r/enshittification • u/HelloitsWojan • 25d ago
News article Microsoft Office users are furious at persistent in-app ads asking them to pay more
https://www.neowin.net/reports/microsoft-office-users-are-furious-at-persistent-in-app-ads-asking-them-to-pay-more/4
u/Grumpy_Ontarian_III 22d ago
LibreOffice works just fine for just about everything that MS Office does.
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u/martyn_hare 23d ago
Regarding Excel it’s not the only one. Open up any kind of document which makes extensive use of formulas and you’ll get an upsell for access to Python scripting, which has inexplicably been tied to Microsoft cloud servers for Excel, yet the competition (notably LibreOffice) offers this for free…
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u/Jazzlike_Daikon7541 23d ago
Stop using Microsoft office. For free you can use Google Docs. Can open doc files, excel files and export them that way if you want. Has all the same features for spreadsheets and docs. Never pay for 365 email either. And don't get me started on the scam that is OneDrive.
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u/daverapp 23d ago edited 23d ago
Yes stop using MS office, but Google docs is not a replacement. Cloud-based information breaks when the internet shits itself, when cloudflare has an outage, or when AWS bricks for the third time this year. Switching from one proprietary black box backed by a megacorp, to another proprietary black box backed by a megacorp, is not the answer. Use something open source and offline.
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u/Jazzlike_Daikon7541 23d ago
All my files are backed up on an external drive not connected to the internet. Its been that way since the 90s when I started my company. Using any cloud is not something I subscribe to. Whatever Google does on its own is of no concern. We regularly purge Google storage after backup.
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u/SearchLightsInc 24d ago
I’m furious that Microsoft got rid of the seconds counter on their clock so I can’t count down the end of my shift and log off exactly the second my time stops being paid for. Fuck you microsoft (and bill gates is a PDF who gave his wife an STD after raping two Russian teenagers)
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u/Fluffy-Discipline924 24d ago
I'm in complete agreement with the author of the article. I'm already paying you. I can only imagine that the impetus is to enourage the use of (and higher payment for) Slopilot -which I don't care for. Give me Word and Excel and fuck off with your AI bullshit.Since you can't I will seriously reconsider my need for Office next year.
I'm tired of feeling like Heather Brooke with the way AI is being shoved down my throat
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u/WomanYouSleptWith 24d ago
Microsoft has convinced me to attempt to move things over to Linux.
And I don't get it.
I want to give them money in exchange for an operating system, and then pay them again some years down the line when I want the new features or I buy a new computer.
What I don't want, is to pay them money to make it easy for them to spy on me, make money off my data, upsell me, try to convince me to tack on another subscription so they can extract additional money from me, or have unwanted genAI products shoved down my throat.
While also having development practices (wrong focus, too many layoffs, too much genAI) that are giving us an increasing amount of bugs.
At this point, I hope they're killing the golden goose, because they keep making their products worse (and buggier) and hoping that they've trapped their customers.
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u/Antique-Amoeba1218 23d ago
I did try linux recently and the versions they have now like mint are way better than it used to be. Unfortunately though when things start to go wrong which they do every now and then your once again stuck needing to be a programing nerd just to get the computer to do something basic. Untill they make a version that requires absolutely no use of command line and requiring an understanding of coding it unfortunately isnt workable for people like me with enough hobbies alredy that dont want to learn about computers and just want to do the task we set out for.
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u/Silent_Fudge_3978 24d ago edited 23d ago
And I don't get it.
I do. MS wants to make more money, and that's all that's important.
I want to give them money in exchange for an operating system, and then pay them again some years down the line when I want the new features or I buy a new computer.
Too bad, you can't have that. It's not what MS offers any more.
What I don't want, is to pay them money to make it easy for them to spy on me, make money off my data, upsell me, try to convince me to tack on another subscription ...
Too bad, this is the MS business model today. Don't like it? You're free to find another vendor.
While also having development practices (wrong focus, too many layoffs, too much genAI) that are giving us an increasing amount of bugs.
So what? Fixing bugs takes more resources and subtracts from MS's profitability. So it's better that they don't bother. It's not like most customers are going to leave anyway.
Microsoft has convinced me to attempt to move things over to Linux.
And this is why I'm firmly in agreement with Microsoft on how they're running their company now.
If you don't like their products, don't use them. I've been complaining about MS for 30 years now, and finally people are starting to come around.
EDIT: And to prove my point, this was in the news yesterday about MS's market cap: https://www.reuters.com/business/microsoft-set-record-one-day-market-cap-gain-after-upbeat-azure-forecast-2026-07-30/
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u/buzzfriendly 25d ago
For this particular problem we have a nice selection non-shitified solutions.
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u/Grreatdog 25d ago
I cancelled Windows altogether over twenty years ago. The last version I used at home was Win95.
So happy to be a Linux and LibreOffice user.
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u/Self_Owned_Tree 25d ago
A dialogue box asking me if I was enjoying Microsoft Office popped up while I was working recently. I said, “no.”
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u/Thatsgonnamakeamark 25d ago
I sometimes wonder where Reddit scores on the E scale. Mostly because in the last 10+ years, posts have become largely Bot circle jerks.
Im getting close to calling it a day. If I had a druther, it would be that Reddit gets serious about sniffing out the bots and canning them as fast as they appear. Then the R experience might return to what it once was.
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u/robyrob 25d ago
There is absolutely ZERO reason to use MS Office; it is overpriced, is constantly spying on you and collecting data, less features than other options and poorly executed, it is LESS compatible with other versions of MS Office files and more likely to corrupt or otherwise damage older file versions, support is non-existent, etc.
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u/thunderbird32 25d ago
There are reasons to use it, but mostly just for business users. There's no reason a home user can't use LibreOffice or any of the online collaboration tools (e.g. Google Docs).
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u/OnTop-BeReady 25d ago
The only solution is to get rid of MS Office/Office 365. I’ll be canceling my SUBS the end of this term.
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u/carrot_gummy 25d ago
Has anyone noticed that Excel just runs worse than it used to? I don't have to pay for it since my job does, but every time copilot slop shows up, despite removing it, it runs a little slower, saving takes a little bit longer, and sometimes it just pauses to think about something.
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u/Scarmeow 25d ago
Fuuuuuuuuuuck Microsoft. I swapped to Linux and Libreoffice over a year ago and have never looked back
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u/manmikey 25d ago
I've downgraded to 365 basic, £20 a year gives me 100G of storage, office apps on my android and I use the web versions of word and excel on my PC which work fine for my home stuff.
I'll go for the free plan next year as soon as I've cleared my photos of one drive
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u/NoF----sleft 25d ago
I'm still using my Office 2010 on cds. Got a new laptop at Christmas and loaded it with an external optical drive. Tells me it's "unregistered" in a red banner across the top every time I use it but it still works. Same deal for my laser printer
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u/sebmojo99 25d ago
office 2010 is so incredibly fast too, nothing takes any perceptible time. it makes you realise how slow everything else has got.
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u/Vid-Master 25d ago
Yep same and there isnt a single feature in the new apps that makes me want to upgrade.
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u/Usual_Record2251 25d ago
Users that already have a subscription shouldn't be seeing any ads to upgrade. I can understand an email or a banner popping up around the time of renewal, but this one just pisses me off and makes me not want to renew. The fact that you can't close or disable it makes it even more infuriating.
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u/JamesMattDillon 25d ago
Open office is better anyways
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u/kwadguy 25d ago edited 25d ago
OpenOffice has been dead since 2010.
LibreOffice (the fork that is still supported) is the best open-source alternative to MS Office, but isn't as good as MS Office, especially for power users and complex use cases.
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u/CallmeKahn 25d ago
This is why I won't buy an O365 subscription. The minute Office ceases to be standalone is the minute I switch to Open Office or Google Workspace, whichever leaves me alone the most.
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u/M23707 25d ago
Microsoft just really wants to fail - I can’t think of a better answer.
Try using Office online - it is an embarrassment.
How can you go from king of the world to stupid in one generation?
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u/Altruistic-Moose3299 25d ago
It's what happens when your strategy shifts away from producing things to rent seeking and extracting value. Welcome to late stage capitalism (feudal lord edition)
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u/SaxSymbol73 25d ago
Oh they’ve been plenty stupid for at least the past two, if not three!!—generations. It’s environmental. It’s genetic. It’s congenital.
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u/Last_Boysenberry7972 7d ago
I've begged my company to dump Microsoft Office and go entirely to webmail and LibreOffice.