Microsoft Office for Mac 2019 Activation

Happyjack,

Thanks for the update; you've clearly been busy talking to Microsoft, trying to get this mess sorted out. Some of the responses you've obtained from Microsoft are helpful, but other explanations from them just don't seem to hang together, in my view. Frankly, until Microsoft makes some sort of public declaration about this, I'd treat anything they say with a very big pinch of salt.

You wrote "It appears MS Office for Mac 2019 does not support Sierra 10.12.6 as advertised". Did Microsoft Tier3 Support actually tell you that? If so, that would amount to Microsoft admitting they'd made a monumental marketing blunder, which might now not only get them into the tricky area of refunds and possible litigation but also will doubtless lose them many thousands of potential customers.

I bought my boxed retail version of Office 2019 for Mac from my local highstreet Apple store. Well before that I checked and double-checked that it'd be compatible with my Sierra. It would have been unwise of me to have upgraded to beyond Sierra because, on an all-flash iMac such as mine, both High Sierra and Mojave change the Apple filesystem to APFS and therefore the boot volume would get erased initially and all software and data on it therefore lost. So, certainly in my case, upgrading should not have been done, nor be done now, unless and until I've a proper plan for dealing with that. Incidentally, both of those versions of macOS are said to be poor compared to Sierra, they having lots of bugs. Lots of users have downgraded back to Sierra.

But what's so shocking is that both Microsoft and Apple are still advertising this product as being compatible with Sierra. Compatibility is claimed on the retail box, it says so on Microsoft's site that specifies the system requirements for it ("Office for Mac 2019 is supported on the three most recent versions of macOS"), and at Apple's online shop too, under MS Office for Mac H&S 2019 it says "System requirements: Office 2019 for Mac requires macOS Sierra, macOS High Sierra or later". Nothing could be more unambiguous.

Regarding OneDrive, though, Tier 3 do appear to be saying that it's now compulsory in Office for Mac. Well, it certainly didn't used to be. The version I ran before was the 2011 edition, and in the installation setup for that you could deselect Onedrive and when the install completed there was indeed no OneDrive installed. You can also deselect OneDrive in the setup for 2019, but we now know that's it's not acted upon. By Microsoft redesigning the install software so that you can no longer, in reality, prevent OneDrive from being installed, they are grossly misrepresenting the product. With users now complaining to them about it, it should not be down to each affected individual to perform a software hack on the Mac's files in order to eradicate OneDrive.

Incidentally, I don't think, in any event, it's true that this Office is incompatible and therefore unusable on a Sierra machine. When I first installed it on mine, the very first thing I did was to check the new contents of the Applications folder. There, the only thing new that I found was MS Word 2019.app. There were no other separate components of the product there, nor a combined Office 2019.app. But then that was to be expected because during the installation I'd deselected virtually everything else except Word. After that, there was a very short activation sequence to do, but that went without any issue and thereafter I was able to use Word. Thus, there was no incompatibility with Sierra, or failure to activate, at that stage. It was only later, after having found that that accursed OneDrive was present and was compromising my system, that I discovered that the Microsoft server was no longer responding to my password when I tried to reinstall Office. Of course, I can't say whether other components of Office would have activated and run without issues, had I chosen to install them, but all I can say is that, first time around, Word definitely activated and ran, suggesting that there's nothing incompatible of Office 2019 with Sierra.

Happyjack25 (or rather, Unhappyjack25),

I too recently purchased much the same retail version of MS Office for Mac2019 - at enormous expense I might add, reckoning that, once installed, it'd probably serve me well for around three years minimum. Previous editions of Office for Mac had. Don't know if yours is similar but with mine (the H & S version) you have to sign in to the MS account in order to manage it, and there's a setting for that on the Office menu bar at top of screen. I recall also that you have to look in your e-mail inbox for a confirmation message from Microsoft.

Initially, I had no problem in installing the app and then activating it. And incidentally, in the setup process for the installation I found on my copy (as with my previous edition) that I could select/deselect various of Office's components. I'm not sure if that's currently available also on your H & B version. That's to say, when I got to the Install caption of the Setup, instead of gayly clicking on Install I selected the Customise button. This gave all the app's components to choose for installing, including OneNote and OneDrive. I specifically didn't want those two, so I deselected them. The trick then was to click on 'Install', not 'Standard Install'.

However, I was utterly shocked to find that, after installing and activating, OneDrive was definitely running, and was actually copying every single personal/private file of mine from my entire system to the server! This was happening irrespective of whether I was signed in to the MS account or not. From the security angle, this was the very opposite of what I wanted to have happen, as I use secure offline methods for storing all my files. I was absolutely livid.

I logged in at the account and deleted what I could, then returned to investigate the OneDrive interface on my Mac in some detail. After nearly a day's work I concluded that there was simply no means of getting rid of OneDrive, it's compulsory it seems, so I decided to use Time Machine on my Mac to roll back to the pre-Office situation, getting rid of the Office account.

Since then, I've had another go at reinstalling Office, but this time the Microsoft server wouldn't accept my login password, even though it happily accepted the Product Key and my e-mail address. I tried again a day later but got the same result.

Mine was a 1 PC/Mac version (onetime purchase) and I've a suspicion that the Microsoft server won't (or cannot) respond to a second attempt at installation, even though the app may be already eliminated from the user computer. I gave up at that point, cursing Microsoft into eternity, and vowing to never use their products ever again. It rather looks like I've been swindled out of my money.

The revelation (if worthy calling it that) from you that my trouble may have been caused by their server being down is interesting, nonetheless. I have, however, embarked now on using LibreOffice instead, the free open-source office software. I've yet to actually install LO. But at least LO is pitched at serious users and not at the frivolous who accumulate short, inconsequential files where it doesn't matter if they get exposed/eventually hacked on a server somewhere.

MS Office was, for some decades, a stalwart applications suite that was IMHO well-designed but I'm afraid that in recent years Microsoft has dumbed down many of its features, seemingly preferrring to appeal to the less-serious office software user using mobile devices.

Happyjack25,

Following on from the last reply of mine yesterday (the 14th), which you may or may not have seen yet, I thought I'd let you know that today (the 15th) I bit the bullet and installed LibreOffice on my iMac and, thus far, nothing's crashed and, as a tentative initial test, in Writer I've opened an existing .doc document of mine, and successfully printed it (both sides of the sheets) to my mono laser printer (on my LAN). I then saved it as a .doc, but with a changed filename. The default Save folder is Finder's 'Documents' folder, which is what you'd expect. But you can choose wherever.

I had a quick look in LO's Preferences and changed just one or two settings there. The default Writer theme is nicely clear too. Before saying 'go' to the printer I checked File > Printer Settings but, for my particular printer, little info was displayed. However, the much fuller pre-print settings more typical of what you'd get with MS Word were then displayed, once I clicked File > Print. My printer then did the required task.

Before that, when I first opened the document onscreen it was enlarged and beautifully clear, and it was a simple matter of then just setting a suitable default zoom level. Between the original and the Writer version of the document there was a slight change in layout, affecting the breaking of paragraphs across the page boundaries, but again that was ultra-simple to put right. Possibly, I'll need to refine some of the page layout settings to get the headers and footers more like they were for me in MS Word. But, thus far, I'm as pleased as punch. I've not tried using any of the other apps in the suite yet, though. These days, where office work's concerned, it's word-processing that I'm engaged in most of the time.

You'll presumably fill me in on how and why you yourself couldn't output to your printer, but I've one or two suggestions that might help, if you'd prefer to forget about MS Office 2019 and give LO another try. Printer drivers, for instance, aren't issued so much by the manufacturer these days, particularly for mono printers, as the scheme called AirPrint has kinda taken over that role (nothing to do with wireless connectivity, BTW). I suspect that, as in my case, the only printer driver required for your setup is the one you'd automatically get - for your directly-attached or networked printer - inside macOS. But it might be worth you doing a manual search (Software Update) of the Apps Store server for that driver, just in case your OS still has an older driver installed. My laser printer is a Lexmark that was first put on the market about 7 or 8 years ago, and Lexmark stopped selling it about 3 years ago. Nevertheless, the basic driver for my Lexmark, as supplied by Apple inside the Sierra OS, is obviously adequate, and the more-detailed and refined print settings are held in a user-accessible way inside the printer itself.

One thing that can sometimes clear up printer connection problems is a reset of the Mac's printer system. If you open Printers & Scanners in System Preferences, you should see your particular printer listed and its status. But there's a feature there for not only removing it or re-adding it but also you can readily clear out the entire printer system in the OS and then you can add your printer in again absolutely afresh. I'd say it's more likely to be something not quite right with the printer driver than a fault with the printer itself that's prevented you from successfully printing from LO.

Incidentally, I myself was careful not to download the 'experimental' version of LO from the official site. The 'developer' or 'experimental' one has a higher version no. Instead, I stuck with just the so-called 'still' version, v.6.1.5, 64-bit, released out of beta just this February.

Happyjack,

(to be appended to my previous reply).

I'm currently using LibreOffice instead. Yesterday I managed, after much aggravation, to redownload to my Desktop the Office 2019 package. However, I'm rather loath to try installing it again, in case I end up once more with the chosen app(s) installed but refusal of the Microsoft server to activate the copy. I'd then be faced with trying to remove the app from the Mac again, plus all the miscellaneous files; I'd have to do a Time Machine restore once again, to get rid of it.

Here in Europe, consumer law says that if a product is mis-described or doesn't work as intended the purchaser is entitled to his/her money back. And this product did, after all, cost me a cool 120 GBP (about 250 dollars). But both Microsoft and Apple are in a favourable situation vis à vis the law, because their goods are not, as far as I understand it, covered by european law. Also, the product as bought states that if even the outer wrapping is removed from the box, let alone the software installed and used, no refund would be permitted. I could possibly contact my creditcard company and ask them if I've a case for a legitimate refund (in which case, the cc company would themselves refund the cost to me), but I'm certain they'd want bullet-proof evidence of the product's mis-selling by Microsoft. Frankly, unless Microsoft were to publish a notice to that effect, the cc company would refuse to entertain the idea.

Judging from what you say, Microsoft Support are clueless; the first contact tells you the server is down, but now a more senior support executive is telling you that it's somehow you or your Mac that's doing something wrong and that remote intervention by them is therefore required. I'd be very surprised indeed if the latter produced anything useful. Personally, I'd never allow any remote entity to access my computer, especially one that changes its reasoning in the way you've described.

As it happens, I'm an oldie too and worked in computing research from the 1960s on, so like you I've had wide experience with MS software. I've noted what you've said about LibreOffice and printing and would be interested in learning the nature of the issue with that. I've also had a quick look at OpenOffice, which (correct me if I'm wrong) is more fully called Apache Open Office Suite, but the blurb on it seems to say that, for Apple machines, it's written for older versions of macOS and is therefore unsuitable for more recent editions of macOS such as Sierra, High Sierra and Mojave. Maybe you see it differently, though.

I'd advise anyone contemplating installing MS Office for Mac 2019 to seriously consider whether or not they'd want all their files, including those even on external drives, to be exposed on MS OneDrive. Sure, anyone has to log in to the server to see them, but nothing is 100% secure these days, so IMHO it's crazy to store all your files online in that way, especially if they're highly personal or copyright and you're using a desktop machine. It's far better to store them locally instead (memory is cheap these days), removing the worry and unnecessary duplication.

My take from checking my MS Office.

Using the Gallery as you described on the left side:

Open shows one drive which has nothing in it and on Mac to get to all my files if I want.

Recent shows what I recently created

Now shows Gallery stuff to use if you choose

My name account shows one drive which contained nothing and this is because I never signed into one drive. Also My name account shows me signed in but that because I installed the software so I signed out because I don't use any MS stuff just the programs and one drive is no longer seen by me..

I'd think you should try this again. I don't work for Microsoft , I'm just a long time Mac user just like you. Admittedly all this digital age software can be a little over whelming at times.

At the initial install of Office 2016 I never installed the one drive app. Figured I did not need it. I did a custom install.

Contact Microsoft. There is nothing anyone here can do about it.

Could you describe how you observed one drive running and had copied yours files? I can't see that unless user sign in to one drive, eh?

That'll be a bit tricky, as I ran it only briefly and I no longer have Office 2019 on my Mac - but here goes.

Once the installation completed I arranged to put the Word icon into the Dock, so that I could thereafter open Word very easily (of that package, I use Word far more than Excel, etc). I then launched Word from that icon. I got the classic Word user interface but what also opened - and this then happened every time - was a separate window of what I suppose were templates. The first and null version of these was the standard, plain 'Open new Word window' appearance. I later discovered that if you wanted to work on an existing Word document stored on your system you could close that special window of templates and instead go to the bar menu of Word at the top of screen and use File > Open.

With that plain template opened, you're presented with a menu of about four basic things on the lefthandside - sign in, sign out, recents, and maybe one other (can't remember exactly, now). I guess the sign in/sign out is a replication from the bar menu. Choosing sign out (the default, I presumed), all the existing filenames of those in the Mac's Documents folder were displayed in that window. However, if I signed in (I needed only to click on a 'signed-in preset' there, as it were) what was displayed instead was every document that it found on my entire system. Obviously you can sign in either at the Mac, or remotely by going to the Microsoft site and then signing in there instead. Either way, you see all the files. And annoyingly, any recent documents that have been opened get listed in that local window, and you can't clear them down.

This was certainly not what I expected or wanted, especially as in the installation setup I'd specifically de-selected OneNote and OneDrive. In fact, what seems to happen, whether you're signed in or not, is that OneDrive modifies the functioning of Finder and prevents the Mac from normally copying files, whether existing or new, from the Documents folder to the All My Files folder. That's to say, you get nothing in the All My Files folder in Finder from thereon. Instead, the files that would have been transferred from Documents to All My Files get sent instead to the Microsoft server. (You could probably prevent the sending to the server if, on the Mac, you turned off all forms of file sharing).

Anyway, this all infuriated me, as my philosophy regarding all my private files - and they amount to hundreds perhaps thousands - is to never store them anywhere near the Web. The problem is academic now, of course, as Office 2019 is now gone from my Mac, I having replaced it with LibreOffice.

My main beef about this edition of Office for Mac 2019 is that, regardless of how OneDrive is allowed to run or not, if you de-select OneDrive in the setup, then you should not be thereafter seeing any elements of it onscreen, and certainly not being given sign in/sign out dialogs, having Finder messed up, and seeing your files whisked off to the Microsoft server! And it's not as if you can get around the server copying by going to the Microsoft site and deleting the account, because to get the software in the first place you had to sign in with an address and password, and it's that that you use for signing in and out thereafter. If you delete the account at the server, you may then not be able to re-download Office if you later hit some problem with it and have to reinstall it.