I subscribed to this a couple of years ago for our two home computers, but it seems kind of stupid to keep paying $70/year with no noticeable benefit. I looked online to find out what sort of consequences there might be if I cancel this payment, but couldn’t really make sense out of what MS was telling me.
We have no networking going on between the computers. There is no office network. All documents are stored on the computer and backed up on an external drive.
So my question is this: is Microsoft Office going to suddenly quit working if I cancel the subscription? Are there consequences that I’m not aware of, other than perhaps updates that I don’t care about?
If it’s anything like the business license, they don’t cut you off immediately but you will gradually (over ~3 months or so) lose functionality until you can no longer open Office or even view files. If you have any files stored on MS servers, those will no longer be accessible, either.
If you have an alternative office application, like LibreOffice or the like, you can use that, but MS Office itself will stop working (eventually) if you don’t renew your license.
Basically, you aren’t paying for software updates but for a license to use the software itself.
Yes, it will eventually quit working. The desktop version of Office 365 will periodically check your license status over the internet connection. If I’m reading this correctly, it sounds like you have 90 days before you lose access.
You might want to check LibreOffice if you need standard Office functionality and don’t want to pay.
Yes, Office will stop working after the subscription period lapses. You can buy Office 2019 as a perpetually licensed product, or check out LibreOffice for a free office suite mostly compatible with MS Office
An Office 365 subscription gives you one terabyte of free storage in OneDive, Microsoft’s cloud storage service. That might be worth continuing to pay for the subscription.
Not really, as I don’t create all that many documents in my retired state. I mainly use Word and Excel to retrieve past documents like cookbooks and inventories, and occasionally add to them. Perhaps I’ll look into just purchasing Office 2019 for both the Mac and my laptop for a couple hundred bucks. The $80/yr is just annoying me.
I don’t create a large number of documents either, but my computer contains bank and other financial statements, income tax returns and past records, many photos, some music and other stuff I would not want to lose. So I do back stuff up, although not to Microsoft’s site.
Do you have a relationship with a company or school of some sort? I get Office:Mac perpetual license for either $10 or $20, as well as other MS goodies (mostly for Windows) if I wanted them.
A couple of years ago the place I was working offered us discounted subscriptions to Office for personal use; something like $15 for the download or an extra $10 to get a DVD. I bought the DVD. When I got a new computer, I just installed the DVD on it (I think it allowed three computers & I was still only using one since I stopped using the old one). It’s Office 2013 so it might be missing some of the latest bells & whistles but all of the basic features are still there but really, how many bells & whistles do you need in a word doc or spreadsheet?
See if you can buy an older version; there’s no licensing fee, ever.
