "native" app now?
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Surprised nobody in the comments has guessed that the non-subscription version will be missing features vs the subscription version. In other words, non-sub will be a basic package and subscription will provide 100% functionality.

Link, please? Otherwise you're just whinging.

 

[LinkRS]

Looks like I am the odd one out here, but I think the Office 365 sub is a good deal. I usually buy a 12 month sub on sale for around 60-70 €, and for that I can always use the latest version of office on my Mac, on my wife's Windows VM, on our two iPads and my iPhone. Buying a new Office suite every couple of years would not be much cheaper, and would not cover all my devices. The bang for the buck is right for me.

Now with Adobe, their subs are simply to expensive for my use case. So I bought Affinity apps to replace Photoshop and Illustrator, and they work great for me. Haven't done video editing for years, but if I need to again, I will purchase Premiere Elements.

I was going to post something similar to this. When Office 365 was first announced, the major sentiments in this post were my opinion as well. Until I took a look at the price structure. Currently I pay $99 a year for Office 365, which gives me, my wife, and my son the latest version of the Office suite. If we were to purchase the perpetual version, and stuck with the "home" version (I use the Pro version, as I use Access), I would have to pay $149 * 3 up front (ignoring my need for Access at the moment) which is $447 once. If I never upgrade to the newest version, after the 4th year, this option begins to save me money. However, Microsoft typically has released a new version every two years or so, which in this model would require another $447 each time. So, instead I only pay $99 a year, and always have the latest version. Disclaimer here, there are ways to install one copy of Office on multiple machines for multiple users, but this is against the license sold with Office Home & Student (the $149 version).

 

[Hildy]

Subscription only options have already pushed my family to the Apple suite of free tools. Now that we are there I doubt we’ll pay to move back to Office... Too little, too late after driving customers away with subscription pricing.

 

[Bustycat]

Subscription only options have already pushed my family to the Apple suite of free tools. Now that we are there I doubt we’ll pay to move back to Office... Too little, too late after driving customers away with subscription pricing.

And you may be also too late to know Office 2019 is available for a one-time purchase.

Compare All Microsoft 365 Plans (Formerly Office 365) - Microsoft Store

Find the right Microsoft 365 Family or Personal plan for all your devices. Includes AI-powered Office apps, 1 TB of cloud storage, and premium mobile features.

www.microsoft.com

 

[fernelius]

I wish Microsoft would unlock the full feature set in the iOS and iPadOS versions of Office to those who have the perpetual license. I've had the perpetual license for years and updated every 1-2 releases, but my increased use of the iPad has me contemplating the Office 365 subscription even though I don't see a lot of value added in each release. I'd generally be paying a subscription to get bug and security updates (and eventually Apple Silicon support).

I, also, moved most of my work to iWork (exporting to Office when necessary for others) because of the better interface and the fact they support greater than 255 characters for file names (with folder hierarchy). The number of folders I deal with means Office can't deal with the file name sometimes. I'm still on Office 2016, which is falling out of support next month. I haven't been clear whether the latest perpetual release fixes this problem. It was so frustrating having to move files up the hierarchy to edit them only to have to move them back when I was done editing.

Maybe I'll roll the dice and wait until Office 2021 hoping for no substantial security problems in a suite that has had a number of security issues in the past.

At least Mac Office still has pull-down menus!

 

[fernelius]

For anyone with basic office needs, and who doesnt want cloud based, don’t forget about LibreOffice, and on iOS CollaboraOffice. I have been using these for a while and am very happy with them - although I’m not tied to Microsoft Office or Google Due to work etc.

Thanks for this! I'll check it out. I've used OOReader on iPad/iPhone when necessary to read LibreOffice files, but hadn't checked for other options in some time. This might allow me to use LibreOffice a bit more often. They've improve much over the last few years!

 

[jdsingle]

Add another happy person. As much as I’d like to move away from MSFT products, they still have a stronghold at work. I just have not seen enough feature updates that warrant me funding their ongoing development costs. Either make material improvements in your subscription-based model that appeals to the masses and meets the value proposition or allow one off purchases at reasonable rates. I’m hoping this subscription style of recurring revenue starts losing steam. I stopped my Office renewal last month because nothing new was being added that helped my workflow.

 

[Mick-Mac]

I have had a Microsoft 365 subscription for the past 4 years and like it. This is the $99 per year version. Of course it depends on how much you use any of the software programs that are included.
Pros:
6 accounts can be created (so why not split the cost with your friends and family?)
Each account gets 1 TB of cloud storage
OneDrive is a great backup alternative / addition to iCloud which costs $3/m for 200GB or $10/m for 2TB
Master account holder cannot access other users accounts.
Software programs stay up to date
OneDrive Sync of all the documents on my laptop is comforting. If laptop breaks / lost / stolen all the important files
can be synced to the new laptop.

and you forgot to mention that part of the deal is that everything you create and store in their world is data mined.

 

[IIGS User]

I work for a government entity that if they upgrade to a new version of Office (we are using Office 2010, and some users have been forced to migrate to 365) we get to purchase the current version of Office at a significant discount.

Last time I purchased Office for my Mac I believe I paid $15 for the entire full function suite through the state government contract/discount. That's pretty good, and totally worth it.

My wife works for a different department within the state and they're using 360 while we are still on Office 2010. Which works just fine for what we do, but I don't understand why they are on 360 and we are on 2010.

Keep in mind, this is an all Windows world here....

 

[Mick-Mac]

This is obviously welcome news, although I'm kind of wondering what on earth they could already add to their behemoth and bloated suite that I could possibly want. They'll likely add a few new features that most people just won't use, and the only net visible change will be a few more horizontal toolbar rows and even less available screen real estate. Microsoft's end goal is an app that has zillions of toolbars, sidebars, status bars, annoying popups that always seem to cover exactly what you want to look at, auto-corrections that *never* do what you want and somehow keep coming back like a bad dream even after you turn them off in the preferences, and no left over screen space to actually do your work in... The most welcome advancement they've made in years is the elimination of their Clippy (or the rubik's cube Mac) assistant.

 

[ncbill]

Too late for word processor documents and spreadsheets...it's Google Docs or PDF files or LibreOffice now.

 

[chrfr]

They stopped offering Office 2019 as part of the HUP...

Your employer may have stopped offering it, but I can still get it through mine.

 

[mdridwan47]

Thank you Microsoft. I'll be definitely getting there New office software when out.

 

[nt5672]

Casual users of Adobe products wouldn’t spend the money to buy them.

Yep, I did. In my business when things were going good I upgraded software with one time purchases. When things were not going good I just used my older, but still functioning software.

I've found that I can get around using Adobe software easily, and if not I just use my CS6 version. If I could by a non-subscription version I would. The problem with subscription is that once you stop the subscription you cannot even look at old project files. That is a non-starter.

 

[nt5672]

. . . . .
For my Windows devices, I still use Office 2007. I have a bunch of licenses for it from back in the day. Office 2007 still handles the moderate to advanced files I create with the latest version of Office. Which is one big reason why Microsoft (and other software companies) push the subscription model.

This ^ is important. I will never buy another copy of Office for Mac. The Mac is not a platform one can depend on (Apple breaks old software routinely). So this year when we upgraded from Office 2003 to Office 2019 we went Windows. Windows hardware is 1/3 the price and Windows OS today does the job just fine. And I'll be able to use it for the next 10 to 15 years. We are tired of replacing hardware every 3 years because Apple forces it.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

and you forgot to mention that part of the deal is that everything you create and store in their world is data mined.

Not true. There is "personal vault" where everything is encrypted and secure and accessible only by 2FA to unlock it.

 

[centauratlas]

it is about time, I dislike subscriptions and stoped using Microsoft, I would rather just buy the program for a one-time payment.

Ditto, I haven't had Word etc since 2011 Stopped working. Pages, Numbers etc are quite good replacements.

 

[ghanwani]

Your employer may have stopped offering it, but I can still get it through mine.

 

[nutmac]

Office 2019 came out on September 2018, Office 2016 3 years earlier on September 2015. I presume Office 2022 will be released on September 2021, or 3-year release cycle for Office perpetual license.

I assume Office 2022 will receive juicy redesign hinted with new Outlook release.

Office Home & Student 2019 (Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint, Word) costs $149.99 and Office Home & Business (adds Outlook) costs $249.99. Both versions include license for only 1 Mac, and unlike Microsoft 365, iOS/iPadOS license is excluded.

In comparison, Microsoft 365 Personal (Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word) costs $69.99/year, while adding continuous updates, 1TB cloud storage, AI features and templates, 1 hour Skype calls per month (international long distance calls to most phone numbers), and iOS/iPadOS license. That's $209.97 for the same 3 years of use, or $59.98 premium. Microsoft 365 Family adds 6 licenses for $30/year more, or $299.97 for 3 years.

My experience with Microsoft 365, AI features and templates are not all that useful and neither does 1TB cloud storage as I dislike installing another app to sync files on the background. I do appreciate Office for iPad and 1 hour international long distance is occasionally useful.

The bottom line: If you are the sort that wants the latest version, would like iOS/iPadOS license, or wants to install on more than one computer, get Microsoft 365. Having said that, most people probably won't miss all that much using Office for far longer than 3 years.

 

[Bearxor]

it is about time, I dislike subscriptions and stoped using Microsoft, I would rather just buy the program for a one-time payment.

You can. Just buy Office 2019. Next year you'll be able to get Office 2022 at some point. Microsoft make perpetual versions of Office available for you.

 

[compwiz1202]

For anyone with basic office needs, and who doesnt want cloud based, don’t forget about LibreOffice, and on iOS CollaboraOffice. I have been using these for a while and am very happy with them - although I’m not tied to Microsoft Office or Google Due to work etc.

When this year expires, I will have to try Libre again. I forgot why I stopped. Maybe something Excel could do that it couldn't.

 

[iamasmith]

Please, we'll poison your Mac for free now, just drink the Kool-Aid.

 

[dwaltwhit]

I wonder what prompted this shift. Microsoft is not an altruistic entity (neither is Apple fwiw) so there must be something they see causing them to switch away from requiring the subscription. I use it because it is required by/provided by my job so I am not paying the subscription, but I am also curious to see the percentage of 365 users who are enterprise s opposed to personal.

 

[chrfr]

I wonder what prompted this shift.

There's no shift. You can buy a non-subscription version of Office today.