Bricking Microsoft Office 2019
Adam Engst (TidBITS-Talk, Hacker News, MacRumors):
If you are still using Microsoft Office 2019 for Mac, it will stop working fully on 13 July 2026. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook will enter “reduced functionality mode”—a euphemism meaning you can view and print documents but cannot edit, save, or create new ones. Microsoft’s documentation doesn’t clarify what this means for Outlook users.
Why is this happening? A security certificate expiration is forcing Office 2019 into read-only mode, though Microsoft acknowledges this only obliquely in the FAQ. Without a current certificate, the apps can’t confirm you have a legitimate license.
[…]
At least in this case, Apple didn’t push users of older systems to buy new hardware—it just quietly kept things working. […] In contrast, Microsoft is quietly changing its story.
After Office 2019 for Mac reached end of support in October 2023, Microsoft assured customers their installed apps would “continue to function.” The July 13, 2026 conversion instead drops the apps into a Microsoft-defined “reduced functionality mode,” in which files can be opened and viewed but not edited or saved. By May 30, 2026, the original 2023 end-of-support page had been re-dated and rewritten on Microsoft’s site; the “continue to function” clause was removed.
We thought the deal was that, if you purchase a perpetual license instead of subscribing, you don’t get feature upgrades but the apps keep working on the original hardware and OS version. Customers don’t like online license activation because it’s annoying and subject to temporary network or server problems. With smaller companies, there’s always the risk that they go out of business, and the server goes down, so you lose access to the app. (None of my apps use activation.) I didn’t expect that to be a danger for Mag 7 companies, but it turns out that Apple broke Mac App Store purchases for older OS versions (as well as movie and music purchases on newer hardware), and now Microsoft is letting its own activation break. I’m sure there’s something in the EULA that says they can end support, but it still feels like a violation of the social contract. The customer did their part by paying; it was the company that chose to impose the activation model in order to weed out cheaters; shouldn’t it then own any problems that creates?
But it’s actually worse than that because even subscribing to Office 365 doesn’t fix the problem. You need a newer version of Office, which necessitates a newer version of macOS, which may necessitate getting a new Mac—all to fix what seems like an artificial problem.
It’s also bricking its mobile apps on devices running iPadOS 16 and iOS 16 or earlier.
Previously:
- Logitech Certificate Expiration Breaks App
- SpamSieve 3.2.2
- Mac App Store Broken on macOS 10.14 and Earlier
- HomePod Late Adopter
- Apple Can Delete Purchased Movies From Your Library Without Telling You
- More Mac App Store Certificate Problems
3 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
Good thing there’s nothing since Word ‘98 that’s especially mission critical. Guess I’ll see if my StarMax still works…
Good heavens. Late[r?] stage capitalism stinks.
I can confidently say there have been zero cases of open-source software that arbitrarily stopped working or reduced functionality. Only corporations think this way, not true authors of software meant to serve people.
Yes, there can be unanticipated failures (new OSes breaking APIs, hardware incompatibility and so on) but that is why maintenance is still important even for free software. Maintenance is usually a thankless task but I wish users would become aware of it and do anything they can to help projects: donate, help report bugs, help with documentation, etc.
Thinking it isn't worth the price that Microsoft charges. I have installed LibreOffice hopefully to get around Microsofts steep price and all the AI they are adding to all the apps in Office.
