Is at it again…
You’re a smart cookie, so you opted to buy a copy of Microsoft Office for macOS back in 2019 or 2021, eschewing the Office 365 subscription, so you could keep on using Office 2019/2021 forever if you wanted to. Just like in the old days.
I’ve got some bad news.
Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion (2026) is a scheduled remote degradation of perpetually-licensed Microsoft Office software for macOS and iOS, set for July 13, 2026 when a license-validation certificate used by the Office apps expires. After Office 2019 for Mac reached end of support in October 2023, Microsoft assured customers their installed apps would “continue to function.” The July 13, 2026 conversion instead drops the apps into a Microsoft-defined “reduced functionality mode,” in which files can be opened and viewed but not edited or saved. By May 30, 2026, the original 2023 end-of-support page had been re-dated and rewritten on Microsoft’s site; the “continue to function” clause was removed.
Microsoft’s advice to the users they’re stealing from is to keep using the applications as mere viewers, switch to the free Office 365 web applications, pay for a 365 subscription, or buy a brand new regular copy of Office 2024. None of these make any sense, and clearly, all of this should be illegal, but it’s not because the software industry is a clown show.
Proprietary software is unethical.
Article, HERE from OSNews. h/t Steve
Sigh… I was one of those ‘smart people’…
Guess I’ll be loading Libre Office, HERE. I’ll be dipped if I will use/pay for MS 365 after Microsoft pulled this crap on me.
Grumble… At least this will get rid of the last MS anything I had on any system. I left Windoze in 2019, and I’m glad I did. I find the Apple/Mac systems much more robust and easier to upgrade, and are not connected in any way with Google’s Android.
I have a 365 subscription, because for some reason parts of LibreOffice don’t convert well to Office (sending academic stuff back and forth). However, the computer I have it on is so old that they can’t force the “improvements” into it. Yet.
I have LibreOffice on the newer computer. I don’t love it, but it works. The markup/review function isn’t as smooth, IMHO. YMMV
Adobe did that to Acrobat X (ten) – I have an old laptop with its wifi disabled, because all of a sudden one day the app stopped working as soon as I launched it on my other machines. So I move all my ‘time-bombed’ software to that old coal-burner running Windows 7, and I copy PDFs onto a USB drive to sneak them into ye olde worlde, do the surgery I need on the PDF, then plug the USB back into the current era.
Smart. Keep it air-gapped, because sometimes those applications run stuff in the background on startup that try to silently update themselves.
Fire up a command shell in Administrator mode, then start “msconfig” and see what’s firing up on startup on that Windows 7 box, and you can get rid of some of the silent-running crap.
macOS. I begin to see your problem.
And Google expires Chromebooks after a few years (some on the shelf are nearly expired when you buy them).
“Planned Obsolescence” they call it. I call it a waste of good working electronics, and an unethical business practice.
Just one more reason I am still running Win 10. Win 11 is not backward compatible with my ancient 2007 copy of MS Word, which has obviously served me long and well.
Considering auto repair these days, how long before you “buy” a vehicle, but “rent” the tires?
TXRed- Thanks, I wasn’t aware of that issue…
Cranston- Smart move!!!
Steve- Yeah, sigh
RHT- I’m completely Windoze free as of 2019, never again. When they stopped supporting Win 7 is when I left.
I have loathed Microsoft for years, since they pulled FoxBase licensing from small developers back in the 1980s (yes, I’m old). Yet another reason to never touch a Windows machine…
I dropped MS Office years ago and have been using Google Docs & Sheets. With the changes to Windows OS I am considering a move to Linux OS or Chrome for my next PC.
I looked at Google Docs, and then I looked at the “Google Graveyard” and said, “Nope.”
https://killedbygoogle.com/
I use LibreOffice for ALL new documents now. It’s a joy to work with.
This Latter Day Luddite doesn’t understand much of what all of you are talking about so I will just wish you luck.
So making processors out of integrated circuits actually let us beat a problem that they called ‘the curse of large numbers’.
This ultimately made it possible for me to own a digital computer that can be twenty years old, and the processor still mostly works.
But, I think it is mine, and want to be able to still use it. This has a problem in that I got the software from someone, and sometimes the business gets taken over by bad people. Or was started by bad people.
Now, probably most people don’t get to ten years before they break the software, or have a part go bad that they can’t replace. Or just buy a new machine because in principle it should be better.
Funds were tight when it was cheaper to get better parts, and I am still not really making good use of the machine I splurged on less than ten years ago.
I’m extra fussy right now because of stupid personal reasons, and because of a technology change right now.
Seems MicroFlaccid is determined to follow Bud Light, Jaguar etc.into the dustbin of stupid business models. Itr as if they WANT to piss off customers and drive them away.
All- Wow, seems I ‘hit’ a lot of folks hot buttons! Thanks for the responses that tell me I’m on the right track!!!
I’ve been a Mac person for a long time. It works better for me.
If you are still on a Windows machine and still want access to your files, you may want to look into “Open Office” – it has worked fine for me, but I am now retired and don’t have the same needs as when I was working.