[RED FLAG] Microsoft Office License Scams - Comments Page 2

I've used kingsoft for years. Seems ok to me. Bob recommended it way back.

I have to agree with your basic premise when it comes to MS "licenses" as with many things - if it seems to be too good to be true, it probably is...
For most of my Office type needs I have used Libre Office for years, and, as my needs are fairly basic it is more than sufficient for my needs. I do have a (fully legal) copy of MS Office 2007 (inherited from my late wife, a programmer who HAD to have the real thing for work-compatible stuff) which I keep on a Win7 machine for the odd occasion that LibreOffice can't deal with something. I'd just rather not be beholden to Microsoft where alternatives exist.
I also make a small contribution periodically - a few dollars each time - to Libre Office as a thank you and to help support Open-Source development.

Like Stuart Berg, I depend greatly on MsAccess and none of the alternatives canvassed does this kind of database work. If there is a working alternative then I'd love to hear about it!

Thank you for the red warning signs to look for in the offers "too good to be true".

However, like Stephe and Robert H discovered, there are good offers for Microsoft to be found, especially on ebay. Yes, you need to use common sense and look out for those red flags. You can filter the eBay offers by the rating of the vendor, by the number of sales for the specific product already sold, and your prior personal experience.

I have purchased for less than $10 each Office 2016, Office 2019 Pro, and even Windows 10 Pro and successfully installed and activated them. In some cases usually involving Enterprise versions, I have installed a product key on multiple devices. I have used all of these "cheap" purchases without any issues for multiple months and received Microsoft updates when available.

Do your homework always, but real saving for Microsoft products do exist.

So, in spite of Bob's timely and practical suggestions, do not ignore the significant

I use office 2007 does all I want I do not and never will use a cloud do not care what anyone says they are unsafe

I am not fond of (yearly) subscription-based software.
It seems like an outright disservice by Microsoft for trying to force home users to Office365 SaaS. Unfortunately, steep price ($439) of OfficePro2019 is fueling the piracy (KMS activators) and/or the subsequent 'fuzzy' scams (as Mr. Rankin cites).
I cannot blame people like RobertH who have discovered alternatives that work reliably.

I have gotten phones that the Lic has expired Micro ows me money refund they need to get into your acct to make the deposit they hang up when you tell them ok go ahead and mail it i will wait

To "Harold", about the phone calls from "Microsoft".
Those calls are from criminal scammers, not from Microsoft. Just hang up on them.

@Stuart Berg - are any of these possible contenders for your uses? https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-easy-use-free-alternatives-microsoft-access/

Ever since Bob wrote about Kingsoft many years ago, I've used it instead of Microsoft Office. Never had a problem with it - and the latest free version, WPS Office 2016 Free, is supported in 7 languages and has plenty of nice features! There is also a free version for Android, Linux, and iOS. Try it - you can always uninstall it if you want to, but I hope you like Kingsoft! I sure do!

Don't forget that Goodwill Industries offers FREE online tutorials about Microsoft Office alternatives - with download links! https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/access2013/4-free-alternatives-to-microsoft-office/1/

I used Ashampoo Office software (current version is Office 2019) about 8 years ago when I worked from home. It was fully compatible with MS Office for the work I did, however I'll admit that I never was a power user (some spreadsheet and wp work).

At the current sale price of $30 it may be worth a try.

You don't mention Open Office a free full office suite. It's been around for a lot of years. I keep it on my computer as a backup to my Office 365 subscription for which I pay the full price BTW. I use Open Office's spreadsheet function when I am working with volumes of data, far in excess of the maximum of 5000 that can be exported and for a few years now haven't been able to get the excess download batches to be accepted into an Excel spreadsheet. It seems to work fine and be completely compatible with Office 365. compatibility

I have a very small repair business and have used eBay many times in the last few years to obtain both MSO 2016 Pro Plus and Windows 10 License key's. I just looked back through my purchase history and it's been 12, MSO's and 8, OS 10's. The price for MSO ranged $2.60 to $8.67 and for OS 10 $2.97 to $8.26. I am sorry to inform you that I have never had a problem. I reinstalled some of the MSO's 2 and 3 times in that time period without any problems. What you describe in your article is not how my purchases were obtained, I bought a Key which was instantly delivered, went to the MSO download site in the link they usually provide and installed it.

Im fortunate in having my own server running Open Media Vault:
https://www.openmediavault.org
And then run docuwiki: https://www.dokuwiki.org/
And do most of my text writing in that. Then I have the benefit of being able to have a Cloud application but have full control of all the text I create. The benefit of both world's. Cloud and own storage.

I often use Google Docs to write text because it has a built-in voice recognition and its free. I don't save documents with it. I copy and paste it into my wiki. I like Google Docs voice recognition because it's easy and fast to use. When I use Google Docs I just use the same document over and over again and have discovered because of its version control, I can go back and look at all the revisions I've made over the last couple of years. So it's another form of backup. Although a crude one. Each time I enter the document I just delete all the text before creating a new one. Works great for my purposes

It's pretty tricky thing to compare alternatives to MS Office, since it has strictly licensed part - VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). You can not find it in any alternative, so if you have an Office document heavily supplied by those macros, you can not use for it any alternative. Alternatives work only for basic documents. Original MSO also has some pretty sweet functions that I didn't meet in alternatives.

I personally used to use Kingsoft (WPS now) - Chinese made office. It works pretty good, even was able to repair some corrupted Word files that original MS Word was unable even to open, but it became too annoying by ads and constant forced switching default programs to WPS programs even for PDF files. So I installed German made SoftMaker FreeOffice instead. So far so good.

Also WPS offers their own cloud (as I remember 1Gb free) and I fell for it. It seems works, but I lost at least one of the files. Recalling what and when it happen I suspect they delete contents of their cloud once per year (maybe only unused for that period of time files). That was another reason to stop using WPS.

In the past I used Lotus Suite and then free Lotus Symphony. They had some powerful options that MS Office didn't have (and maybe still doesn't have - I didn't check that for last versions of MSO).

About super cheap MSOs - everybody should realized that MS would never sell anything that type so cheap, it definitely is cracked or stolen. If you still want that, go to torrent tracker and download full cracked MSO for free. There is no difference how you obtained stolen software - in case of torrent you would be sure it is yours completely (of course, if you checked there is no backdoors or malware or trojan horses). So eventually everything has a price. The price for stolen software is the risk to install malware and loosing the ability to use it for commercial use. You can not use it to make money - it's a straight road to courthouse.

All those crazy high prices are actually investments - to make more money using those highly effective tools like MSO.

I use a company-supplied MS Office suite for work, and a $79/yr license for my family and my personal computer. These have served me well for 20+ years, so I don't see why anyone would look for shady alternatives. Someone mentioned VBA scripts and that is one really good reason to stick with the original. That being said, lately I have been using Google Sheets for script-intensive analytical spreadsheets. I find the javascript-based macro programming environment superior to VBA. I also like that, being cloud-based, my work is seamlessly synced to my phone and across my work and home computers, as well as hotel PCs, etc. Not that you can't accomplish that with the MS products - it's just way easier.

To JImK: VBA language themself is not the reason to stick to original MSO, but sets of script/macros are. You need to rewrite them completely for a new environment. And that is harder, than programming from scratch. Code reuse - and license restrictions for VBA scripts use effectively shut it down - is the reason for compatibility.

When my MS Office became so old I was concerned regarding security I followed Bob's advice and tried Libre Office.

It was a seamless transition, I have experienced zero issues with it. My old MS files open perfectly and it was an extremely short learning curve as it is so similar in the way it works.

And best of all it is FREE. When we were happy it was exactly what we needed, we made a donation.

@Gillian who wrote:

"@Stuart Berg - are any of these possible contenders for your uses?
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-easy-use-free-alternatives-microsoft-access/"

Very helpful! After reading the webpage she suggested, I found that OpenOffice Base / LibreOffice Base are worth a try. One thing not mentioned in the article was whether Base can read ".accdb" files directly or at least import them. Without those capabilities, switching database systems wouldn't be feasible for me. I need to look into them further. Thank you.