Microsoft Office 2021 Perpetual License Disabled After Software Update

(learn.microsoft.com)

8 points | by nialse 5 hours ago ago

8 comments

  • nialse 5 hours ago ago

    Casually opening a Word document to do some adjustments, a number of popups appeared. Word is disabled until buying a M365 license. It's not that it doesn't get updated, editing is disabled. How on earth do they get away with this?

    • Danox 4 hours ago ago

      Don’t let them, just move on. The days are pretty much over in terms of using Microsoft Word at a personal level away from the office why? It doesn’t add anything special, the only program worth using is Excel. And even that is slowly fading away. Adobe and Quark are also declining too.

      • nialse an hour ago ago

        It actually trigged installation of WordCraft to fix the document and export as pdf. Maybe it won't do everything Word does, but it did this task well. Now I'm willing to use it again, especially considering I don't want to subscribe for basic computer use.

    • d3Xt3r 4 hours ago ago

      > How on earth do they get away with this?

      By having trillions of dollars, that's how. Even if they get hit with a lawsuit, it'll be some million dollar fine, which is chump change for them.

      The best way to deal with this is to not use their products in the first place. And now that we've got OnlyOffice and ArtCraft, there's almost no reason to continue using the MS Office suite, unless you're a corporate customer.

    • bell-cot 4 hours ago ago

      How on earth do they...

      They are the 900# gorilla, and the screams of the smallfolk have no effect on their bottom line.

      • Danox 4 hours ago ago

        They are sadly mistaken. Microsoft is slowly fading away to irrelevance. In fact, the age of Nandella is coming to an end I’ve said it before. “Microsoft does not know how to compete when the playing field is level” and the same applies to their evil twin Intel.

        • bell-cot 3 hours ago ago

          You are thinking long-term. In the late-stage capitalist taxonomy, long term is a subspecies of lip service.

  • gnabgib 3 hours ago ago

    This is in Mac-Office, the reporter apparently didn't see the outcry 5 months ago:

    Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion (1015 points, 376 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48341578

    Microsoft Deliberately Bricking All Office for Mac 2019/2021 Installations (16 points) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48390461

    Microsoft Office 2019 for Mac Will Soon Stop Letting You Edit Documents (25 points, 3 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48391060