Office 365 Subscription Question

[jasnw]

I've reached a point where I'm needing to make the jump to the latest Office suite. I'm leaning towards the Office 365 subscription, but while I don't have a problem paying for a subscription I am concerned about what happens when I finally end the subscription. In a perfect world (hah!), I'd just stop getting updates and the apps would continue working until I no longer have a computer they'll run on. It sounds like MS has not gone this route, and that the official answer is that after some grace period the apps will stop working other than in read-only mode. I've also heard anecdotal reports that this isn't true, that the apps do keep working after you drop the subscription. I'm only concerned about accessing documents on my computer, not in MS's cloud.

Anyone have any real-world experience with this?

 

[maflynn]

I'd just stop getting updates and the apps would continue working until I no longer have a computer they'll run on

I believe the first month you can still use the apps, after that you'll not be able too.

 

[chrfr]

I've reached a point where I'm needing to make the jump to the latest Office suite. I'm leaning towards the Office 365 subscription, but while I don't have a problem paying for a subscription I am concerned about what happens when I finally end the subscription. In a perfect world (hah!), I'd just stop getting updates and the apps would continue working until I no longer have a computer they'll run on. It sounds like MS has not gone this route, and that the official answer is that after some grace period the apps will stop working other than in read-only mode. I've also heard anecdotal reports that this isn't true, that the apps do keep working after you drop the subscription. I'm only concerned about accessing documents on my computer, not in MS's cloud.

Anyone have any real-world experience with this?

The apps will stop working after your subscription ends.

 

[gilby101]

I'm only concerned about accessing documents on my computer,

Whatever may happen with the Office apps, your documents will continue to be accessible using other apps. With some other apps, it will be read-only. But with others (e.g. Apple's apps or OpenOffice) it will be the full read/write experience.

 

[jasnw]

So Apple's suite and OpenOffice can handle MS's new document formats without too much trouble? I don't do any wild formatting or Excel macros.

 

[gilby101]

So Apple's suite and OpenOffice can handle MS's new document formats without too much trouble? I don't do any wild formatting or Excel macros.

Yes. Compared with Pages, OpenOffice is generally more faithful to the look/formatting of the original. Numbers is liable to have problems with anything but the simplest Excel. Again OpenOffice will do better.

MS Office to Pages/Numbers is generally one way. OpenOffice can write back to xlsx and docx reasonably well.

 

[shaunp]

When you first install the software you are asked which document format you want to use. One of them is an open standard, choose this and then you are free to use LibreOffice, etc in future if you want to. Actually is there anything stopping you from using LibreOffice now?

 

[jasnw]

Yes: (1) I am required to deliver items in MS Office document formats, and (2) I don't have time to spend learning yet another set of office apps. Which is why I'm not wildly happy about MS's constant changes to their user interfaces.