Microsoft 365 Family Subscription Renewals

Off-Topic
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Trigger warning: About AI
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I got an email from Microsoft a few weeks ago about a price increase. Here’s an excerpt:

“…Effective 14 February 2025, the price for Microsoft 365 Family subscriptions will increase from CAD 109.00* per year to CAD 145.00* per year. To continue with the new price, no action is needed—your payment method on file will be automatically charged. To make changes to your subscription plan or turn off recurring billing, visit your Microsoft account at least two days before your next billing date…”

I thought that was a bit of a price leap, and wasn’t happy about it. I looked into it at first, but got distracted and forgot about it until last night.

Turns out, the automatic change to the more expensive subscription is to pay for including the new “Copilot” features in their office products.

Well, given my family and I only need MS Word or Excel occasionally, we don’t really need Copilot, so I figured how to opt out of the higher priced subscription, to get back down to my original price (with no Copilot) by switching to the new “Family Classic” plan.

Switching to Microsoft 365 Personal and Family Classic Plans

Luckily, my next billing date is not until March, so I won’t be dinged for the higher price.

Hopefully this helps someone avoid the price increase, if you don’t need or want an AI overlord messing with your files… :wink:

Edited to add: Trigger warning.

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That’s why I use Softmaker Office, which also runs on Linux…

No Outlook counterpart though…but hey…who needs an email client that occupies more than 2GBytes on macOS (o;

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I hear Google Workspace pricing is going up for the same reason. I haven’t seen it yet. The bad thing is, to turn off Gemini in Workspace you MUST contact support. The panel with the settings is hidden from your account until you do so. I was so mad.

If you aren’t using the custom domain email features, you could consider a perpetual license for Office which you can find on StackSocial legitimately for reasonable prices. Beware of the Office 2019 listing though, Microsoft announced end of updates for Office 2019 (so pick up the 2021 listing).

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You know, I’m using LibreOffice for ages now. My family uses Google Docs/Sheets (home and work). We don’t miss MS Office, maybe because we don’t need extreme fancy things?

I use Thunderbird.

The good part is that I can switch to Mac / Windows or Linux. All those have the same apps.

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I’d be happy to migrate away from MS Office altogether and just use Mac Pages & Numbers (already using Mac Mail for a few years now), but I have two challenges at the moment:

  1. I need to weed through 35Gb of files on my OneDrive before I can turn off the service (the free plan only allows 5Gb).

  2. My wife has a huge treasure trove of Word docs that is essentially a diary of our kids growing up. I know other apps like LibraOffice and Mac Pages can open Word files, but she is very skeptical of how well that’ll work. And I don’t blame her, after all the work she put in.

Once I get my OneDrive stuff sorted, then I’ll buy one of those one-time licenses for my wife, then that’ll be it. :smiling_face:

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I never turn this thing on. :smile:

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Smart.

I used OneDrive faithfully for years, even when I switched to all Macs about 4 years ago. But about 2 years ago it began misbehaving on macOS using excessive memory and CPU time for no apparent reason, then not staying connected, etc.

So I uninstalled it and only access via online. Obviously this slows down weeding through what I’m keeping and what I’m not. What a pain!

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LibreOffice does a pretty darn good job at this. As long as your wife didn’t get exceedingly fancy with layout, it should open up just fine.

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