Microsoft changing terms of service - taking away right to licensed material.

Thread Starter

Tonyr1084

Joined Sep 24, 2015
7,852
I received an email this morning from Microsoft. They're changing their terms of service. I regularly use MSWord and MSExcel. According to the new terms I have to sign into my account once every one - or two - years, not certain which, or I will lose my license. I NEVER sign into MSOffice. The version I have is the one where I paid for the service license without expiration. Under the new terms it looks like they're saying if I don't sign in I may lose my right to use the program. I have deliberately NOT upgraded to the latest version because there the agreement is to RENT the license, not OWN. $99 a year I think was the cost - I could be wrong. This really ticks me off! They want to pull away my original agreement by saying "We retain the right to change the terms of service whenever we gaud dam feel like it." This is a money grab in my opinion.

SO: I'm familiar with Apple's version of Word and Excel. Are there any other versions that DON'T hold the risk of losing the right to use their programs? Geez! I have a ton of spread sheets I've built over the years.

Yeah, I know it's $99 a year - but I'm a fussy old codger who doesn't like being ripped off. I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT MY SIGN IN WAS, I've never used it. PITA!
 

wayneh

Joined Sep 9, 2010
17,496
I'm using Excel 16.48 on macOS. I have no email from MS later than 2016.

It might be the nature of your license. MS loves to have all sorts of different levels of privilege (so they can extract maximum revenue by different pricing for different customers). Student, home, office, etc. Mine is a "volume license" and as far as I know, it's mine to use forever.
 

Deleted member 115935

Joined Dec 31, 1969
0
I received an email this morning from Microsoft. They're changing their terms of service. I regularly use MSWord and MSExcel. According to the new terms I have to sign into my account once every one - or two - years, not certain which, or I will lose my license. I NEVER sign into MSOffice. The version I have is the one where I paid for the service license without expiration. Under the new terms it looks like they're saying if I don't sign in I may lose my right to use the program. I have deliberately NOT upgraded to the latest version because there the agreement is to RENT the license, not OWN. $99 a year I think was the cost - I could be wrong. This really ticks me off! They want to pull away my original agreement by saying "We retain the right to change the terms of service whenever we gaud dam feel like it." This is a money grab in my opinion.

SO: I'm familiar with Apple's version of Word and Excel. Are there any other versions that DON'T hold the risk of losing the right to use their programs? Geez! I have a ton of spread sheets I've built over the years.

Yeah, I know it's $99 a year - but I'm a fussy old codger who doesn't like being ripped off. I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT MY SIGN IN WAS, I've never used it. PITA!
Are you certan it was ms, and not a scam ?
 

Thread Starter

Tonyr1084

Joined Sep 24, 2015
7,852
Not sure off hand which Office I have but I also run a Mac computer. I miss Lotus123 and WordPerfect. Those were simple and great. What more would anyone need from a word processor beyond what WP did?! As for Lotus, it was every bit as good as Excel back in the day. But I'll look into all recommendations.

MY Excel is before they went to the License Rental method where you paid $99 a year and got automatic updates as you go. I bought the one where I OWNED the license for it. Now they want to change their TOS to better extract - as you say - Revenue. Sadly, they will be losing out.

Somewhere I have the Apple version of office, but didn't find it very impressive. If I have to go backwards - I can go back to that. Also, the latest Mac OS programs won't run older versions of Office, prompting me to purchase the rental version.

Thanks.
 

Thread Starter

Tonyr1084

Joined Sep 24, 2015
7,852
Are you certan it was ms, and not a scam ?
The email will not automatically open when it is viewed. Rather, I get all the source information so I believe it's legitimate. They're not asking for any info, and my firewall will block all attempts to upload something I don't want. Though these days I'm never 100% confident, I'm fairly confident it is from MS.

Here's the website - if you dare to open it:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/servicesagreement/upcoming.aspx#serviceslist

My Excel version is 14.7.2. A little older but back from when you BOUGHT a license to fly it. My beef is that they want to take their agreement back.
 

SamR

Joined Mar 19, 2019
5,031
Are you certan it was ms, and not a scam ?
Yep, it is, I got the same notification and confirmed it was from MS. Didn't look into it so I missed the sign-in requirements and will need to rethink my subscription. Thx for the heads up!
 

Deleted member 115935

Joined Dec 31, 1969
0
Wow,
MS have a habit of doing this sort of thing,
Wife was with company that had licence that people could get discount versions of office,
About 1/4 the normal price.
then after 2 years , they agreement was terminated, and wife had to purchase full licence,
so ended up paying 1 1/4 times for the discount licence.

Another, I had 5 copies of office on 5 PC's , when one PC broke, they would not let us re register office on the new machine as it had a new disc. Ended up having to put old disc in machine then registering, then cloning to new disk, and then coudl re register as only disc had changed !
 

Papabravo

Joined Feb 24, 2006
21,157
Another vote for LibreOffice. I have been using it for a more than a decade since Version 3. We are now on Version 7. Two main features:
  1. I can open any Microsoft document in the equivalent LibreOffice program, edit it and save it in one of several formats
  2. I can can export a document directly to PDF
Under these condition why would anybody put up with having their pockets picked in the fashion they are heading to. Cut the cord man, you'll be glad you did. Don't forget to send them an FU email in reply to their money grab and post it on social media if you have one of those accounts. They hate bad publicity.
 

atferrari

Joined Jan 6, 2004
4,764
Just in case, macros for Excel could hardly work, if at all, with those open / libre versions. Nasty surprise to me, some years ago.
 

KeithWalker

Joined Jul 10, 2017
3,063
Just in case, macros for Excel could hardly work, if at all, with those open / libre versions. Nasty surprise to me, some years ago.
I never had that problem. For a number of recent years I ran and updated a spreadsheet in Libre that was developed in Excel, with lots of macros and sorting. It was the weekly stats for our pool league. I shared the pdf and printed results with the members. During that time, I added a few more features. I passed it over to the new stats man who is working with it in Excel now. We never encountered a compatibility problem. Libre appears to have excellent upward compatibility, too.
















































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BobaMosfet

Joined Jul 1, 2009
2,110
I received an email this morning from Microsoft. They're changing their terms of service. I regularly use MSWord and MSExcel. According to the new terms I have to sign into my account once every one - or two - years, not certain which, or I will lose my license. I NEVER sign into MSOffice. The version I have is the one where I paid for the service license without expiration. Under the new terms it looks like they're saying if I don't sign in I may lose my right to use the program. I have deliberately NOT upgraded to the latest version because there the agreement is to RENT the license, not OWN. $99 a year I think was the cost - I could be wrong. This really ticks me off! They want to pull away my original agreement by saying "We retain the right to change the terms of service whenever we gaud dam feel like it." This is a money grab in my opinion.

SO: I'm familiar with Apple's version of Word and Excel. Are there any other versions that DON'T hold the risk of losing the right to use their programs? Geez! I have a ton of spread sheets I've built over the years.

Yeah, I know it's $99 a year - but I'm a fussy old codger who doesn't like being ripped off. I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT MY SIGN IN WAS, I've never used it. PITA!
Welcome to Microsoft- They've been trying this pay for use thing for years. Glad I never bought into their later schemes.
 
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