Microsoft 365 and Office in 2024 and beyond

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MICROSOFT 365 By Peter Deegan Let’s do a low drone pass over another year of innovation and hype in Microsoft 365 and Office. Amazingly, there were so
[See the full post at: Microsoft 365 and Office in 2024 and beyond]

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jimmythesaint53, AlexEiffel, Norio, fisher75, windbg, lmacri, Sky, DLivesInTexas

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I have realized that MS-Word can be useful in many ways for my work. I just two days ago used Word to completely re-format an article from the NSF on 30 meter class telescopes. The way the writer produced the article, I could not present the article on my blog. But copying the writer’s text and pasting it into an empty Word document, I was able to re-format the text and get my work done.

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My Monday rant:

I’m disgusted with all the “subscriptions” that companies want to charge for like CoPilot. In this one article if I paid the $20 for Perplexity and $20 for CoPilot, I’m already up to $40 per month. And then you add  Spotify, Paramount, Audible, and the other apps we want (not need) and it’s up to a couple hundred dollars per month.

It reminds me of when we went to a Mexican restaurant and we had to pay extra for the salsa. The corporations just keep adding on and adding on charges. I just cancelled Dish because we couldn’t afford it anymore.

MS office wants to take away Publisher and WordPad. Why?  I love those two apps. When I signed up for Microsoft 365, they were included. They can push the delete button or add button anytime they want without consideration to the consumers.

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gwt10, Sky, satrow, WSbobby-p

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I still use Office 2007 on Windows 10 and 11 with no issues.  Maybe I’m just careful, maybe I’m just lucky, but it works for me.  Sure, I don’t have a lot of the new bells and whistles, but I don’t miss them (unknown unknowns).  And I don’t have to jump thru Microsoft’s endless hoops.

Outlook 2007 certainly shows it age:  no emojis. Not that I use them, but plenty of incoming emails contain them. But it remains one of the best designed and functioning PIM/email clients ever.

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Cybertooth

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I tried the “money-saving opportunity” in the article and I have been unable to apply to my subscription.

money-saving opportunity:
It’s always been possible to pay for Microsoft 365 up to five years in advance. That means you can buy up to four 12-month packs at the current price and apply them to an existing plan. There’s no downside because, at worst, you’ve paid in advance.

I have purchased Office 365 Family from Dell the last few years. It will expire in March 2025. I purchased a renewal from Costco on Friday and when I enter product key to my account I’m told that I will have to wait for current subscription to expire before applying renewal. So, I went to Dell and cancelled the auto-renewal hoping that would allow me to extend my subscription. Tried again this morning with same results.

Any ideas on how to apply renewal as outlined in “money-saving opportunity” from article?

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That’s very strange.   You’d have to ask Microsoft support why you can’t extend an existing Microsoft 365 plan.  Their rules are quite clear that extending up to five years is allowed and I know many people have done that.

A few things occur to me:

• Are you sure that the existing Microsoft 365 plan is Family?  i.e. the same as what you’ve purchased from Costco?  If the current plan is M365 Personal, that would explain the message you’re reporting.
• An auto-renewal arrangement via Dell (or any other company like Amazon) should not stop manually extending a subscription.  Though it’s possible and you were right to cancel the Dell auto-renewal.

Please let us know what you find. The details of Microsoft 365 renewals aren’t public, and we rely on reports from readers to fill in the many details.

Peter Deegan
Office-Watch.com

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jimmythesaint53

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I rechecked and I did purchase the Family version, which I currently have. I attached a screen shot of My account showing purchased from Dell. When I click “Manage” it takes me to a Dell site with Microsoft 365 Purchase Instructions.

I will attempt to contact Microsoft today and report back.

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See Manage your Microsoft 365 subscription purchased through a third party

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jimmythesaint53, Peter Deegan

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Thanks for that link.

I’m not sure when Microsoft slipped that trick in.  A nice earner for the third-parties to charge full price and get ongoing commission on Microsoft 365 plans.

Not the best for customers.

Peter Deegan
Office-Watch.com

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windbg

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The Microsoft representative told me several times that the only subscription that you can extend is a subscription purchased from Microsoft. Since my subscription was purchased from Dell, Dell is managing it and the only way to extend would be to contact Dell and cancel my current subscription (losing the remaining three months). Only then would I be able to use new product key.

If I wait until Dell purchased subscription expires, then I can enter new product key from Costco.

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The answer from Microsoft is….

If you purchased a Microsoft 365 subscription from a third-party retailer, such as Amazon, Apple, Best Buy, or Google Play, please contact them directly to manage your subscription and billing.

Microsoft cannot cancel or help turn on or off recurring billing for subscriptions purchased through a third-party retailer.

If you purchased a Microsoft subscription from the third-party retailer, contact their customer support for cancellation or refund. All refund requests must go to the third-party retailer from whom you purchased the subscription because Microsoft did not receive that payment.

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windbg

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As ‘b’ has pointed out — so-called ‘third-party’ subscriptions now have to be managed via the seller.

That’s a sly change by Microsoft and their partners since those partners always renew at full price.  As far as I know it wasn’t that way when Amazon etc first started their separate auto-renewal offers.

It’s far better to have a Microsoft 365 plan (Family/Personal) direct with Microsoft, if only because you have the option of extending the plan more cheaply.

Looks like you’ll have to follow Microsoft’s original advice:

1. Cancel auto-renewal via Dell.
2. Wait until the current M365 plan via Dell expires
   1. in three months in your case.
   2. There’s a ‘grace period’ when an M365 plan expires so you can wait until the current plan fully expires before moving to the next step.  There should be no loss of service.
3. Use the Family product key you’ve bought to start a fresh M365 plan direct with Microsoft.

You’ve locked in the current Family plan price by purchasing the product code.

Peter Deegan
Office-Watch.com

 

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jimmythesaint53

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