NOT SPAM: Microsoft Office for $35.99

[James Steele]

This isn't a scam. I got an email from Cult of Mac and you can get Microsoft Office 2021 Home & Business for Mac for $35.99. It's good on one machine. If you've only had it one one machine because didn't want to spend the money, this seems like a good opportunity to get it. Sale goes for 3 days.

https://deals.cultofmac.com/sales/micro ... -license-2

You can also get it for Windows... there's a little check box that if you click it will take you to the Windows version page if you want that. Thought I'd pass it along.

[mikehalloran]

Yes, a very good deal if you do not already have Office but…

If you have Office 2016, 2019 or later, no need to buy this as I found out after buying this deal earlier this year. Office 2016 & 2019, kept up to date is identical to 2021 except for the addition of Teams which is free if you need it.

There are end dates if you need MS 365 connections (2020 for Office 2016 and 10/23/2023 for Office 2019) but updates to the individual components continue to 2025. From the article:

…both Office 2016 and Office 2019 have the same end-of-support date, which is Oct. 14, 2025. End of support means that the software can still be used but security patches from Microsoft will stop arriving.

https://redmondmag.com/articles/2022/07 ... 2C%202023.

One more thing. Catalina is the minimum MacOS that runs the latest Office updates. If running Mojave or earlier, there are similar deals on 2016 and 2019 (although identical if updated, these will install earlier builds than 2021). I have the MS link somewhere where one can download older updates that run over Mojave and can check my Mojave boot drive to see what build is the last one you can use.

[James Steele]

Right. Well, the thing is the license is good for one machine and I already have 2019 on my other Mac which is intentionally on High Sierra. So legally, to put on the Mac Studio I needed to purchase again... which is what I just did.

Office 2016 & 2019, kept up to date is identical to 2021 except for the addition of Teams which is free if you need it.

Are Office 2016 & 2019 Apple Silicon native? Perhaps they pushed out AS native versions as part of the "kept up to date," because I did check and it *appears* that the 2021 apps are Apple Silicon native. Granted not really that big a deal for word processing or spreadsheets (I pretty much only got it for Word and Excel... and maybe PowerPoint), but the Get Info for Microsoft Word shows the "Open using Rosetta" checkbox... which seems to imply that the app is AS native, otherwise, why have it?

Screen Shot 2022-10-06 at 8.30.54 PM.png (135.29 KiB) Viewed 1296 times

Again... I'm not trying to say this is the awesome deal for everyone, but in the spirit of passing it along to help someone else who either doesn't already have it, or like me, only has one license and wants to put it on another machine. And if it's native, I guess that's a bonus. I'm glad I bought it and put it on my Mac Studio.

[mikehalloran]

The current version of all the components is 16.65 whether updated from 2016, 2019 or 2021 if installed over Catalina or later.

16.65 runs Native on my wife's M1.

Although I currently have an extra license, I expect to be needing it before the year's end.

[James Steele]

Right. Like I said... I had a need so seemed like a good opportunity.

[tremo]

I wanted to grab this for my MacBook Air, but since I already purchased the same product from Cult of Mac back in April (for my Mac Studio, which is where I really need it), they won't let me buy an additional copy. One per person, I guess... Oh well... I can open Office docs on the MBA with Numbers/Pages/Keynote if I have to.

[HCMarkus]

I wanted to grab this for my MacBook Air, but since I already purchased the same product from Cult of Mac back in April (for my Mac Studio, which is where I really need it), they won't let me buy an additional copy. One per person, I guess... Oh well... I can open Office docs on the MBA with Numbers/Pages/Keynote if I have to.

Libre Office. I really like it, very Word- and Excel-like, more so than the Apple equivalents. Free or Donation, and AS-Native. You can read/write to .docx format as default, if preferred.

https://www.libreoffice.org

LibreOffice is community-driven and developed software, and is a project of the not-for-profit organization, The Document Foundation. LibreOffice is free and open source software, originally based on OpenOffice.org (commonly known as OpenOffice), and is the most actively developed OpenOffice.org successor project.

[cuttime]

+1 LibreOffice

[tremo]

Libre Office. I really like it, very Word- and Excel-like, more so than the Apple equivalents. Free or Donation, and AS-Native. You can read/write to .docx format as default, if preferred.

Yeah, I should try that on the MBA. I do graphic design work for corporate clients, and need to open and save "real" Office files; can't take a chance on something getting messed up. But I'm covered there with Office on the Mac Studio.

Thanks for the Libre tip, HCMarkus and cuttime.

[mikehalloran]

I wanted to grab this for my MacBook Air, but since I already purchased the same product from Cult of Mac back in April (for my Mac Studio, which is where I really need it), they won't let me buy an additional copy. One per person, I guess...

Huh? Cult of Mac has sister sites—can't recall the names at the moment but they're out there. You might also try changing your payment method or signing in with a different email. These licenses are legitimate and not cracked so you do want the real deal.

To those proposing alternates, if you need Word, nothing else will do—lots of functionality including editing and markup that nothing else has. If LibreOffice will do the job, then you don't really need Word—and that's fine.

Speaking of LibreOffice, it opens AppleWorks, MacWrite and many other long-abandoned formats from many companies and translates them to Word or Excel compatible.

LibreOffice does not open most graphics files from AppleWorks, ClarisWorks, MacDraw, MacPaint etc. which is a definite bummer. I do have EazyDraw, an app that does but the 32 bit version (EazyDraw Retro) must be run over Mojave or earlier to open the files and convert to a form that the 64 bit version can open. If you purchase EazyDraw, you can download a copy EazyDraw Retro 10.0.2 and activate with the same license instead of email for a v.9 license like I did.
http://eazydraw.com/

[tremo]

I wanted to grab this for my MacBook Air, but since I already purchased the same product from Cult of Mac back in April (for my Mac Studio, which is where I really need it), they won't let me buy an additional copy. One per person, I guess...

Huh? Cult of Mac has sister sites—can't recall the names at the moment but they're out there. You might also try changing your payment method or signing in with a different email. These licenses are legitimate and not cracked so you do want the real deal.

Thanks, Mike -- that worked. Used my icloud email to purchase from Cult of Mac, and I now have two copies registered with Microsoft. Installing on the MacBook Air now...

And thanks to James for starting the thread!

[bayswater]

+1 LibreOffice

+2. A very long time since I've needed MS Office.

[mikehalloran]

+1 LibreOffice

+2. A very long time since I've needed MS Office.

I wish but both my wife and I do editing on contract and only Word has the markup tools we need.

So did Pages when it was part of iWork but Apple dumbed it down at the same time they made it free with the release of Mavericks. That functionality went away never came back.