4 ms·
I recently discovered that Microsoft literally will not sell you Office for a computer not connected to the internet. You cannot buy this product, I tried very
by mapgrep 9y ago
I recently discovered that Microsoft literally will not sell you Office for a computer not connected to the internet. You cannot buy this product, I tried very hard, lots of escalation, etc.
Needless to say, LibreOffice works very nicely in an offline environment, and it's very rare that I find a file it does not handle well. (The only example I have — a Word document with Track Changes enabled, heavily revised by multiple people, multiple times over many days. L.O. seemed to lose track of the changes and showed a wrong document. I imagine for most people this is pretty rare.)
And you don't have to worry about malware (for those tempted to pirate Microsoft Office).
- taspeotis 9y agoI'm a bit confused by this. Microsoft normally has excellent offline activation capabilities for all the three letter agencies that buy their software and run it on internal networks.
- mapgrep 9y agoPrecisely my thinking (based on supposition). Adobe provides similar activation for offline computers (a sort of challenge/response where you take a number off the offline computer, enter it on their website on a different computer, bring a number back to the offline computer to finish activation). I assume they just have decided to make this functionality a special case for enterprises of a certain size. I emphasized to them this could be bought through a business channel if needed but I assume I have not the right scale.
- fny 9y agoEnterprise editions exist with 100% offline installation, but unfortunately, home and business licenses have an "offline install" that requires online activation...[0] This has been a huge PITA for me since I often need Word and Excel on a computer that's restricted from accessing the internet. [0]: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Use-the-Office-2016-offline-installer-f0a85fe7-118f-41cb-a791-d59cef96ad1c https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Use-the-Office-2016...
- taspeotis 9y agoThis is a bit kafka-esque: > You need to be connected to the internet to download this installer file, but once that's done, you can then install Office offline on a PC at your convenience. > ... > After your Office installation is complete, you need to activate Office. Be sure you're connected to the Internet and then open any Office application, such as Word or Excel. I mean the lede is "problems with slow speed or unreliable connections" but at the same time ... offline is offline.
- Spooky23 9y agoThat’s only available with an EA, which means 250 seats or more.
- kryptiskt 9y agoYou can still activate it by phone, it just tells you it can't be: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/-telephone-activation-is-no-longer-supported-for-your-product-error-when-activating-office-9b016cd2-0811-4cb3-b896-5a6a13177713 https://support.office.com/en-us/article/-telephone-activati...