Older Macs and iPhones could lose key Office 365 features in a few weeks

If you want to change your Microsoft Office 2019 files on your Macyou will only be able to do this until next month.

Starting July 13, Office 2019 apps for Mac, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote, will enter a “reduced functionality mode” that disables editing, saving, or creating new files, while only allowing viewing and printing. This restriction also affects outdated iPhone and iPad apps, according to Microsoft.

This is because Microsoft Office 2019 is no longer officially supported as of October 2023 and the version no longer receives software or security updates.

Microsoft 365 subscribers on the most recent supported versions of Office on MacOS, as well as Office 2021 customers without a subscription, will need to update their software before July to avoid the same fate.

The heart of the problem is an expiring security certificate that validates Office licenses. Microsoft renewed the certificate and updated other versions of Office to recognize it correctly, but not the 2019 version for Mac. Versions of Microsoft Office for Windows are not affected by this security certificate.

Unplug Office 2019

Microsoft’s end of support notice for Office 2019 lists a five-year support lifecycle for the software suite. Office 2019 was released in September 2018, which is almost 8 years ago.

With software updates, this is not unreasonable. But this certificate issue doesn’t appear to be caused by faulty code that would require resources from other, newer projects to fix. Office 2019, sold as a one-time purchase, still works very well.

The problem is that Microsoft will not provide an update to activate the renewed certificate. Expiring security certificates is a standard industry practice designed to mitigate the risk of compromised cryptographic keys.

But some critics say Microsoft’s deadline is self-imposed. To compound the backlash, Microsoft quietly removed a previous online promise that the software would “continue to work.”

When reached for comment via email, a Microsoft spokesperson responded: “Microsoft does not intentionally limit or modify Office 2019; The product cannot receive the renewed certificate because no update path exists for an unsupported product. »

The latest full version of Office for Mac is Office 2024, which will continue to be supported. Its predecessor, Office 2021, will also continue to work but will enter end of support mode in October 2026.

Office 2019 existed in the not-so-distant past, before Microsoft started integrating artificial intelligence features into all of its products. It’s reasonable to assume that some customers keep their apps because they want basic word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation functionality without today’s distractions.

If you decide to upgrade from Office 2019, you will need to download and run a license removal tool, open an Office application, and then navigate to Help > Check for updates to activate it.

As an alternative, you can use Microsoft 365 on the web for free.