Microsoft Office retiring in 2023 - replaced with Microsoft 365

[Wadmodder Shalton]

After 32 years, Microsoft is finally retiring the Office brand name and replacing it with their Microsoft 365 branding.

 

With this new change coming in January next year, this makes Office 2021 the final release to bare the old-school Office name, which probably marks the end of the Office suite in its original Windows and macOS desktop application form in favor of the subscription-based stuff Microsoft has been promoting and selling since the 2010s, similar to how Adobe has been promoting and selling their Creative Cloud subscription service after the discontinuation of their Creative Suite software.

 

And I don't know what is ever going to happen to any of the major and minor Office applications (like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access, Publisher, Visio, Project & Teams) after the January 2023 rebranding next year, well just have to wait and see what comes out.

 

With the end of the Microsoft Office brand for the Microsoft 365 branding in three months time, many of us now have to use either WordPerfect Office, OpenOffice or LibreOffice.

[smeghammer]

For the casual user, the Google Docs suite works well too.

[dasho]

I'm not sure why there's the implication that you'd need to switch what you're using. You realize that they aren't actually getting rid of their Office programs, right?

[Bauul]

Yeah this is just a branding thing.  "Microsoft Office" is kind of confusing because it only covers some of the apps included in the standard 365 subscription.  For example, increased OneDrive capacity is part of 365, but not an "Office" app in the traditional sense.  So Microsoft formally promoting both brands isn't very helpful, when "Microsoft 365" is the actual service and covers the actual apps you get access to.

 

I'm sure people will continue to refer to the core office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc.) colloquially as "Office", but continuing to formally give them their own special category when it doesn't actually exist as a product any more isn't ideal.

 

2 hours ago, Wadmodder Shalton said:

which probably marks the end of the Office suite in its original Windows and macOS desktop application form in favor of the subscription-based stuff Microsoft has been promoting and selling since the 2010s,

 

You know the classic desktop applications exist within the subscription purchase model as well?  Even if Microsoft does retire the perpetual license purchase (which I've not seen anything about) why would they retire the desktop apps too?  They're the bread and butter of the product offering.

 

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Well the perpetual license versions of Office are going away from 2023 onwards it seems. And also, with Microsoft losing interest with the perpetual license versions, they shortened the support lifecycles of both Office 2019 and 2021, with 2019 getting only seven years of support and 2021 only having five years of support without an extended support llifestyle.

 

And many other applications in the Office suite were short-lived, having only appeared in one or two editions of the suite due to low popularity. A couple examples include, but not limited to:

 

PhotoDraw - a Vector graphics program with at least two versions made for Office 2000.

Vizact - a short-lived HTML+TIME animation software made for Office 2000 with only one version ever made.

InterConnect - a Personal Information Manager made by Microsoft's Japanese division originally released in 2004 which was later part of Office 2007.

Binder - a utility found in Office 95, 97 and 2000 that allowed users to add OLE 2.0 objects in their documents.

Office Assistant - a feature first introduced with Office 97 utilizing the assistant technology from Microsoft Bob, and later on Office 2000, XP and 2003 in which the latter versions utilized Microsoft Agent for the assistant characters. Also included in the Mac OS versions of Office 98, 2001, X and 2004. The Office 97 assistant characters were Clippy, Office Logo, Mother Nature, Hoverbot, Genius, Scribble, Power Pup, Will and The Dot, while the Office 2000 to 2003 assistant characters were Clippy, The Dot, Genius, F1, Mother Nature, Office Logo, Links and Rocky. It was removed with Office 2007 and 2008 for Windows and macOS respectively, due to low popularity and criticism of the feature throughout the years.

InfoPath - a collaborative software introduced in Office 2003 and last included with Office 2013.

 

With very little support left in a couple years time, many of us might want to transfer our documents over to LibreOffice or Google Docs.

Edited October 22, 2022 by Wadmodder Shalton

[Kinsie]

4 minutes ago, Wadmodder Shalton said:

Well the perpetual license versions of Office are going away from 2023 onwards it seems.

Source?

[heliumlamb]

office 97 still installs and runs on windows 10!

[Murdoch]

1 hour ago, heliumlamb said:

office 97 still installs and runs on windows 10!

 

Correct. As does every later version. Shalton seems to be confused equating lack of official support for it ceasing to function. As long as you have a valid key or it registered to your ms account old versions will still remain completely operable. And considering there's been few if any new features of note since 2010 i fail to see the big deal. 

[heliumlamb]

28 minutes ago, Murdoch said:

 

Correct. As does every later version. Shalton seems to be confused equating lack of official support for it ceasing to function. As long as you have a valid key or it registered to your ms account old versions will still remain completely operable. And considering there's been few if any new features of note since 2010 i fail to see the big deal. 

all software becoming a live, network dependent service seems to a fairly far reaching blight. i dont mess with ggle docs too for that very reason.

libreoffice has been all i've used for over a decade, zero issues. free and doesn't depend a network connection or grand-scale data mining operation to be used.

[Murdoch]

2 hours ago, heliumlamb said:

all software becoming a live, network dependent service seems to a fairly far reaching blight. i dont mess with ggle docs too for that very reason.

libreoffice has been all i've used for over a decade, zero issues. free and doesn't depend a network connection or grand-scale data mining operation to be used.

 

99% of the computers I set up or build for my customers end up with Libre on it. Few complain about it. It is more than adequate for the needs of most of the populace.

[Herr Dethnout]

Me, who uses LibreOffice:

[PineFresh]

23 hours ago, heliumlamb said:

office 97 still installs and runs on windows 10!

97 was the first MS Office I used so this is kinda cool to hear.

 

Personally, I've been re-using the same 2010 license from machine to machine (I think it used to have a machine limit, but clearly whatever server policed that is either gone or doesn't give a shit anymore). And when that stops working I'll probably go to one of the alternatives in the OP, because screw subscription licenses in general, and screw MS in particular for binding accounts/logins to a freaking word processor (of which Google is also guilty).

[Mr. Freeze]

Does Libre do images well? OpenOffice seized and shat the bed every time I tried to add images to a document. 

[heliumlamb]

1 hour ago, Mr. Freeze said:

Does Libre do images well? OpenOffice seized and shat the bed every time I tried to add images to a document. 

[AndrewB]

I'm doing everything I can to avoid products-as-a-service. I just bought and activated a copy of Office 2007. Now is a good time to start hoarding software-that-you-own while you can.

[Dusty_Rhodes]

Libre Office master race 

 

It's like Office but it actually does what you want. 

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Some more forgotten Microsoft Office programs that few of us remember.

 

FrontPage - an HTML editor originally developed by Vermeer Technologies and acquired by Microsoft in 1996 and was part of Office 97, 2000, XP and 2003.

SharePoint Designer - a freeware HTML editor that replaced FrontPage and was part of Office 2007, 2010 and 2013.

SharePoint Workspace - a collaborative software originally developed by Groove Networks under the title Groove Virtual Office which was acquired by Microsoft, which was included with Office 2007 as Groove and later Office 2010 as SharePoint Workspace.

Schedule+ - a Time Management software included with Office 95, 97, 2000, XP and 2003.

Entourage - a short-lived Mac OS replacement for Outlook as part of the Mac version releases of Office 2001, X, 2004 and 2008 before being replaced by Outlook for Mac OS with the release of Office 2011.

Accounting - a short-lived accounting software originally introduced as Microsoft Small Business Accounting before being rebranded as an Office application in 2008 before being discontinued in 2009.

Liquid Motion - A Java animation tool using technology acquired by Dimension-X introduced in 1998 and discontinued in 2000 due to lack of popularity.

Live Meeting - a commercial subscription-based web conference service introduced in 2007 and discontinued in 2017.

Photo Editor - a raster graphics editor included with Office 97, 2000 and XP.

Picture Manager - a raster graphics editor included with Office 2003, 2007 and 2010.

 

Got those forgotten programs from Office out of the way.

Edited October 27, 2022 by Wadmodder Shalton

[Quasar]

Even the name is a late-stage vulture capitalist signal for "you should be working every day of your life," they just can't help themselves with that kind of shit. What a plague. I join others in strongly encouraging those that can to move to open and free solutions instead of paying rent to author virtual documents.

[Graf Zahl]

For private use the free alternatives are fully adequate. In a professional environment things are unfortunately different because if you have to share data with MS Office users you can't afford to send them stuff that isn't rendered correctly. And thus there is little chance to migrate to better alternatives.

 

[Gothic]

First time I heard about Libre, and here I am stuck with Open like a chump.

[Mr. Freeze]

5 hours ago, Quasar said:

Even the name is a late-stage vulture capitalist signal for "you should be working every day of your life," they just can't help themselves with that kind of shit. What a plague. I join others in strongly encouraging those that can to move to open and free solutions instead of paying rent to author virtual documents.

 

Wasn't the advertising campaign literally  something like "never be away from the office with Office 365"? 

[Blzut3]

2 hours ago, Gothic said:

First time I heard about Libre, and here I am stuck with Open like a chump.

It's kind of crazy that the OpenOffice brand has enough power that it's still carrying itself over a 11 years later.  So in case you don't know when Oracle bought Sun pretty much all the developers jumped ship to create LibreOffice.  OpenOffice has pretty much been a zombie project ever since.  Essentially a Skulltag/Zandronum situation, only OpenOffice is technically still barely alive due to politics.

[Nevander]

365 was always a stupid name. I prefer Office.

[Graf Zahl]

7 hours ago, Blzut3 said:

It's kind of crazy that the OpenOffice brand has enough power that it's still carrying itself over a 11 years later.  So in case you don't know when Oracle bought Sun pretty much all the developers jumped ship to create LibreOffice.  OpenOffice has pretty much been a zombie project ever since.  Essentially a Skulltag/Zandronum situation, only OpenOffice is technically still barely alive due to politics.

 

All this really tells us is that 11 year old office software is still fine. I don't really care about it being old, what I do care about is that LibreOffice changed some things enough that I don't like it.

 

[Biodegradable]

On 10/26/2022 at 3:51 AM, AndrewB said:

Now is a good time to start hoarding software-that-you-own while you can.

 

 

I still have these 10+ year-old physical copies of Adobe Creative Suite (CS4, 5 and 5.5) from back before The Great Rentism Plague began to really take hold. I was using Premiere Pro CS5.5 for the first two years of my freelance editing work (2019-2020). I couldn't afford to rent the current version for a while. I made the switch over to the current Creative Cloud version once I could afford it; mainly due to CS5.5 not being able to handle 4k footage or render anything at 60fps, which was causing me to lose work. Considering YouTube's compression rate, why anyone would even bother filming their videos in 4k is beyond me, but if I can't handle the footage I'll starve. These still run like a charm on Win10, so the bastards don't have me completely enslaved yet, especially since I'm still using my CS4 version of PhotoShop daily.

 

I imagine I'll run into OS-compatibility issues later down the line, but for now they're still handy while I still can't afford the full-on Adobe Creative Cloud.

Edited October 27, 2022 by Biodegradable

[Dark Pulse]

On 10/23/2022 at 3:26 AM, heliumlamb said:

Love that you proved it, fucking hate Comic Sans somehow survives.

[ReaperAA]

9 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

fucking hate Comic Sans somehow survives.

 

Amen. I have a hate boner towards that font.

[Kes Gaming YT]

I went to college for a couple of years, and so I got a student email address. At the time, Microsoft had this promotion where if you had a student email address, you could get a free Microsoft 365 Students plan. In addition to all the office applications, it includes 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage.

Certainly nice while I have it, but I probably wouldn't pay for it. I don't know when the expiration date is though, it's been almost 5 years now, fingers crossed it never goes away. ;)

[Azuris]

There is a Marketing Genius, killing of a Decade old Brand.

[Kinsie]

I don't think Microsoft will be getting rid of standalone Office anytime soon, seeing as they were recently talking about how their Game Pass subscription service makes up approx. 15% of their games division's revenue... but they don't expect it to get much higher, specifically citing a lack of delusions of 50-70% subscription revenue.

 

Besides, those big corporate volume licensing deals probably make crazy bank. Why kill the geese when they're laying multiple types of golden egg?