Office 2019 - Microsoft Account needed?

Because you have a Microsoft Account does not mean you have to put anything in the cloud.

If you buy Office you basically buy an empty box with a product key inside. You get an account, register your key and download the software. If you need to download again you log in. (how many times you download and activate is contained in agreement)

Now you may already have a MS account you can use. Any Outlook.com, Hotmail, MSN or live email account counts as a MS account. As you are on Win 10 you may already have an account if you used the Store for an app.

While MS will let you use any email account as the name for a MS account I recommend using an account name like xxxxx@outlook.com. We see people use their gmail name or yahoo name and then some time later say their gmail password doesn't work. Makes sense it doesn't work, you created a name with unique credentials at Microsoft and while the name may be the same as your account somewhere else the credentials are unique. By using a MS name then it stays separated in our heads.

Office 365 can be a good a deal. The subscriptions allows for the use on five (think I recently saw six) devices. I work with families who want at least three copies so it is cost effective, especially if you want the Outlook 20XX mail client. Again you don't have to store data in the cloud.


Ken

Get use to the subscription model. Great for revenue and revenue drives stock price and money drives the world.

Buying software is a dying breed. Like I said depending on needs the five or six versions you get make it cheap. I can easily use five licenses. It also stays current. Not for everyone but a good deal for many.

I use Quicken, use to buy and use for three years online. Now only subscription. Think Quickbooks is the same. Don't use Adobe but I think they are also moving to that model. Not much different than buying AV licenses every year.

You have to download the software, it is not included in package. Until you download there is nothing to activate. Just like activating Windows, you activate and moved on. You will activate 2019 , sign out and use your software.

I am still using Office 2007

I am also still using Office 2007.

I do not need any of the additional capabilities of later versions [which are mostly to do with group editing & sharing within organised teams].

I am aware of one significant security improvement though.
- Office files that have an open-file password from Versions 2010 onwards are much harder to crack than Office 2007 ones because the module that assesses whether or not a password is correct has been deliberately slowed down in later versions & even hackers have to use that module.
- That slowness hinders 'brute force' password cracking which is the only method for Excel & Word 2007 onwards. Small Access 2007 databases [<25MB] are, so it was alleged online, crackable by methods other than 'brute force' attacks so I stopped using Access 2007 for anything that needed protection.
- Office 2007 was itself a major improvement [Office 2003 passwords were laughably easy to crack very quickly]
- None of the free online password-cracking services I tested out were able to crack my Office 2007 passwords even though they boasted about being able to do so.
- For my Office 2007 Excel & Word files, I use 18-21 character passwords {random-characters} so that such hackers would only have a 1/1,000,000 chance of cracking them within the 100 hour hacking service they commonly provide. Do please note that I based my analysis on likely processing speeds 25 years or further into our future.
- If I had Office 2010 or later then I understand I'd achieve the same level of protection with passwords that are significantly shorter [but I have never sat down and calculated the difference].
- There is a longer exchange about this in Password Managers Newbie Re Password Safe - TenForums

How dangerous is it security wise to still be running Office 2007 now? Have there been any documented exploits since the end of extended support on 10 October 2017?

I have been watching out for reports of exploits but have yet to see any. But, for all we know, they might appear tomorrow.

Denis

Whilst I chose to stick with Office 2007, many people in this forum praise the free alternatives such as, but not limited to, Apache OpenOffice & LibreOffice
- I use VBA to automate some repetitive tasks within Access, Excel, Word & Outlook. That is a limiting factor for me because I do not want to give up the benefit of VBA.
- The free alternatives do not include the full equivalent of Outlook. None of them have any VBA capability.

There is a very useful discussion of your options in I Need “Office”, What Should I Get? Pros vs Cons, You Decide - Rohn007 - MSAForum Rohn is a very highly regarded contributor to Office forums.

Denis