Forced to buy 365 for my stand alone WORD

Question

I purchased Office for Home back in 2020?? 2021?? and installed it on my Mac. Occasionally Word and Excel would prompt me for an update over the years until that stopped and it kept saying I need an upgrade to some higher level of Word but I was quite satisfied with what I had. The same with Excel I didn't want to upgrade. I had paid for what I was happy with. The other day I open Word to type a letter and now I get a new streamer across the top of my open word program. "Subscription required to edit or save. Start Microsoft 365 to activate a subscription" I never signed up for 365, nor did I download it. I paid like $99.00 for a stand alone program for Word and Excel and elected to Not down load the other attached programs it came with. Now my Word and Excel are completely useless. I purchased the program 6 years ago and now suddenly it wants me to pay for a subscription to 365. I have no interest in 365. I called Microsoft but the AI won't put me through to a person. The AI has it all wrong what I was saying. I logged back onto my account and downloaded it all over again but nothing changed. Any Suggestions?

Answer 1

Hello Dan Wall!

Based on what you described, it seems that your previously purchased standalone copy of Word and Excel is now showing a “Subscription required to edit or save. Start Microsoft 365 to activate a subscription” message on your Mac, even though you did not sign up for Microsoft 365 and have been using the apps without issues before.

This behavior doesn’t necessarily mean that Microsoft is requiring you to switch to Microsoft 365. In many cases, it happens when something in the setup or activation isn’t being recognized correctly. For example, it could be related to the version of Office installed, the account currently signed in, or how the license is being detected.

You might start by signing in at your Microsoft account and checking Services & Subscriptions to confirm that your one‑time Office purchase appears there. If it does, one option to try is uninstalling the current Office apps and then reinstalling them directly from Microsoft rather than from the Mac App Store (since App Store versions typically require a Microsoft 365 subscription).

Also, depending on the version of Office you have installed, compatibility between the app and the license can sometimes matter. For example, with Office 2019 on Mac, newer app updates may no longer work properly with that license as Mac version 16.78 is the last build that supports Office 2019 license types.

If the Office version is not the issue, you can try using the official Mac License Removal Tool, then restart your Mac and attempt to activate Office again.

Note: The license removal tool only clears saved activation/licensing data on your Mac, it does not delete your purchase or invalidate your license. However, please make sure you still have access to the correct Microsoft account associated with your original Office purchase, as you will need to sign in again to reactivate it after running the tool.

Hope this could help. Feel free to post back if you need any further clarification or assistance!

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Answer 2

As of today this no longer works.

I have a one off Office 2019 product (version 16.77) installed under Sequoia.

I've not updated Office or MacOS but from today get read only access and a banner 'inviting' me to register for Office 365.

Why? What has changed? Why does the Software Licence I've paid for no longer work on hardware and OS that it did yesterday?