I have 2019 and 2021 on different machines.

Not sure what deficiencies you are referencing compared to 365 other than not having the "privilege" of paying a monthly subscription fee. Maybe something to do with OneDrive, but OneDrive can DIAF for all I care.

There are a handful of apps or functions that aren't included w/2021. Skype, Teams, ... I suppose it doesn't amount to much.

Skype is officially dead and I’ve always gotten Teams as a standalone download. I’ve got Office 2019 and 2021 on various systems and have never noticed anything missing functionality wise.

Office 2024 also exists and it does not require subscription.

Office 2024 keys are expensive, Office 2021 can be pretty cheap, especially the phone activation ones

Matth79 wrote on 2025-03-16, 17:25:

Office 2024 keys are expensive, Office 2021 can be pretty cheap, especially the phone activation ones

Aka, they have already been used and require you to call to tell them it is only installed on one system.

So the brand new 2024 products/keys you see on ebay for ~125 USD are actually used?

I don't need 2024 necessarily (I don't need Office at all, just hate being out of the loop if you know what I mean. I can get 2019 for ~45$, and I imagine the knowledge gleaned from using (and reading about) that is sufficient to be "current"? New features are always added I guess, but this isn't for professional use).

If they are phone activation, then I don't trust them.

Initial activation should always work over the internet.

The phone activation licenses may well stop working / deactivate if/when MS blacklists them.

They could also be offline keys taken from some companies enterprise license site. (Sketchy IT people stealing them and selling them on eBay or other sites)

Most of the keys like that and on key sites are gray market, meaning they buy licenses in the country with the cheapest licenses, then resell them. But with telemetry/internet data on your PC being sent back to the activation server, companies like Microsoft see you are using an out of region key. Every once in a while they batch deactivate them once they trace them back to illegal resellers that are circumventing the regional purchase requirement clauses in the legal agreements.

Honestly, I consider MS Office an absolute last resort these days.

I have seen the gray market stuff that activated and worked fine, and I have seen ones that did not. I have also set up office 2019\2021 using full retail licenses (the ones that come on cards from the store) on computers for people, and then a month later their motherboard died and required setting up a new system. Microsoft conveniently failed to list that 100% legit, bought and paid for *brand new* office license anywhere on the person's microsoft account, despite requiring the account to activate the license in the first place. They also rejected the key when trying to reactivate it, saying it was already used. When trying to use phone support to activate it, the CS robot would simply hang up after saying "sorry, we can't activate this license" . In the end, I ate the cost of another license since these people were friends of mine and needed their computer back ASAP for their home business.

I also tried moving the drive from the system that died and putting it directly into the new (identical) machine, and absolutely everything worked perfectly except for the Office license. Once it was activated on one motherboard under a certain MS account, it seems that without THAT account signed in using THAT motherboard the license seemingly never even existed.

From then on, I tell people to give LibreOffice a shot for a while and if it doesn't work out to let me know and I'll help them get whatever they want from Microsoft. Or, if they are perpetually online and are already familiar with Google, just use Google docs or their other apps. They aren't perfect, but they work fine for most things.

I feel like most people that absolutely need MS Office are probably getting it from their university or their employer to begin with.

I helped someone recently who pays yearly (dearly?) for Office 365 because they thought they needed to do that. They mainly use it for Outlook because they always used that for email. Not only is this program absolutely HORRID, with show-stopping bugs that have existed for almost 20 years, it is actually the same Outlook program from Office 2016, despite them trying to convince you that you're at least getting updates for your yearly subscription. On top of that, there is a free Outlook now, which does most of the same things. Outlook was so slow and broken on two of their PCs that it was driving me crazy, so to narrow down some issues I installed Thunderbird on their system and had their email and everything working and ready to use in less than 5 minutes, while also being much faster.

MS has really become a joke at this point. I don't know exactly what changed at the company over the past 10 years, but it seems that their already questionable standards took a massive nose dive in that span of time.

Probably more of the usual stuff. The programs and operating systems themselves were perfectly usable for 10-15 years, and they couldn't sustain the size of their company (and "growth") by going all-in on fixing bugs and improving security to make their existing software bulletproof. To keep the investors happy and 200,000 workers employed they have to keep forcing changes that benefit no one and wasting an astronomical amount of time, money and energy.

Sorry for the rant.

P.S.: Have tried Windows 11, find it irritating and sluggish, still using 10 on my main PC. Also, get off my lawn.

So ... whatever standalone version you buy, if it's an actual retail/OEM product, it has to specify for use in the USA or suffin? I really just need the minimal best bang for the buck (but totally legitimate) means to familiarize myself with "modern" Office products.

No I really don't want to pay for a subscription. I'd sooner but a new cheap laptop with 365 for free for a year. If they still do that.

I've had free M$ products included with perhaps 8 laptops I've bought since 2002. And never used 1 of them! Should I figger it's time?

I still use Office 2k
Oops

As Ozzuneoj mentioned, LibreOffice is indeed an option worth considering, if you don't want to play the "you never really own any software anymore" game.

LibreOffice has gotten really good over the years, including its support for both the later and earlier MS Office file formats.

And it's actually a native desktop application that you can install for offline use. It's free and open source.

2021 is 70$ and includes the DVD. It's not a lot of money wasted, if that be the case

My old Lenovo laptop still has Windows 10. Not sure if 11 is an option. It was released 9 or 10 years ago. It's never been on the Internet! I frequently download things via phone, usually, and subsequently install them. Ok there was 1 itty bitty time I accessed the net with live Linux on a USB drive. Every other device I own is or has seen internet access. I'm due for a healthy heaping of updates. Or (hopefully) I'll just install the latest 10 build. Then go from there. Or maybe you can still get 10 (or 11) DVDs on ebay for cheap.

Once I install office, assuming I can't activate by phone, I'll activate them shut it off. I just like it that way. I am in therapy though.

11 takes some tricks to get installed offline. You can also bypass the hardware requirement check but I wouldn't bother going past 10 on something that old and not being put online.

If you really want, you can do a search for "Microsoft Media Creation Tool" and make a bootable USB installer or even download the ISO.

Official requirements are 8th Gen Intel or Ryzen whatever. Not sure if there are specific CPU requirements on the AMD side besides Ryzen.

The 8th Gen on the Intel side is stupid as they gave a pass to their Surface Pro with 7th gen as well as to the 7720HQ in the Dell Precision 7720 as a ton of people complained about it.

Believe me 11 runs on anything. Calls for a 1ghz processor, 4gb of ram, 64gh hard disk space. Not that critical.

Oh, I know. It is just the official requirements check that the installer does that is kind of stupid. I get that they want some security features supported, and that is totally understandable as far as general users go as they generally have absolutely no clue about online safety and tend to believe anything they get through email or on a web page.

cyclone3d wrote on 2025-03-17, 01:47:

11 takes some tricks to get installed offline. You can also bypass the hardware requirement check but I wouldn't bother going pa […]
Show full quote

11 takes some tricks to get installed offline. You can also bypass the hardware requirement check but I wouldn't bother going past 10 on something that old and not being put online.

If you really want, you can do a search for "Microsoft Media Creation Tool" and make a bootable USB installer or even download the ISO.

Official requirements are 8th Gen Intel or Ryzen whatever. Not sure if there are specific CPU requirements on the AMD side besides Ryzen.

The 8th Gen on the Intel side is stupid as they gave a pass to their Surface Pro with 7th gen as well as to the 7720HQ in the Dell Precision 7720 as a ton of people complained about it.

I believe the requirement on the AMD side is that it has to be a Zen+ core or newer. This is pretty irritating too, because the Ryzen 5 1600 is Zen, which is not supported... unless it is the unofficially designated "AF" version (part of the serial number is AF where most Zen 1 chips are AE), which was effectively a slightly lower clocked Ryzen 5 2600, which has a Zen+ core. THOSE are allowed to install 11 without any hassle at all. Derp.

Also, it's very easy to bypass all of the checks, at least it was the last time I installed 11. By default, Ventoy is set to do this automatically when booting from a Windows 11 image. A year or two ago I switched to using an SSD in a USB enclosure with Ventoy installed on it for OS installs and diagnostics on modern machines... it has been amazing. I can just drop .iso files onto the drive and Ventoy will let me choose what to boot from. It even handles secure boot and other things in a graceful way (most of the time).

I can throw Hiren's Boot CD ISO, Windows 10, Windows 11 or other diagnostic ISOs and they load very fast thanks to the SSD.

oldhighgerman wrote on 2025-03-16, 21:38:

So ... whatever standalone version you buy, if it's an actual retail/OEM product, it has to specify for use in the USA or suffin? I really just need the minimal best bang for the buck (but totally legitimate) means to familiarize myself with "modern" Office products.

No I really don't want to pay for a subscription. I'd sooner but a new cheap laptop with 365 for free for a year. If they still do that.

I've had free M$ products included with perhaps 8 laptops I've bought since 2002. And never used 1 of them! Should I figger it's time?

Just try using LibreOffice. You have absolutely nothing to lose other than a little bit of time tinkering with them.

I'd check for Office 202x Professional Plus LTSC release.
Those should come with pendrive/DVD and have Skype/Teams included and be non-Subs option.
Not sure about prices though...