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Say no to Microsoft Office

The time has come to say no to Microsoft Office. If someone sends you an Office document, tell them no and demand they send an open format.

Why? Because Microsoft wasn't happy with being medium sized dicks. They decided to expand their dickishness to massive size. By effectively shutting off all Mac ( so far ) perpetual offline versions of Microsoft Office. Yes. Really.

How is that possible? Well, you see, all those perpetual pay once and that's it copies of Office have a built in time bomb placed there by Microsoft to fuck you out of using it perpetually. Because it's not greedy enough that you have to end up buying Office 30 times ( I know I have; actually 30 times! ). They need to force you into a monthly subscription, because all of us realized about 10 years ago that there is basically no fucking reason to ever upgrade beyond whatever version of Office we happen to have working.

The way the time bomb works is in the form of a certificate in Office that expires. Once it expires Office goes into "read only" mode. It's essentially just checking a date to decide when to fuck you over.

Yes people have contacted Microsoft about this. No they don't give a shit. They are doing it on purpose. They could trivially issue a fix but they are intentionally not.

The kicker? People, companies, etc are still fucking selling these versions of Office that are about to expire. Right now on StackSocial even. StackSocial is effectively intentionally stealing your money lying to you that you can get lifetime offline Office for "the low scam price of $30 before it ceases to work within a month."

Fuck M$. Fuck StackSocial. Say no to Microsoft Office.

The details for those who want to read them can be seen here: consumerrights.wiki

The summary? Office 2019 for Mac gets shitified ( read only mode ) next month. ( in July 2026 )

Office 2021 gets the same treatment October 2026. That's when support for it expires at least. I haven't yet seen confirmation that the certificate within 2021 expires in October and am seeing mixed reports. At some point I'll need to dig into it myself to verify. ( Office 2021 is what I have on my Macs )

In case having Office on your machine cease to work isn't enough to convince you to avoid Microsoft, check out this article where the Wall Street Journal throws Bill Gates under the bus.

The WSJ article is pretty weak sauce though. Next up I'll be getting into that.