Here's what Microsoft won't tell you: If you buy standalone office and it is not allowed to phone home to Microsoft at least once a month, it stops working. This can happen if you use it on a disconnected computer or you just have a reverse firewall rule blocking microsoft domains.

I’m not sure that’s true. Last Office I bought was “Home Edition 2016” and it’s been running on a machine that doesn’t have internet access since 2017 without any issues.

2016 is almost a decade in the past. The phoning home thing hasn't really taken off at the time.

Microsoft doesn’t release an Office version every year. They technically released 2019, 2021 and 2024, but they have all been “Office 16” versions. As far as I could tell they are more or less “service packs” + random improvements/small features on to of the 2016 base. I was planning to upgrade last year but life got in the way and I only use that machine in the deep winter. Do you know what release they introduced that in?

My standalone copy of Excel (which is the only member of the Office suite I use) is version 16.54 for MacOS "© 2021 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved."

If I block it from accessing Microsoft domains in Little Snitch, it goes into readonly mode after about a month. Opening a hole in the firewall lets it start working again. Previous versions from several years earlier didn't do that.

Fuck 'em — pirate that shit with a clean conscience https://massgrave.dev/office_for_mac#office-activation

That's honestly less than I would have expected. I still have an old copy of Microsoft Office 95 though I no longer have the hardware with which to run it. Ditto a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS6 which I believe was the final version before they went full on subscription.

i reckon these software ought to run fine in a VM, perhaps running something like windows xp. Unfortunately, with photoshop, the hardware drivers for the various drawing tablets will probably not function (or remain available).

Also work on a brand new Linux with wine.

Actually come to that, my wife has Windows 10 and runs Photoshop CS2 occasionally.

I tested PS7 on ARM64 Windows and it ran fine even. A little blurry on the high DPI display though.

I hear https://ms.codes/ sells office and stuff.

I recently helped my sister upgrade from an extremely old MBP that couldn't upgrade past 10.13 to a pre-retina MBA that couldn't upgrade past macOS 12. Her ancient version of Office from the MBP wouldn't run on the MBA.

I was unable to figure out how to download/purchase a version of Office from MSFT that would run under macOS 12[1]. But in my searching, I ended up here:

https://github.com/alsyundawy/Microsoft-Office-For-MacOS

So she's now running a volume-licensed version of Office 2019. MSFT seems to tolerate not necessarily legitimate volume licensing I guess as these have been floating around the internet forever.

[1] e.g. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/what-...

My go-to strategy still seems to hold up: https://www.g2a.com/search?query=microsoft%20office

> I suppose it always was.

I have a very vague memory that is was $200 in the 2000s, so if accurate the price has gone down.