Fuck Microsoft.

It encourages me to sign in to refresh my license and then tells me there is no license associated with my account and I must purchase Microsoft 365 in order to regain access to my own work.

[edit] Am I correct that you have a version of Microsoft Word which is not subject to this blackmail? What is it?

I don’t see why the end of support means the end of access?!! WTF.

I don't think it should have. I was working just fine in a Word document and then I wasn't.

*hugs*

*hugs*

*hugs*

But really. Singular me hates them.

I paid them for a perpetual license. I did not get my money's worth. I wrote my own work on versions of Word they did not offer on a subscription model. This is extortion. It should not be allowed.

I just really hope it helps a tiny bit for you to know you are not alone.

*hugs*

Thank you. I like your SETI motif.

This sounds perilously close to the perennially annoying "Install Linux", but have you considered LibreOffice? Can read and write M$ Word and Excel format files.

I appreciate the double-check. I have LibreOffice on this computer. I don't write well in it. I've tried. It may be the shape of my future because there's nothing else left, but I would still like a copy of Microsoft Word that doesn't brick my documents.

(I normally refer to it as our Linux-driven pseudo-TV, but we have a Linux box which I do a bunch of things on. My entire archive as a professional writer, however, is in Microsoft Word for Mac. Until this year it was never a problem.)

Some recent info about this here, hopefully it's helpful.

Thank you. I also tried to refresh the license and received an error message. It happened several times in a row. I was finally able to sign in and was simply directed to purchase the subscription version. No other options offered.

This is so enraging.

I am trying to convert my feelings to wanting the people responsible to die.

Ugh, not another completely unnecessary and infuriating thing to deal with! I'm so sorry about the latest bullshit.

Thank you. I really feel like I'm drowning.

Argh! I hope you can sort something soon.

*hugs*

I'm just not sure what there is to sort. I am not finding avenues of recourse from Microsoft beyond paying them more money for access to my own work.

This is so wildly not okay. Fuckers.

It's not doing much for my mental health.

(Hmm. Even if they're not suitable for working in, it should be possible to open Word documents in LibreOffice and Pages, unless Microsoft have really reached new tactical heights of invasive greed that I don't understand. That is a bit ridiculous!)

It is possible to open them. I can almost certainly save new copies in LibreOffice. But in terms of working within the decades of documents that I had created and written and edited and saved on my own time it seems to be no go unless I am willing to be extorted and nothing about this seems reasonable or legal to me.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

That's about where I am.

sheesssssh, I had JUST gotten so annoyed with Libre Office's laggy saving and stuff that I switched to the 2021 Word I've had on here for yonks. (Mainly I got it for Excel and receiving files from other people...)

I'm so sorry! That is unfair.

if you still have your installation key, which you would have gotten with the original purchase, you can download and re-install it. Sounds like this is working well.

That is more or less what I did this evening after a marathon unhelpful session with a Microsoft support representative who may have been a bot! Despite being able to provide literal receipts and the product key, I was eventually told that actually the problem was that my license was invalid and therefore I was not entitled to tech support at all, at which point I was kicked out of the chat without recourse. I hadn't seen the Reddit thread, but I remembered that when a previous iteration of Microsoft Word 2021 developed Copilot in 2025, I was able to nuke it from space and reinstall successfully from the package I had never thrown out in 2023. It had not seemed to work when I tried it yesterday, but this time I was more paranoid and did things like shut down my computer completely between the license removal and the reinstall and I am now in possession of a very old copy of Word which I do not feel I can trust not to lock me out at any second, but it activated its license without foofaraw and allows me into my own files. I have shut down its auto-updates with extreme prejudice and am hoping that helps. Thank you for making sure I had seen the information! I just arrived there through prior experience and incandescent rage.

I was able to edit and save a file this evening; I'm not up for an extended download-and-reinstall fandango just at the moment.

I am glad you can edit and save!

Fingers tightly crossed for the new installation.

*hugs*

So far, so good, but I must say it feels like tap-dancing on Vesuvius.