this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2026
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/48806122

A license verification certificate expires and when it expires, Microsoft Office for Mac assumes it's unlicensed even if it has been fully paid for.

So, any idiot who paid for Office 2019 for Mac "perpetual" will lose access to it next month.

The same will happen with Office 2021 and Office 2024 in the future.

Pirates are unaffected, only who paid for the product gets punished

Good job 👍🏻

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[–] magnue@lemmy.world 26 points 8 hours ago (4 children)
[–] poopkins@lemmy.world 4 points 4 hours ago

It's an appeal directly to the thriving community of intellectual property pirates here on Lemmy in order to make the post directly to the front page.

[–] PumaStoleMyBluff@lemmy.world 12 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

It can sometimes be annoying when news communities require posts to use an article's original headline, but it definitely makes sense at times.

[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 5 points 7 hours ago

Like this time

[–] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago
[–] WrathEnchanter@europe.pub 5 points 8 hours ago

You think so? I only see an acurate representation oft reality

[–] Passerby6497@lemmy.world 50 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Rossman posted a video a while ago about how Microsoft updated their site without noting they updated it to gaslight their customers into thinking it's always said that.

There's a reason these companies are trying to kill the archive sites, it lets people call them on their bullshit.

Edit: YouTube source

[–] worhui@lemmy.world 9 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

While people are piling on Microsoft, I have had issues with older software needing workarounds for certificates. Especially on the Mac OsX.

How is this anything other than a basic security cert issue?

[–] BillCheddar@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

So that means Microsoft doesn't need to honor their contracts with users?

Interesting legal strategy, cotton.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

That's all it is, which is why it's so obvious they just want people to subscribe now. Very issue is the smallest thing they could do, and they can't be bothered.

Folks tell your Mac friends about Libre Office

[–] worhui@lemmy.world -1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

The stand alone versions of office(2021 and 2024) that are under support are being updated and work. So this isn't directly targeted to end all standalone support.

It's nothing special to Microsoft and is more an issue with vintage software. Early security models require some level of cracking to install vintage software even on vintage hardware with a vintage OS.

The hardware it was made for has almost rolled off processor support.

If you can find an official release tagged back to the publisher on archive.org your going to have to put some work in. https://archive.org/details/Office-2019-Collection

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

This isn't that some architecture isn't supported or there's some new unseen dependency that failed, it's a cert expiry. Something that happens millions of times per day and can be completely automated.

[–] worhui@lemmy.world 1 points 11 minutes ago

At what point past the official support window are they required to make updates?

I have a bunch of software that I have bought licenses to over the decades. At around a decade if a company is still supporting a product it seems like going above and beyond.

I’d been able to get support from adobe on photoshop 6 about 12 years after it was released and that seemed pretty extra.

[–] Dvixen@lemmy.world 15 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Not surprised in the least. It's all about maintaining incoming cash flow.

They cancelled my Win11 (from purchased Win10 eligible upgrade) key earlier this year when I replaced a failed motherboard.

Happy to be free of their ecosystem. Should have jumped free long ago.

Welcome to the other side. Breathe the free air again

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 19 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (3 children)

I'm not sure I'm cool with calling people 'idiots' in this scenario. We don't blame the victims of con men when they're stolen from, and this is the same thing, just on a bigger scale.

That said, here is the obligatory linking to LibreOffice: https://www.libreoffice.org/

It's free and a better choice.

[–] architect@thelemmy.club 8 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

We need to quit focusing on stuff like this. If somebody calls you a fucking idiot so fucking what?

And we do blame the victims constantly. The people that blame the victims do nothing but fucking win.

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[–] Zorcron@lemmy.zip 12 points 10 hours ago

OOP’s comment on the original post that the cross-poster should have shared:

Disclaimer: I wrote "idiot" to describe someone who paid for the product not because they're actually idiots, but it's because Microsoft is treating them like that: their official solution on the website is "simply subscribe to the latest and greatest or buy a new "perpetual" license to office 2024 to continue using what you paid for"

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 49 points 14 hours ago (3 children)
[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 13 hours ago (6 children)

Since the OP specifies Mac users, as a Mac user, I find iWork perfectly serviceable. I think it's a bit controversial with its "Ribbon" on the right rather than the top, though it kind of makes sense. I don't love iWork (Writer, Numbers, and Keynote), but they are good and they come with Macs (or at the very least are free in the App Store).

I have tried LibreOffice recently, and I didn't care for it. But I am glad that such a robust free office suite is available on Windows. I believe some Linux distros ship with it, too. If I didn't have iWork, I'd probably just use LibreOffice. It's not terrible, I just have a better choice.

[–] teohhanhui@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago

a robust free office suite

The few times I tried using LibreOffice, it's anything but robust. Very bad UX, and even worse, it frequently crashes and fails to recover, resulting in data loss. And I've only been using Linux for more than 10 years now.

[–] setsubyou@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

The Apple office apps are still free, but they do have an add-on subscription too now.

[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 hours ago

Yes... I was able to disable the subscription-oriented tools from Numbers (Excel) but not Pages (Word). Maybe I didn't try hard enough. They're marked so you can just not click on them, but there's a way to hide them. I did it on one, I can probably do it on the others.

They're completely free with a subscription for GenAI stuff that wasn't there before. They didn't take anything away from the free product.

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[–] ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip 21 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Victim blaming is definitely how you win people to your side... Dumbass

[–] architect@thelemmy.club 3 points 11 hours ago

Seem to have worked for this fucking shitty ass president. And his shitty ass fucking party. And I’ll be honest it seems to work for every major corporation.

The victim blaming definitely works, Just ask anybody who was raped.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 131 points 17 hours ago (24 children)

Idiots?

I'm not one of them, but what makes them idiots? Seems kind of uncalled for.

[–] FartMaster69@lemmy.dbzer0.com 131 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

It just wouldn’t be a lemmy post without a smug sense of superiority.

[–] mspencer712@programming.dev 10 points 13 hours ago

Agreed. I don’t know if this is the term for it, but I’ve been thinking of all this as “signaling disrespect,” a deliberate attempt to make people think of their peers as lesser, as other.

I feel like either people have been conditioned to do this online all the time for some reason, or maybe there’s some directed attack against civility. I don’t know. But I refuse to let myself be affected by it. I won’t hate people.

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[–] Zephorah@discuss.online 85 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Not sure why they’re idiots, trying to go the non-sub option is smart, doesn’t vote for subs. Microsoft is the asshole here.

[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Not sure why OP is sitting here tanking these hits, but I don't think OP meant to call people who bought perpetual licenses to Office idiots. I think they're saying that Microsoft thinks they're idiots. Still, OP should have clarified that or at least answered at least one person who asked.

[–] wols@lemmy.zip 8 points 11 hours ago

Because it's a repost.
If you go to the original, OP actually has the top comment explaining exactly that: "idiots" refers to MS treating their customers as such, not a judgement by OP.

[–] Epzillon@lemmy.world 44 points 15 hours ago (7 children)

Victim-blaming is the real stupidity here. Microsoft harasses its customers (again) and now the customers are the idiots?

This is the same type of propaganda Nvidia is trying to push. Jensen Huang saying "people should have planned better, the rising prices of hardware was imminent" is the exact same tactic of being the cause of the problem and still putting the blame of everyone else.

[–] rapchee@lemmy.world 3 points 10 hours ago

imo it was sarcasm

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[–] melfie@lemmy.zip 11 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Not even worth pirating when there are better open source alternatives.

[–] bhamlin@lemmy.world 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)
[–] username123@sh.itjust.works 3 points 7 hours ago

I plunder booty.

[–] Mwa@thelemmy.club 16 points 13 hours ago

classic Micro$lop

[–] Th4tGuyII@fedia.io 58 points 16 hours ago

I'd argue trying to avoid yet another subscription by paying upfront was an honest and good faith strategy. The problem was assuming Microsoft also acts in good faith, and wouldn't just take the money and run like they have just 7 years in.

Honestly for things like this, I would struggle to be convinced that these folks aren't entirely within their right to take back what they already bought in good faith by pirating it.

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