Microsoft Removing Standalone Office Features to Force Users Towards Office 365

[CrAKeN]

 

Microsoft announced last week that starting October 13, 2020, customers who purchased a copy of a standalone Office product — such as Office 2010, Office 2013, and Office 2016 — will have their access revoked to Skype for Business and OneDrive for Business accounts.

 

Access to these accounts came with the perpetual license customers bought for the standalone Office copy.

 

Microsoft says that when mainstream support ends for Office 2016, on October 13, 2020, so does this access, but that customers can regain it by ditching standalone Office suites and moving to a cloud-based Office 365 ProPlus account.

 

"We’re providing more than three years’ notice to give IT time to plan and budget for this change," Microsoft said in a statement. "Until this new requirement goes into effect in 2020, Office 2010, Office 2013 and Office 2016 perpetual clients will still be able to connect to Office 365 services [Skype and OneDrive for Business]."

 

Experts say this is a veiled attempt to force customers to move to its Office 365 paid service. Last year, Microsoft boasted of having more than 85 million Office 365 customers.

 

Just like Adobe, Microsoft is trying to move away from the classic license-based purchase model to a monthly subscription service, known to bring in stable revenue and a quicker return for any investments in new features.

 

Also this past week, Microsoft announced that major updates for Office 365 ProPlus and the Windows 10 OS will be synchronized and delivered at the same time, twice per year, one update in March, and one update in September. The company said it took this decision to make the upgrade process easier for companies and sysadmins.

 

Source

[straycat19]

Why use Skype and OneDrive?  No business, university, or government that I know of uses these.  Some provide their own cloud and have their own cloud based phone service while others use other products not from Microsoft.  Microsoft must really be getting desperate to basically threaten users into Windows 10 and Office 365.  All the more reason to use these three years to find other solutions that don't include Microsoft.  

[PrEzi]

6 hours ago, straycat19 said:

Why use Skype and OneDrive?  No business, university, or government that I know of uses these.  Some provide their own cloud and have their own cloud based phone service while others use other products not from Microsoft.  Microsoft must really be getting desperate to basically threaten users into Windows 10 and Office 365.  All the more reason to use these three years to find other solutions that don't include Microsoft.  

Actually I know (big) companies that use Lync/Skype for Business but still officially roll-out Office 2013 on their PCs.

Let's wait and see --- if the push from M$ side will go on like this then they will just switch to other platforms.

[luisam]

14 hours ago, CrAKeN said:

Microsoft announced last week that starting October 13, 2020, customers who purchased a copy of a standalone Office product — such as Office 2010, Office 2013, and Office 2016 — will have their access revoked to Skype for Business and OneDrive for Business accounts.

 

I'm using Office 2010 on Windows XP and 2016 on Windows 7 but don't even have these apps installed and no intention to install any of them in a previsible future. OK,  I'm not a "company" (neither big nor small) so I'm not a good company for  Micro$oft.

If this is a strategy of Micro$oft to get rid of installable standalone  Office and push people to 365, they are way wrong. There are some really good MS Office FREE alternatives. And of course, existing versions of Office, like 2016, 2010 and even older 2003 are more than enough for my personal requirements.

Looks to me that Micro$oft has lost its course. They are working to make sales for "companies" and "corporations" while most of the users of their more popular products are individual users, not too ready to spend their good money on replacing what works for them.

[Karlston]

I wonder how long it will be before Microsoft decrees that their stand-alone Office suite is not compatible with Windows 7/8/8.1, or with Kaby Lake and later CPU's, or with <insert any non-Windows 10 condition here>?

[steven36]

24 minutes ago, Karlston said:

I wonder how long it will be before Microsoft decrees that their stand-alone Office suite is not compatible with Windows 7/8/8.1, or with Kaby Lake and later CPU's, or with <insert any non-Windows 10 condition here>?

I don't know if they will do this since Office  is cross platform  they even have standalone Microsoft office for Mac OS.and most malware on Mac comes from Microsoft Office  Some on my network use it but I myself have never kept  this malware causing product on my machine. I only have LibreOffice on Linux  and none at all on windows .It's never been important  too me because i always made a living setting up and running machines .

[Karlston]

Doesn't matter to Microsoft.

 

Nadella has decreed that everything must move to Windows 10 and/or "The Cloud", and Microsoft will stop at nothing to force, sneak, bully, and trick users to those.

 

The big burr under Microsoft's saddle blanket is that a billion or so users have raised their middle finger at Microsoft and said "No way, Jose". May that burr continue to annoy them for a long, long time.

[steven36]

I dont care when it comes too Microsoft 3rd party apps I never liked any   , this is why I dont use no UWP apps . If you want too hit Microsoft were it hurts use you're free upgrade to Windows 10 and make  sure Microsoft dont get any money from that store from you and uninstall all of them and boycott it by using only legacy software. I talked too the office user on my network yesterday what do they plain too do when updates run out for Office 2010  are they going buy Cloud office? they said they hardly ever use it at home anymore so they would not be buying it.  So I told them OK I will just replace it with open source when it stops getting updates . So Work will have to worry about buying office in my world we are not buying it again.

 

I have  a friend that is the same way  and they turned me against  using Microsoft office along time ago  ,they said  that even if you uninstall it leaves crap behind and if you try too remove the leftovers  you would have too reinstall windows.