New VERSION of MS Office 365

Thanks Phil

My Microsoft Office Home and Student 2010 is nearing the end of support. I only need Word and Excel. It seems an Office 365 subscription and an Office 2019 purchase are both too costly.

What other options are there? What about continuing to run Office 2010?

dobs108

When I got a new laptop last December I added Microsoft Office Home and Student. I was disappointed that its level is 2016 (I was hoping it would be 2019) but I needed Excel and Word and there were a lot of enhancements between the 2010 and 2016 versions. I got everything at Best Buy but I don't remember what I paid for Office, but it has a perpetual license for that one machine so I should be good for several years. I think it was worth the money.

Phil

End of extended support for Microsoft Office 2016 Home and Student is 10/14/2025.

After a Google search, it is apparent that Office 2016 is not really available for sale except for scams.

I use MS Office 2010 Word the odd time, very rarely Excell or Powerpoint so for my use 2010 will be good forever.

Having said that, there is a FREE alternative available and it works with Windows 10. It may need an adjustment learning curve as another program undoubtedly will.

This is "Apache OpenOffice" and you can download it from here:

https://www.openoffice.org/download/

If I recall it does everything MS Office does!

Thanks for the update information-I have been thinking of switching to Libre Office-also free.

Does your employer use MS Office? They may belong to the MS Home User Program.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/home-use-program

thanks for the info on apache open office, I mainly use power point so not worth paying a yearly fee to microsoft to keep my office. I am downloading it as we speak.

I am using Microsoft HUP program. Microsft have disbale activation key for Office 2016. It was working fine until I reinstalled Windows on my laptop and key won't work anymore. I called Microsoft and they told me that Office 2016 was not available anymore. They forced me to buy Office 365 on HUP which is little cheaper than retail version. One good thing I like about O365 is 1 TB Onedrive space for each account. It comes with five accounts in your family.

Until 2019, I used MS Office 2007 Pro. It worked and was functional. Any updates I did were manual. Last year I bought Office 2019 for a deeply discounted price which will pay for itself in less than three years of subscription fees. Even though the software was 12 years older than MS 2007, there was not a lot of difference in functionality. The difference was the look on the screen. There is not much difference between MS 2019 and Office 365 except that I don't get forced to pay an annual subscription fee.

They are essentially both the same thing since LibreOffice started out from OpenOffice.

It started out as StarOffice and became OpenOffice and in 2010
LibreOffice branched off. These are open source programs and are developed by users contributions.

that's helpful info.

.

It is true that Microsoft says all Office 2010 products will no longer be receiving security updates after October 13, 2020. I've used Office 2010 since 2009, though lately, only Word and Excel. If you ever share files with anyone, open their files, etc., going without security updates to Office is ill-advised, and I do share files, so I need to do something besides continuing to use Word and Excel 2010.

There's no way I'm going to pay Microsoft their subscription fee for this product, though, and they've made the new non-subscription versions of their Office software an equally poor bargain with hidden traps (like works on only one PC, can't be moved to a different PC one year or more later), so I need an alternative.

I'm trying LibreOffice now. So far so good. The fonts are different but not bad. A bit of a learning curve but not bad. I do like that there's way less bloatware. If I stay with it, I'll make an annual donation as I do with other open source software I'm using.

I'm still using Office Professional 2007 but I mostly use Word and Excel. I use Access for one lone file to keep a contact database for family and acquaintances.

The programs include: Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Publisher, Accounting Express and Access.

I sometimes share pdf printouts but I never share files with anyone. I don't use Office nearly enough to pay for a subscription. I'll move to Libre office if push comes to shove.

@mcginkleschmidt: I'm not an expert, but this seems safe and reasonable to me. If you *never* share files in either direction, and you're using Office 2007 (already no longer receiving Microsoft security updates), and you're happy with the feature set... then I'd say there's no reason to pay more for newer software. Open source apps have some pluses to recommend them, but in this situation, I'd sign on to "if it ain't broke..."

What's the deal with all the $60 Office 2019 Professional Plus keys for sale, on amazon, ebay, newegg, on and on. If you do get a key, where's the software?

Are these legit? Do they even work? And is there any truth that newer products recheck activation, meaning just because it did activate, doesn't mean it will work tomorrow, next month, next year?

I don't want to fool around with pirated software etc., but want to know the deal.

I have a fully paid for and licensed version of Office Professional 2010, and that's what I just installed on my brand new laptop,, which is Win10 Pro. These days I rarely if ever would use Access, so not sure why I even want Pro, but whatever, had it since 1996 (various versions of Office Pro)....

btw I saw one seller "brand new retail sealed" and it's $135 for 2 pcs and apparently Office 2019 is on a USB and they claim to be an authorized reseller and have 100% positive feedback--30 day returns and eBay money back guarantee....what's going on?

Just entering Microsoft Office 2019 on eBay I see some offered at about $ 3.00 or best offer including free shipping.

If I enter "Brand New Factory sealed" I see it offered for WIn XP, Win 95, 2008. I guess there is every minute.a sucker born.

It is very unlikely that any substantially-discounted Office product will work for long.

Microsoft no longer sells disks for Office. If you're buying standalone, new, legitimately at full-price on amazon, you're buying a license key in a box. You then download the Office suite (and you want to be very careful that you're actually downloading it from the Microsoft website, not a website provided by your seller, which might seem to activate but really install malware on your PC). It takes a long time to download the very bloated Office software, obviously, even on broadband Internet.

So the lack of disks is not the real problem with the $60 "deals" you're seeing, because that's how legitimate Office is purchased too; the real problem is that the key you get will not work at all to authorize Office, or it may work for a month or two, and then as you suggest, Microsoft will invalidate it, and your copy of Office will stop working for you. This happens when a seller distributes one legitimate key to multiple buyers.

Here's an article discussing the scam:
https://office-watch.com/2018/more-office-2019-buying-scams-...

Also be aware that sellers offering Office 365 subscriptions for $3 etc. are also trying to scam you, often to get your credit card number.

The going prices are the going prices. Avoid deals that appeal to the desire to get something for much less, because they are almost certainly a trap to separate you from your money.

Try OfficeLibre instead.
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/
It's open source and totally free software, maintained by many volunteers and donors who think Microsoft needs competition. It works with Microsoft Office files and may do everything you need Office to do.

Or as Melaqueman suggested, Apache Open Office, a similar free competitor.
https://www.openoffice.org/download/
I've tried Libre and like it. I haven't tried AOO, but the buzz is good on both. If you try one of them and don't like it, uninstall it and try the other. And if neither one does it for you, then bite the bullet and shell out--at Microsoft's real prices!--for Office.

In my opinion, if I were to buy the current version of MS 365 I'd go to someplace like Best buy and get it there. It's pricey and it's only a yearly license, but at least you know what you're getting.

Phil

just wondering since amazon, eBay, newegg are legit websites....

I'm ok with Office 2010 Pro seriously. What am I "truly" missing when I use word and excel over 2019? Even my work computer is 2016, not 2019, and not 365 because we are a google shop (everyone hates that lol). Like I said my 2010 is fully paid for legit etc. and it may have been $400 I don't remember--so probably makes sense to continue to use it, until I say, hey, my spreadsheets and docs are inadequate I can't do this anymore....

Great tip, thanks. Downloaded this and so far very impressed. Once I'm confident in it I'll be deleting most of MS Office

You can get burnt buying new software on legit websites. I learned this first-hand one year when I wanted to pay "the lowest price" for TurboTax and bought the download version of it on amazon from a third-party seller. I tried to get it from amazon's software download website, and it wasn't available there. I email the seller and say, "What gives?" and he replies, oh, no problem, here's a link to download it... and it's not an amazon or Intuit web address. It's his own website. Yeah that's a good idea, getting tax software from "a guy," then loading your SSN and financial data into that... NOT. I said you didn't disclose that the software would be downloaded from your website prior to purchase, so I want a refund. And he gave it to me. I paid the going price on Amazon, downloaded directly from them.

Unauthorized software is for sale all the time on legit websites like amazon and eBay.

As an alternative to MS Office you may want to look at "Free Office". It is supposed to be as close in looks as MS Office is.
Downloads as a 111MB file and is totally FREE forever for Mac, Windows and Linux!
https://www.freeoffice.com/en/

Libre Office download also free for Mac, Windows and Linux:
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/?type=win-x86_...

I have downloaded Libre Office and Free Office. to try them out.
Firstly the Libre office is a 302 MB download file and Free Office is only 110MB. So the footprint of Libre Office is 4 times larger on the Disk.
At first try it seems to me that Free Office responds faster too.
Both will open a MS Docs.docx file with no visible difference.

I’ve been using LibreOffice for years. When I worked I needed the real Excel. I had to do a lot of graphing and it had to be quick and presentable. If I wanted e.g. the line on a line graph to change color that was easy. In the many years since I retired I haven’t made much of an effort to learn LibreOffice spreadsheets. In that context I find it’s graphing difficult. My only current use for a spreadsheet is to send my MD an occasional graph of my recent blood pressure. In the beginning I wanted linear regressions of the systolic and diastolic pressures. I didn’t find a primitive function to do that so I had to go back to high school intermediate algebra and use the slope and intercept functions and build the graph myself. As I recall that was unnecessary with Excel. For the price LibreOffice is satisfactory. I must confess that I never have contributed to them.

Word in it’s four thousand versions used to drive me nuts. Word was never compatible with Word. I was associated with an organization that produced a yearly publication of papers presented at a meeting and we had pretensions that we could really peer review the papers. Papers were submitted for review with authors and their associations deleted. The reviewers had every last different version of Word. Unfortunately what is deleted in one version of Word is presented as intact and crossed out in another version. The review can no longer be regarded as impartial when the author is known. There were other failures like that but the most glaring was that complicated graphs were often rendered unreadable with conflicting versions of Word.

To decide if LibreOffice will be satisfactory for you consider both it’s functionality and if it meets any requirements you may have for sharing documents with others. My requirements are minimal and LibreOffice has much more than I need.

Simply put, LibreOffice or other free or cheap Office software works well IF you do not have to deal with Microsoft Office documents. They are not completely compatible. Been there done that in early 2000 with Star Office. The more complex the MS Office documents, the more messed up they become when opened with non MS Office software. When almost all companies you deal with use MS Office, you have no choice but to use it as well. Save the headache.

My only criticism of what you are saying is that M$ Office versions are (actually my knowledge isn't up-to-date) wildly incompatible with one another too.

This situation has changed since 2000. Beginning with Office 2007, Microsoft adopted open document standards (e.g. .docx and .xslx) to avoid this issue. But your point is still a concern because as minke indicated, Microsoft keeps fiddling with its own file formats.

Just a couple of days ago I encountered my first issue with LibreOffice, and it related to your point. I was sharing editing on a Word 2007 .docx file with somebody who still works from home with his "permanent-"license Office 2007. Like me, his reaction to continuing to pay Microsoft their current price for basic needs in word processing and spreadsheets is: absolutely not. If MS offered the prices they offered just a decade ago for basic home use, that would be different. But year-over-year, both Microsoft's subscription and non-subscription models are priced quite a bit higher than the standalone model for home use then and are difficult to justify for many light users like us, retired, not routinely sharing documents in an office environment.

Our problem related to spacing within lines of text. Some spaces on text I added got dropped, for example, when I opened his Word 2007 .docx file in my current LibreOffice, edited it, Saved it As a.docx file and sent it back to him. The spacing looked fine on my PC but off in places on his.

I websearched it. This is a known issue, and not just with LibreOffice, but even within slightly different versions of Office because of minke's point. It is Microsoft's fault, not their competitors'.

The workaround to try first if this is only an occasional issue: don't Save As .docx. Save As .doc. This worked fine for us. It may not work for people who need more advanced Word features incorporated since 2007.

The functional requirement to enable "undo" requires maintaining an undo queue with both your raw data and your formatting included. I presume that the queue and it's management us quite complicated. As much as I love the undo feature I recognize that it undid me. Not to suggest that this was the only problem area,,,

basing your information of a program you used 10 years ago, things have a way of changing in 10 years !

how do you know what version you have.
thanks.

On the main ribbon, click the left-most tab, "File." Near the bottom on the left-hand menu, click on "Account." Everything you've ever wanted to know is on that page.

Phil

Microsoft 365 suffers outage across the U.S.:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/28/tech/microsoft-outage/index.h...

My Microsoft Office 2010 is still operating properly since it is not networked.

dobs108

On Windows

If you have Windows, open a Word document, choose File from the top left corner, and then click either Account or Help on the left navigation bar. You’ll see your Office version and information under Product information, on the right side of the window.

If you don’t see File>Account or File>Help, you might be using a very old version of Office.

Personally, if running Windows, I suggest the use of Belarc Advisor because it will report the version as well as the product keys as well as a ton of other info regarding your PC.

It is free and can be downloaded from https://www.belarc.com/products_belarc_advisor

On Mac

If you have a Mac, open Word, go to Word menu, and click About Word.
In the dialog box that opens, the version will either appear in the middle (Mac 2016), or on the top left corner (Mac 2011).

See https://downdetector.com/status/office-365/

Still running Office 2013. Works fine for my needs. Doubt I'll ever update.

While some of the reporting implied that all use of Office 365 was affected, I think most functions for most installations don't have a moment-by-moment need even for Internet access at all.

I've made new installations on two computers of Office 365 in the last week (made in response to the "end of support" nag message on my existing Office). I just now clicked on Excel and it opened right up, offering me my files recently accessed on the previous Office, and opened one just fine.

Libre Office has just announced a new update to version 7.0.2

Download it here and select you Operating system, Linux, MacOS, or Windows in the box:

https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/

I've tried Open Office but found I did not like it, I like Libre Office better.
With Open Office you have to purchase certain additions if you want more than the basic program.

Isn't Libre Office a free-b-ie office kinda program from IBM?

Document Fondation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice

I've been using LibreOffice now since last year and I have to say I don't miss MS Office.
It can even read PDF files.
Just updated to LibreOffice to v. 7.1.4.2

I just converted from Office 2016 to Microsoft 365. I don't like to fall to far behind in versions because it can make upgrades much more difficult.

I'm still running Office 2007 on one of my computers just fine. Unless you need some of the newer features there really is no need to upgrade.

Otherwise OpenOffice or LibreOffice are very nice free alternatives.

which is helpful.

The only advantage I see with Office 365 that it comes with 1 TB Onedrive cloud storage per account. Otherwise for casual home user, you don't need new features. But I love Onedrive because everything is backed up on onedrive. I can wipe my laptop without thinking and re-install Windows anytime because all the important stuff is already backup. Some people may not like cloud storage and find it too risky.

I don't like subscriptions. MS used to let us thru work get the non-subscription version for a nominal fee, now it is subscription only and much more costly.

Switched from Office 2007 to what has become LibreOffice. Have never looked back. Free open source and it is not much of a learning curve at all.

I also have the Home and Student version, but at the 2016 level. A few months ago I almost bit the bullet and bought the 2020 level. I don't need the new functions but I do like to poke around and try new things in Excel. Fortunately, common sense punched me in the nose and I decided not to get it.

Phil

I also don't like subscriptions. There are perpetual licenses for Office 2019. I recently purchased an Office 2019 with perpetual license through a friend who works at Microsoft.
Mark