Office 2019 Pro Plus? Any good?

I am running Office 2016 and want to try 2019 Pro Plus. Is this any better than 2016?

Most people are leaning towards O365 but I don’t want to run a subscription based program.

Have you fished around at Microsoft site to see what added functionality you get from "Pro Plus"?? I have no idea.

Hard to know what you mean by "better". Different undoubtedly, but "better"??

FYI: 6 months to a year ago, I saw a quote from a Microsoft Office developer that stated that Microsoft WOULD be offering a new stand alone non-subscription version of Office. Newer than 2019. Presumably to be called Office 2021 or similar.

I have no idea when that might actually become available.

Like you, I don't want subscriptions. I'm still on Office 2010, hiding and watching. It works perfectly for my purposes, so I may or may not ever update.

The standalone purchases of Office Pro Plus are pretty expensive. Do you need the added applications that come with Pro Plus?

You can buy a standalone copy of 2019, without having to do office 365. Home and Student edition is around $125-$150. 2019 Home and Business (includes Outlook) is $249. And finally there is Professional Plus at $439.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/micr...%3aoverviewtab

This is why I like Office 365. You pay $69.95 a year and get an unlimited # of Office Pro Plus installs and 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage space. You cannot even get 1TB of iCLoud, or Google Drive or Dropbox for less than $70 a year.

Or if you have some friends and family members, you could do the Office 365 plan for $99.99 a year and that gives you 6 accounts. Have your friends/family pitch in $20 a year for 1TB of space each and office. Everybody wins.

If you decide you don't need it anymore, you can just cancel the subscription. You cannot return a copy of Office Pro Plus that you paid over $400 for.

The one thing I liked about O365 was the built-in encryption feature of Outlook and that was it since I did try the Trial version of O365 E3 and just recently canceled my subscription.

I wish MS would and hopefully come out with a “pay-once” only version of O365. That would be a big selling point for me.

I’ll stick with 2016 for now.

win10freak said:

I wish MS would and hopefully come out with a “pay-once” only version of O365. That would be a big selling point for me.

I don't see that happening.

For example, for the $99.99 a year Office 365 bundle comes with 6 accounts, each of which get 1TB of OneDrive space. So, you get 6TB of cloud space and an unlimited number of office installs.

For a single 2TB account with Dropbox it's $9.99 a month, so $119.88. And iCloud in North America is $9.99 a month for 2TB as well. So, same $119.88 a year. Google drive is also $9.99 a month for 2TB. So, 1/3 the amount of space, and no office whatsover and it's $20 more expensive per year.

How much would you be willing to pay for a lifetime of Office 365, and 6TB of OneDrive space. It would probably be a pretty hefty bill.

I know people don't like to pay yearly for software, but if you buy your software legally, Office 365 is dirt cheap. I have Office 365 on 3 PC's in my house. 3 legal copies of Office 2019 Pro plus would be ($439 x 3) or $1,317. Instead I pay $99.99 a year for Office 365 which means it takes me (1,317/99.99) 13.1 years before I hit what it would have cost me for Office 2019 Pro plus. And If I decide in 3 years, I don't want Office anymore and don't need cloud space, I can cancel and my total cost for office would have been 99.99 x 3 or $299.97. 1317/299.97=22% of the cost of buying stand alone.

win10freak said:

I am running Office 2016 and want to try 2019 Pro Plus. Is this any better than 2016?

Most people are leaning towards O365 but I don’t want to run a subscription based program.

Hi works fine for me -- I got 3 cheap licenses for Office 2019 (including VISO and PROJECT) -- so far no probs with updates etc. I can't say I use VISIO but I do like PROJECT.



I don't like subscription software either -- however that's everybody's own choice. For some with the online Cloud data too and the number of users in a household who can use O365 might be worth it.

I think currently there's no detectable difference -- I suspect most users probably would still be OK with Office 2010 !!! - EXCEL has some new features since Office 2010 - notably in areas like Pivot Tables but probably unless you were a "Power" EXCEL user you wouldn't use a lot of those features.

I suspect also there´s more emphasis on "Teams" type of things. Probably not of much relevance to HOME users - I assume for those working REMOTELY your Workplace would have all that type of software in place e.g connecting to SKYPE / ZOOM / other applications for meetings etc.

Cheers
jimbo

Steve C said:

I too have really cheap licences (£5) for Office 2016 & 2019. The 2019 version is fine but for my amateur purposes I can't really spot much difference between the versions.

Hi there

EXCEL 2019 does have a few differences - especially as I said in Pivot tables, graphing and being able to insert multi-media / powerpoint etc more easily but you really need to be quite a mega power user to take advantage of those facilities -- in fact I suspect loads of people would be quite happy even staying on Office 2010. (Office 2010 with the final updates can access all the latest office document formats of course e.g docx etc)!!!

Whether it's streaming TV, satellite TV sports channels, interactive excercise platforms (e.g pelaton and things like that) , software etc etc there's just too many subscription type services these days -- everyone seems to be jumping on the bandwagon.

I've opted out of that trend as much as possible.

(If there's any more start up TV streaming services that dilute current content of existing services I'll probably do what a lot are going back to again -- start using torrents !!! as an example I believe the Disnsey+ subscription service wants to start making things like National Geographic only available on its own platform so if you want that service - it's again pay MORE).

There is a level at which these things become too much for typical consumers and they just say - forget the whole thing.

Cheers
jimbo

Steve C said:

Perhaps you have Yorkshire or Scottish genes being shy of subscription services?

If Yorkshire people have a natural resistance to being ripped off then perhaps I can join the "Honorary Yorkshire" club !!!

Cheers
jimbo