[psmith2.0]

Says so right here.

Some caveats/catches (always are), but for those who like to buy and be done, vs. monthly subscription, that's good news.

I don't use it so this doesn't affect me in the least, but I assume quite a few here use Office.

Not sure if it's a fluke/one-off thing, or a sign of the pendulum swinging back in the other direction a bit (and maybe, someday, even Adobe might offer two buying options as well). I have no plans to go back to them anyway at this point, but I know that would be welcome by many.

We're all getting "monthed to death" (all the streaming services falling out of the sky the past year or so, Adobe, Office 360, etc.), it seems, so something useful/desirable that isn't based on yet another monthly fee/bill is just nice to see. Refreshing.

[kscherer]

A buy-it-and-own-it version of Office has existed all along. Office Home & Student has been a thing for $149 for ages. We sell it in the store, and have carried both the 2016 and 2019 versions.

It's not all monthly subscriptions.

[psmith2.0]

Good to know. This doesn't seem like it'll be called that, so I don't know what makes the difference. In any case, a new version is coming in 2021, so it should have a least a few things that differentiates it from the 2019. Even if it's just dropping the "home office and student" part of the name. The article says that Microsoft says all their improvement/innovation is done in the cloud-based, subscription stuff, but a lot of people probably won't care. I don't know what the differences are in the home office/student version vs. the "real" one...major stuff, or just lots of little features here and there? Like Adobe, is a large part of it cloud/collaboration-oriented features? Because, if so, that certainly doesn't matter to tons of users.

And I didn't say all is, but the biggies seem to be. Outside of Adobe and Microsoft, who really gives a shit, right?

I'm joking. A little...

I'm not eager to fall into that, so I like knowing new stuff coming out isn't only available that way. That's the point.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 Not sure if it's a fluke/one-off thing,

Nope.

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 or a sign of the pendulum swinging back in the other direction a bit

Nor that.

Microsoft has continued to do non-subscription releases every ~2-4 years, for most of their product lineup.

Like, you can even buy just individual products, like Excel 2019 for $140, if you like.

So, I wouldn't extrapolate a shift from this. There's probably some beancounters at MS that hope that the amount of people who still buy this variant eventually reaches below 1% or whatever threshold they pick, and then they kill it off.

[chucker]

(I wonder how much of this IT departments come into play here. Perhaps they, in this case, act as a good conservative force, whereas Adobe's customers are more likely to install the apps on their own and thus, for this part, don't have IT backing?)

[psmith2.0]

My Mom has Home Office & Student Office 2008. It's in a little yellow box, and I don't think she ever updated it. It was around $150 I believe...so long ago. She opens Word about three times a year, and I think she keeps track of her DVDs in Excel. I'm 98% sure PowerPoint has never been launched.

Someone tried to teach me the basics of Excel ages ago...my forehead exploded, and in my weakness and despair I turned to heroin.

[chucker]

Spreadsheets are kinda neat for some quick napkin calculations.

You might be more into something like Soulver, though. https://www.acqualia.com/soulver/

[turtle]

My mom just bought Office 2019 Home & Business outright so she wouldn't have a monthly fee for her Mac. Funny thing is, she's retired and doesn't have to use any of it. My brother uses Excel and my mom still helps him with spreadsheets so she wanted Excel and not a different brand.

[drewprops]

I still run Office 2011 on a daily basis and have gone back and forth over the option to buy the standalone version when I upgrade to a new machine with a new OS.

My decision will be based on the refresh cycle on the software vs the sunk costs vs being able to freeze at some point (as I've done with this machine, on MacOS V10.12).


...

[Frank777]

I use iWork, but I have Office 2016 for emergencies.

Will likely upgrade to 2021 in conjunction with an M1X Mac purchase later this year.

[kscherer]

I just use iWork.

[PB PM]

I use iWork on Mac or open source on a PC, will never use MS office again. There is simply no reason to unless you need MS Offices database app, which is Windows only anyway.

[Frank777]

Haven't upgraded to MS Office yet, so I just downloaded LibreOffice to work on something in a pinch, and it seems fine.

But man, that icon is just brutally ugly. It makes me want to delete the whole thing just to get it out of my dock.

[turtle]

I make my kids use OpenOffice.

It is also ugly, but interoperates with MS Office too. Really, Once I trained them to use the export feature of Pages, Keynote and Numbers they are also compatible. Since their school expects certain projects and assignments to be submitted via Word or Excel (normally) they can just used the Apple titles.

[kscherer]

Originally Posted by kscherer A buy-it-and-own-it version of Office has existed all along. Office Home & Student has been a thing for $149 for ages. We sell it in the store, and have carried both the 2016 and 2019 versions. It's not all monthly subscriptions.

Update:

The 2021 version is now available for the same $149.99.

[psmith2.0]

For the handful of people I know who insist on having Office, that's good for them. I'll pass the word.

[Frank777]

I thought there used to be a Home version good for multiple computers, but they may have killed that off in the push for Office 365.

Once good ole psmith2.0 fires up Affinity and fixes the icon for LibreOffice, it'll be fine for me.

[psmith2.0]

Is it that little dog-eared document icon? Post here what it is you dislike so much so I can be sure I’m seeing the same thing.

[Frank777]

I tried to post the image and deleted it because (I think) the icon I was pointing to was in SVG format.

If you go to the LibreOffice Twitter Page, you'll see a row of coloured icons for the various suite programs (word processing, spreadsheet etc.) Those are fine.

The main (white/grey?) icon they want me to put in my dock is in the profile picture circle. And that is not happening, ever.

[drewprops]

This year I developed a spreadsheet in Excel that uses some new database formulas. The result is pretty incredible and has expanded the efficiency of my employer in ways they never imagined. I believe that the Google spreadsheet app uses these functions as well, and perhaps they exist in the free spreadsheet alternatives, but they were a revelation to me since I have been constrained to Office 2011 on my main machine.

I had to build the spreadsheet using my newer machine, a 2 year old Mac Mini, running Office 365 provided by the employer since Office 2011 lacked those features.

Since I need to migrate my email database from Outlook from Office 2011 to the new Outlook, I'm trying to decide on the best purchase.

I think that owning the app would be better than relying on making monthly or annual payments to maintain access to my email records.

Unless I attempted to migrate many gigabytes to the cloud in an Office 365 plan...

Any advice?


...

[chucker]

Where are your e-mails stored? Is this POP3? Exchange? IMAP?

I'd say Office 365 is worth it if 1) you are fine with the privacy implications and 2) you use multiple of their services.

For example, if you use their Exchange server for e-mail, calendar, etc., then that may be cheaper and/or less hassle in the long run to have them manage it. Another thing that's nice and works pretty well about Office 365 is collaboration: working together on a Word document with multiple people, say. And you can just install it on your iPhone and iPad to quickly access stuff on the go.

If all you're doing is run Excel and Outlook, and if your Outlook's server isn't Exchange anyway, then I think the $250 standalone Office Home & Business 2021 is the better deal.

[psmith2.0]

Originally Posted by Frank777 I tried to post the image and deleted it because (I think) the icon I was pointing to was in SVG format. If you go to the LibreOffice Twitter Page, you'll see a row of coloured icons for the various suite programs (word processing, spreadsheet etc.) Those are fine. The main (white/grey?) icon they want me to put in my dock is in the profile picture circle. And that is not happening, ever.

It’s a little plain, but not the horror show I’d imagined. If, like the other individual icons, there was something in that big expanse - a symbol of some sort or even just the letters “LO”, it might not look so generic or “broken”. It does look a little of both. And the lack of color is a little odd/different, for sure. It does indeed look like a generic placeholder icon substituted by the OS because the real one got lost or corrupted. It’s about as bland and “could be anything” as it gets.

But if it does the job and is a good app, I’d just suck it up and be okay with it. Goodness knows I’ve had some weirdo, goofy - and/or criminally ugly - icons in my dock over the years!

[psmith2.0]

Speaking of weirdo, goofy and/or criminally ugly...I got nothin'!



I think you're better off just learning to like the blank, plain one.

So how does that work...why does that sit in your Dock? It's not an actual app itself, those colored, detailed ones are the actual apps. What happens when you click on the one you dislike so much? Does it open a folder that contains all the others? The Apple iWork and MS Office stuff all sits in the dock as individual icons of each app, there's no overall "container" icon (unless things have changed in more recent versions of macOS (I'm still on Mojave).

[kscherer]

Originally Posted by Frank777 I thought there used to be a Home version good for multiple computers, but they may have killed that off in the push for Office 365.

Yes, the Home and Student version used to cover 3 computers for $149.99, but that was discontinued with 365.

Got to sell those subscriptions!

[psmith2.0]

People are gonna get "subscriptioned-out". That's all people do anymore, pay nickel-and-diming monthly "subscriptions" to silliness they can't possibly use to its fullest, once it's all tallied up: (multiple) streaming TV services because God forbid we can't just turn on the TV and get a huge choice of whatever we like...oh, wait; that's exactly what we've had for four-plus decades , software, podcasts, iOS apps, food home delivery/cooking, gym memberships, cigar/wine/coffee/dildo o' the month clubs, online "news", a slightly-less-shitty YouTube experience, music-listening, etc.



I'm waiting for Home Depot and Lowes to wade into this nonsense with their take on it. "We have several subscription plans on the Ryobi miter saws, Dewalt cordless tools and paintable caulk!"

GFY.

[drewprops]

Originally Posted by chucker Where are your e-mails stored? Is this POP3? Exchange? IMAP?

The accounts on that app are probably IMAP.

I do already use Office 365 with two employers and am familiar with the usefulness of collaborative sharing. This would essentially be me bringing all of the stuff under one tent, with my personal inboxes continuing to use IMAP and my work accounts getting pulled in via the O365 login.

I had not considered migrating my personal email accounts into 365.


...

[drewprops]

Update on Word 2021 on my new MBPM1x

With the release of MacOS 12.2 the search problem in Outlook 2021 has been fixed.

New problem: over the past 2 days I have twice reopened a Word file to discover that my progress was not recorded. I have ZERO idea why this would be happening but I will now be saving a new numbered version of the file when I walk away at the end of each session, from now on.


...

[Frank777]

I don't get this.

It's $29.99 for one license, or $64.99 for two. The math seems suspect. What am I missing?

[drewprops]

Originally Posted by Frank777 I don't get this. It's $29.99 for one license, or $64.99 for two. The math seems suspect. What am I missing?

Did you carry the 2?

...

[PB PM]

Originally Posted by Frank777 I don't get this. It's $29.99 for one license, or $64.99 for two. The math seems suspect. What am I missing?

Nothing, you are right it's cheaper to buy two separate licenses.