Can you only get Microsoft Office by paying monthly?

scottduffy

scottduffy

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Guys I’ve just finished two years of study and just realised my Microsoft Office package has been removed from my laptop. What’s the best/cheapest way to get this as a non student?
 
Not sure what the situation is regarding using an older version that was purchased outright if they are still available to buy as first owner, obviously you can't buy a second hand copy and install on your computer.
 
Office 365 is either a monthly or annual subscription, either way, it's a subscription.

But you can buy an office 2019 (which just came out) as a one off purchase and then its valid for as long as you have it, its more expensive for the same software (the difference in software between Office 365 and 2019 is your ownership and cloud functionality, but thats it otherwise) but that makes sense, as its less of a serviceable return for Microsoft.

I have access to discount for Microsoft software (which makes sense, I work for them) - however I cannot resell it. Thats the only thing I can't do with the keys. But I do know keys are floating around on eBay which people resell. Thats probably the absolute cheapest way and would likely be fine for years. If I were in your shoes, thats where I would go.
 
You could try Google's Docs, Sheets and Slides to replace, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. They are not as sophisticated as the MS products, but they offer the standard features and are available at no cost.

Chris
 
If the work you do is straightforward then OpenOffice is a good, free alternative. Although it has its own format to save files you can save files as .doc (and .xls if you do spreadsheet work) which are readable by Microsoft Office. When I worked from home I used OpenOffice for docs and spreadsheet and never had a problem reading them at work with Word or Excel.


https://www.openoffice.org/

Dave
 
mickledore said:
Must be copies floating around in cyberspace.
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Is that legal though?
Isnt the licence you originally purchase just so you can use it without any rights to sell on, much like old versions of Photoshop etc?
 
MatBin said:
Is that legal though?
Isnt the licence you originally purchase just so you can use it without any rights to sell on, much like old versions of Photoshop etc?
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Yes it is illegal.
And usually those keys are old "corporate" keys which some company paid for years back which allows unlimited amount of installs, they then get leaked to the net so they just install again and again. Some of them get blocked, but for an older out of support version of office, nobody really cares anymore tbh.
 
MatBin said:
Is that legal though?
Isnt the licence you originally purchase just so you can use it without any rights to sell on, much like old versions of Photoshop etc?
Click to expand...
Sorry. Misinterpretation there. Don't get all excited. I didn't mean hooky stuff. Just genuine copies. Such things do exist. A quick Google will show plenty genuine copies at rock bottom prices.

There also appears to be a problem with W10. Older programmes, the stuff Bill Gates once said would only need to be bought once, are not officially compatible with W10.

Open Office looks the best bet for OP.
 
Libre office works fine with office 365, just need to save the file as the correct extension. I have office 365 at work and often use own libre office at home. have yet to find a word or excel formatting issue
 
Jake said:
Yes it is illegal.
And usually those keys are old "corporate" keys which some company paid for years back which allows unlimited amount of installs, they then get leaked to the net so they just install again and again. Some of them get blocked, but for an older out of support version of office, nobody really cares anymore tbh.
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Does that also apply to other MS etc programmes? Not asking you to name names of course.
 
Tringa said:
If the work you do is straightforward then OpenOffice is a good, free alternative. Although it has its own format to save files you can save files as .doc (and .xls if you do spreadsheet work) which are readable by Microsoft Office. When I worked from home I used OpenOffice for docs and spreadsheet and never had a problem reading them at work with Word or Excel.


https://www.openoffice.org/

Dave
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What he said. It works with MS docs on my laptop, phone and tablet, both ways!
Never had a single problem in 6 years of using it.
 
MatBin said:
Does that also apply to other MS etc programmes? Not asking you to name names of course.
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I know thats what happened for WinXP & Win7, also Office 2010. Those were the most popular for that.

But then again, Windows & Office and arguably the most popular products :)

For other programmes....hmm nothing much comes to mind.
 
I get a terabyte of online storeage with my Office 365 subscription and licenses for all the computers in the house, so taking that into account it's it is a pretty good deal for me. I use the storeage as one of the backs for my photos.
 
sirch said:
I get a terabyte of online storeage with my Office 365 subscription and licenses for all the computers in the house, so taking that into account it's it is a pretty good deal for me. I use the storeage as one of the backs for my photos.
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You would be amazed at how many people completely forget about the 1TB of storage inc with the O365 subscription. Many don't even mention it. When you consider that, suddenly it becomes a much better value.
 
Don’t get OpenOffice, get LibreOffice if you go that route. AFAIK OpenOffice is discontinued (Wikipedia). Open and LibreOffice use the same Open Document format though. LibreOffice is still being developed and updated.
 
mickledore said:
Sorry. Misinterpretation there. Don't get all excited. I didn't mean hooky stuff. Just genuine copies. Such things do exist. A quick Google will show plenty genuine copies at rock bottom prices.

There also appears to be a problem with W10. Older programmes, the stuff Bill Gates once said would only need to be bought once, are not officially compatible with W10.

Open Office looks the best bet for OP.
Click to expand...
Office 97 was released 22 years ago almost to the day. It's hardly surprising it does not work with the latest OS.
 
sphexx said:
Don’t get OpenOffice, get LibreOffice if you go that route. AFAIK OpenOffice is discontinued (Wikipedia). Open and LibreOffice use the same Open Document format though. LibreOffice is still being developed and updated.
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Open Ofice is still going, it is now on V4.1.5, Wiki says that the last version was 3.4, I think that Wiki needs an update!
I used Open Office for many years and there were the occasional problems, I tried Libre Office earlier this year and I found it slow on the spreadsheets which I have. Following a problem with Open Office earlier this month when it crashed whenever I tried to open a particular file (although it always recovered it and then ran OK) I tried Libre Office again and I have no complaints, everything runs OK and Libre does seem to have more frequent updates.
 
My Office 2010 works fine with the latest updates for Win 10 and I see the software and keys are available cheaply from numerous 'vendors' on eBay.
 
Libreoffice is a fork of Openoffice, and probably has better development. Both can work well, but are unsuitable for use in a customer facing business because of incompatibilities in the way documents display in office (the defacto business standard). If you need an office suite for home use then it's hard to go wrong.

FWIW I have both Microsoft office (2013) and LO on this laptop because it's my business machine, but LO can open 20+ YO .doc and .xls files that MO refuses to touch, and is therefore very useful if I need to dig into my archive of methods and techniques that I've accumulated.
 
sphexx said:
Don’t get OpenOffice, get LibreOffice if you go that route. AFAIK OpenOffice is discontinued (Wikipedia). Open and LibreOffice use the same Open Document format though. LibreOffice is still being developed and updated.
Click to expand...

I am still getting updates for Open Office!
 
ancient_mariner said:
Libreoffice is a fork of Openoffice, and probably has better development. Both can work well, but are unsuitable for use in a customer facing business because of incompatibilities in the way documents display in office (the defacto business standard). If you need an office suite for home use then it's hard to go wrong.
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You’re right of course about sharing documents if they need to be edited but sending Word docs to people just to read is one of the most annoying habits of businesses/organisations — PDFs are so much better!

FWIW I have both Microsoft office (2013) and LO on this laptop because it's my business machine, but LO can open 20+ YO .doc and .xls files that MO refuses to touch, and is therefore very useful if I need to dig into my archive of methods and techniques that I've accumulated.
Click to expand...
I was going to mention that MS Word is one of the worst at opening MS Word docs between different versions but I haven’t used it since Word 97 so I wasn’t sure it was still true.

Edit: typo
 
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Wikipedia doesn't say OpenOffice is discontinued, it says (rather confusingly) that 'OpenOffice.org' is discontinued, but a successor project, 'Apache OpenOffice', is active. This is rather geeky hair splitting about whether the current Apache OpenOffice should be regarded as a fork or continuation of the original OpenOffice project, now it is under new management. Apache OpenOffice is available (even more confusingly) at www.openoffice.org, and is still being developed, though not as actively as LibreOffice.
 
You can buy Office 2019 keys on eBay for less than a tenner.

The vendors selling the actual keys which can be entered into your ms account are quite genuine.

The vendors offering a link to download the software with an ‘embedded’ key from their own servers are dodgy.
 
60 quid for best of breed office apps for a year. Bargain. Or pay 80 and install it on 6 devices.

I've tried Google docs (nice but their doc sharing can be shaky and enough of the shortcuts are different to annoy me) and various version of FreeOffice (often work, sometimes crash, usually mess with formatting).

Fiver a month for Excel and Word is a bargain.
 
Brazo said:
You can buy Office 2019 keys on eBay for less than a tenner.

The vendors selling the actual keys which can be entered into your ms account are quite genuine.

The vendors offering a link to download the software with an ‘embedded’ key from their own servers are dodgy.
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No Office 2019 key you find on ebay for under a tenner is going to be legitimate. Some of them may be genuine MS keys (e.g. from MSDN subscriptions) but selling them on like this is a violation of the licence:

http://www.softwaremedia.com/signs-of-microsoft-download-fraud
 
ancient_mariner said:
Reselling software in Europe is legal, and the license terms attaching them to a single original license holder are not valid: https://www.itassetmanagement.net/2016/10/31/secondary-software-2016/
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That only applies to perpetually licenced software that 'originally .. sold at an economic price', which generally isn't true for the copies you'll find on ebay - e.g., a licence key from the MSDN scheme is only valid for the length of the subscription (though it may continue working afterwards) and is not sold to the subscriber at full price. If you bought the business version of Office for £200 you may well be entitled to sell it on, but you won't be doing this for £10 on ebay.
 
Retune said:
That only applies to perpetually licenced software that 'originally .. sold at an economic price', which generally isn't true for the copies you'll find on ebay - e.g., a licence key from the MSDN scheme is only valid for the length of the subscription (though it may continue working afterwards) and is not sold to the subscriber at full price. If you bought the business version of Office for £200 you may well be entitled to sell it on, but you won't be doing this for £10 on ebay.
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I would see it as applying to any perpetually licensed version of microsoft office. Obviously not applicable to any time-limited lecense keys, so buyer be-aware.
 
ancient_mariner said:
I would see it as applying to any perpetually licensed version of microsoft office. Obviously not applicable to any time-limited lecense keys, so buyer be-aware.
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It's notable, I think, that the defendants in the case you link to were actually found guilty and the appeal to the ECJ did not exonerate them - the software they were selling was not 'accompanied by an unlimited user licence', so they did not have the right to resell it. The ECJ is, quite properly, upholding the right to resell conventional retail copies, but not those provided under limited licences, such as academic copies, employee copies, re-used OEM keys, or MSDN keys. And something you buy on ebay might not even be one of these, but the output of a keygen program that outputs working but unlicensed keys.
 
scottduffy said:
Guys I’ve just finished two years of study and just realised my Microsoft Office package has been removed from my laptop. What’s the best/cheapest way to get this as a non student?
Click to expand...


I think that you can use online Office apps through browser for free by only using Microsoft Account ID.
NOTE: Using Office ONLINE is free but have somewhat limited functions. (ie: Have the general editing tools, but likely to not have export options, not able to save to your disc drive, stuff like that.)
Not sure if you have a smartphone or a tablet, but I do believe that you can download Office apps (ie: Word on iOS) for free, but files will be saved in your OneDrive.



mickledore said:
I'm still using Office '97. Works fine on W7.
Must be copies of that floating around in cyberspace.
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YEAH!! :clap:

Great to find someone else who still use Office 97. I also use Office 97 on Windows 7 Professional. I thought I would be the only one, but glad to know there is someone else in the same club as me.
 
I only had Linux at work for a few weeks, so it was a choice between the browser version of MS Office and a local copy of LibreOffice. I ended up using LibreOffice most of the time - although it was possible to download the files you'd edited to your local disk from the online version of MS Office, there were too many missing features (though occasionally it did something better than LibreOffice).

I can understand why people still use Office 97 - I think Office hasn't really improved (for anything I use) since 2003, and I've never liked the ribbon interface they introduced in 2007. Every version seems designed to make useful features harder to find than the previous one. I like this plugin that restores traditional menus:

http://www.ubit.ch/software/ubitmenu-languages/

However, ancient versions of Office must have a ton of security vulnerabilities by now...
 
FWIW I am using Office 2007 SBE

As far I recall there are still the odd security updates coming through......though not too sure when I last saw one???
 
sphexx said:
Maybe you don’t really need it? See https://www.libreoffice.org/
Click to expand...

nice, open and free - what not to like unless you are stuck with some very specialist module or macro code.


Foxbat Flyer said:
You could try Google's Docs, Sheets and Slides to replace, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. They are not as sophisticated as the MS products, but they offer the standard features and are available at no cost.

Chris
Click to expand...

I wouldn't recommend this for any serious or long term work. 1) you are letting goolag read and use all your work as they see fit; 2) cloud storage, functionality and availability (or pricing) just can't be taken for granted. Today they are no1, tomorrow maybe hacked, split up, bankrupt or overpriced. You take the risks.
 
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