Office 2019 for Mac Goes Read-Only on 13 July 2026
If you are still using Microsoft Office 2019 for Mac, it will stop working fully on 13 July 2026. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook will enter “reduced functionality mode”—a euphemism meaning you can view and print documents but cannot edit, save, or create new ones. Microsoft’s documentation doesn’t clarify what this means for Outlook users.
Why is this happening? A certificate expiration is forcing Office 2019 into read-only mode, though Microsoft acknowledges this only obliquely in the FAQ. Without a current certificate, the apps can’t confirm you have a legitimate license.
It’s unclear why Microsoft can’t renew this certificate, even if it would require creating a separate utility similar to the License Removal Tool it makes available to upgraders who need to clear out the Office 2019 license.
Apple navigated similar rapids earlier this year by releasing certificate-extension updates for operating systems as old as iOS 12 to ensure that iMessage, FaceTime, and device activation continue working through January 2027 (see “Apple Releases OS 26.2.1 for AirTag 2, Extends Certificates on Older Versions,” 26 January 2026, and “Apple’s Certificate-Extension Updates Continue for Older Operating Systems,” 3 February 2026). At least in this case, Apple didn’t push users of older systems to buy new hardware—it just quietly kept things working.
In contrast, Microsoft is quietly changing its story. When Office 2019 for Mac reached its end of support in October 2023, Microsoft’s support page said: “Rest assured that all your Office 2019 apps will continue to function—they won’t disappear from your Mac, nor will you lose any data.” A few weeks ago, Microsoft edited that page. It now reads: “Rest assured that all your Office 2019 apps won’t lose any data. Your data can be accessed on any supported Microsoft 365 or Office product.” So much for “continue to function.”
Who’s Affected?
Why would anyone still be using Office 2019 when Microsoft officially stopped supporting it in October 2023? As has been discussed extensively in TidBITS Talk, the best reason is macOS compatibility: Office 2021 and Microsoft 365 require macOS 12 Monterey or later. Users whose Macs can’t run Monterey—or who must stay on an older macOS for other software compatibility—have no upgrade path. Others paid for a one-time license that does everything they need and see no reason to pay again. (Microsoft sometimes uses the term “perpetual,” but it’s difficult to determine what any given purchaser might have seen.) Some people philosophically oppose subscriptions.
In fact, the 13 July 2026 deadline doesn’t affect just Office 2019 for Mac users. Some users of Office 2021 or Microsoft 365 must also update using Help > Check for Updates, and if you’re still using macOS 11 Big Sur, you’ll have to upgrade to macOS 12 Monterey first. It seems less likely to be an issue, but old versions of Office apps on the iPhone and iPad will also require updating to iOS 17 and iPadOS 17.
To see what version of Office you’re using, open Microsoft Word and choose Word > About Microsoft Word (or the equivalent in any other Office app). If your version is 16.83 or higher, you’re fine and can update. If it’s lower, you need to do something before 13 July 2026 to retain write access to your Office files.
Windows and Android users are unaffected—this certificate issue applies only to macOS and iOS/iPadOS.
Your Options
If you are using Office 2019, you have a few options:
- Microsoft 365 on the Web: You can use simplified versions of the Office apps on the Web at microsoft365.com. They’re adequate for basic editing, but you will need a Microsoft account.
- Microsoft 365 subscription: Microsoft would prefer that you subscribe to Microsoft 365, which costs $99.99 per year for Personal or $129.99 per year for Family (up to six people). You’ll still have to run a newer version of macOS—Microsoft says it supports the current and two previous versions, which suggests macOS 14 or later.
- Office 2024: One-time purchases of $179.99 (Home) or $249.99 (Home & Business with Outlook) are still available. They’re cheaper than the subscription, but you’ll probably have to jump through upgrade hoops again in the future. And the same macOS requirements apply.
- Alternatives: If your Office-related needs are relatively modest, Apple’s Pages, Numbers, and Keynote can import and export Office files and should be available in older versions, albeit without update options. LibreOffice and OnlyOffice are free, generally handle Microsoft formats well, and work on older versions of macOS. Google Docs works in a Web browser and can also import and export Office documents.
Note that these two options will still require upgrading macOS if you aren’t running a version compatible with these apps. Owners of older hardware incapable of running macOS 12 or later will have to choose one of the other options.
Seriously, why is anyone still using Microsoft Office (of any flavor)? I personally find Excel easier to use than Numbers, but the general hassle of dealing with Microsoft way outweighs having to struggle a bit to figure out how to do something in Numbers… I don’t miss Word -at all-.
Many of us don’t live in isolation. We have to trade files back and forth. School, work, whatever. And if you’re the “odd” one and things don’t work for ANY reason, you are the one at fault.
And if your work setup uses MS apps, and you’re in them all day long, using them for personal use is much easier at times.
Good catch, thanks! I’ve added that now and tracked down the system requirements for LibreOffice and OnlyOffice, which seem like they should work. The iWork apps will come with their own version confusions.
Oh, this is going to be a nightmare. I’m still using Catalina with Office 2022 but my version is 16.66.1. I wanted to update Office a couple of years ago but that would require updating my OS, which I can’t do on this 2014 iMac. I absolutely require Word and Excel for work and the current version meets all of my needs. This is a major problem, which sounds like I’ll need to buy new hardware simply to upgrade MS Office. That’s quite the upgrade! Can’t fully describe my anger with that company publicly.
So I use a variety of Microsoft office versions on 3 or 4 computers. I also have Little Snitch on all of them. I never use the microsoft auto update and if I have to update I go over to their site and see what the latest is- But I usually don’t need it. Anyway I DENY all connections to Microsoft- ( I do not have subscription with them- only one-time purchases)- So the real question is how do they know what and when I am using the app. They don’t!
@ace
“If your version is 16.83 or higher, you’re fine and can update. If it’s lower, you need to do something before 13 July 2026 to retain write access to your Office files.”
Where did you find that 16.83 is the cutoff? I have 16.79.2 (and my license says Office 2019), but various web searches indicate Office 2021 also included that version.
Adam,
I am running Ventura 13.7.8 and currently using Office 2021 Home and Office (one time purchase), but only use Word and Excel. Excel is V16.101, but Word is V16.79.2 (less than 16.83). Is there still a problem (with Word)? Word shows an “Update License” link, Excel does not, Office licensing is so unclear. I do not need or use any collaboration capabilities, but do need to read and write occasional doc(x) files but have extensive Excel data files.
This is so unacceptable. Office products have matured decades ago and Office 2019 already has all the capability that most people will ever need. I bet Microsoft is using this forced upgrade as an opportunity to also get Copilot onto people’s Macs - a win-win for them.
If Office 2019 was sold as a perpetual license, they are breaking their contract with the buyer, and quietly changing the wording on a web page isn’t going to cover their asses. Anybody smell a lawsuit?
OMG thank you so much for this!!! Being on a Mac running Monterey, most TB issues these days are a very quick scan for me. But every now and then I’m really glad I still put the couple of minutes per week into it! Needless to say I haven’t received any emails from Microslop about my Office 2021 being kneecapped in just 6 weeks………
“you’ll have to upgrade to macOS 12 Monterey first. It seems less likely to be an issue,” – Only a couple of hundred thousand Mac users that would need to buy a new Mac (perhaps they ought to anyway, but …)? And also many installations with OCLP will not work as I think 16.7x (?) was the last version that worked well with earlier Macs.
Another option is to use an older mac with older Office on it (we have one on Sierra with Office 2011 and some later version) if document needs are not dependent on the latest technologies.
Another free suite is called SoftMaker Office, I have so far only installed it on a Linux machine and not done much else with it, so can’t offer comparisons.
It is, and I feel your pain, but I will note that the cheapest of current Macs will so completely rock your world, performance-wise, that you might feel that it was worthwhile once you do.
Or you could see if LibreOffice or OnlyOffice will do what you need.
I was afraid someone was going to push on that. :-) The Microsoft page says that:
But I couldn’t really figure out why they called it out. In the end, I decided that because it came from Microsoft, it was likely to be true.
I’m no expert here, but if the security certificate has an expiration date, it’s going to expire regardless of connectivity, no? I guess you could reset your computer’s date to prevent that, but at some point, the workarounds become ridiculous.
If I’m understanding all the variables here, I think all you need to do is update the Word license. But this is enough of a black box that you might want to to wait until July 14 and see if Word has problems then.
Most license agreements say that the software firm can change the terms at any time (because why wouldn’t you put that in if the customer has no choice in accepting?) so I’d be surprised if a lawsuit would go very far. But I don’t even play a lawyer on TV, so take anything I say in that regard with a grain of salt.
Fixed that for you!
Was just contemplating getting 2019, I’ve tried Apple’s version of Excel ands found it not good at all… plus all I need to know to function is Excel, I just already understand how to do things there. AND I go back to the days of VisiCalc on an Apple II.
It is irksome that the Windows version of Office 2019 apparently will continue to work. I presume that’s because it uses certificates that are addressed via the standard Windows update process, though that is just speculation on my part.
This link was in MacRumors today - Office 2024 for $9.99/£7.50. I’ve paid, downloaded and it all works. It does appear to be a legitimate Microsoft partner. I’m not bothered about Word or PowerPoint but I am a big user of Excel.
But will it install on Catalina? Apparently not:
“Office for Mac is supported on the most recent versions of macOS (Tahoe, Ventura, Sonoma, Sequoia).”
Otherwise, this would have been the simplest solution. Thanks for the link.
It’s getting harder running Office on Ventura, which is as high as my Intel iMac will go. Microsoft already discontinued updates. In July Teams will stop working.
That’s unfortunate. I have no trouble running it, just can’t update it. Otherwise I’m getting all the functionality I need.
I just purchased two different copies and got a download for Monterey and a few extra steps for earlier versions: “For macOS 12 (Monterey) please use this download link. If you have oldest macOS version (10 or 11) please contact us by replying to your order email - we will send you compatible version and compatible license file.”
I bought Office 2019 many years ago to future-proof my access to Office applications. I tried it and prefer Office 2016—which still works fine on MacOS Monterey. Several months ago, I tried to install Office 2019 on one of my laptops and Micro$oft would not allow me to activate it. It activated successfully on my iMac a few months earlier. If I could revert to Office v5, I would keep using it, but for me the problem is newer machines needing 64-bit native apps. Hopefully my 2016 version will continue working; I also use Little Snitch to block all Office 365 connections and deleted as much of the M$ updater as possible.
I’ve read all the dismal emails re: Office. I just checked my laptop, which I only use when I travel. I’m running Mojave (10.14.6) and Office 2016. Since only Office 2019 is mentioned, will 2016 continue to work?
While a new laptop would be nice, I’m loathe to replace a computer that is only fired up a few times each month.
I’ve been wondering about this very question. I’ve used Office 2016 long after it received its last update, and as recently as last month, without problem. Is this a new “trick” reserved for 2019 and later versions? So much for “perpetual” licensing.
Even those of us who are on Microsoft 365 may decide they need to stay on an older version of macOS and thus eventually be unable to update Office. In the face of unnecessary tactics like this, third-party software (the quality of which varies widely) becomes the only viable option.
Sad.
Unless you use the laptop for “professional” work like documents that require change tracking, you should be able to get along fine without Office. I work on a MacMini that needs Office features, but the MacBook Air I use for travel or in the living room doesn’t have Office at all.
@david.n.watts
Dave, that is almost guaranteed to be a “grey market” or volume license not intended for resale. There’s a very real possibility that if Microsoft detects its use outside the licensing terms, they’ll simply revoke it. It could suddenly stop working in weeks, months, or years from now. Now for 10 bucks and the fact that “legitimate” licenses are so stupidly overpriced, maybe it’s worth the gamble. Caveat emptor.
P.S. The fact that link “includes” VMWare Fusion Pro 13 is also suspect – that’s has been a free product from Broadcom for some time now.
@ace Here is a better / more clear link. Sadly, 16.83 is correct.
I truly do not see how they can reduce the functionality of software under a perpetual license – I agree with a previous poster: sounds like grounds for a lawsuit. Fine don’t upgrade it or provide any support – but to actively block it from working when nothing changed is just evil.
I’ve got a few Excel files that I continue to update that have been going for decades. I buy a new version of Office every five years or so (usually also when I buy new hardware) and that isn’t much bother.
@bld On the basis of ‘if something looks too good to be true…’ you’re probably right. I checked Companies House (the UK Government database of active registered companies) and it does exist, though not at the address shown, but that’s not unusual. Apple Maps suggests it’s a florist at the purported London store address and Google maps does not show a store there at all. A reverse look up of the store photo comes back only to Softmall. It is an https. web site and I paid by Apple Pay so I am covered if I have to make a claim. If one can believe Trustpilot it has many positive reviews.
I thought it low risk for £7. There’s always Numbers or Libreoffice if it goes south in a month or two.
Although I have an Office365 subscription and have installed Excel & Word on my MB Pro as a backup, I primarily use the last versions without the ribbon – Excel & Word 2011 on a Parallels install of Mojave – as I can never find what I need on the newer versions. I’m not sure if I could ever install them again on a newer old Mac, but I have plenty of backups of the VM so should be OK for now. (My Windows 11 on Parallels install – required for client compatibility – has Classic Menu so I can ignore the ribbons and abbreviated menus on the Office365 programs there also.)
And then there’s the Wordperfect 3.5e for Mac install … only for opening older files now, but a great app under classic MacOS.
Like @david.n.watts and others, I’m willing to risk the $10 SoftMall link to get Office 2024; that deal isn’t really so different from how I obtained Office 2019 in the first place, which has worked fine (through various computer migrations) until now. I care only about Word and Excel, and my usage of both is pretty minimal; if the Office 2024 versions stop working, at least Word and Excel are available for free in the browser, so that I would still be able to deal with documents sent to me by others.
Are there any legitimate versions out there that work? I found it at https://www.macintoshrepository.org/891-wordperfect-3-5e but I have to see if I can find anything that runs it.
Matt, let us know if you have any problems with SoftMall and getting Office 2024 to run. I bought Office 2019 like this, too.
I don’t mean to distract the Topic from finding solutions for those needing one, but as I’m defacto retired and even back in working life didn’t write for a living, I’m a bit baffled by the ‘need’ for MSOffice.
For those using it for a work requirement, I get that sometimes users have no choice, but others…? If anyone has time to explain a bit and it doesn’t drag the Topic down, I’m just curious to know why MSOffice is even necessary, and what specific advantages it has over iWork or TextEdit etc.
I spent $20 for two Macs last night at SoftMall. No problems with the installations! As per their instructions, you download Office 2024 directly from Microsoft. Then you download the license installer from SoftMall. This isn’t like a direct-from-Microsoft purchase or one from most retailers where you get a 25-character license code to type in. You run SoftMall’s license installer after the Office installation and you’re done. I quit and restarted the Office apps a number of times. Rebooted the computers too. It works!
SoftMall does point out that in some situations, the license installer may not overwrite the previous license properly. For that situation, they provide a link to another installer – actually an uninstaller – that removes all remnants of any versions of Office. When that’s done, you reinstall Office (again directly from Microsoft) and then run the license installer. I had to do this with my second Mac. Once again, no issues!
I have already recommended the SoftMall purchase to a bunch of people.
SoftMall does offer a refund for 30-days if the license is not activated, and you could always dispute the charge with your credit card company if the license doesn’t work and SoftMall does not honor their guarantee. But in the end, in the worst-case scenario, you’re out $10 – it seems entirely worth it to me to spend $10 to try and save an additional $170. But I doubt you’d ever be out the $10 anyway.
Will Office 2024 run on macOS 26? My wife is currently running macOS 12 and Office 2019 on her laptop. Her only upgrade option is macOS 26. She uses Office for work.
I agree there’s no “need.” It’s simply a matter of convenience. You could be used to the way Office apps work and just want to continue that. You may be sending and receiving documents with others where they use Office – in which case you’d have to import/export with Apple apps and contend with a greater chance of formatting inconsistencies. For $180, that’s a personal decision. For $10, why not just have it?!
Yes…I’m running on 26/Tahoe. But will your Mac support MacOS 26?
My Mac is an Intel currently running macOS 12. If I upgrade it to macOS 13 it will be topped out and able to run Office 2024. My wife’s computer is also running macOS 12 (we have tried to keep the same OS to help when I am trouble shooting for her), but she has a Mac with an M1 chip, so she can upgrade to mac26.
According to the MS website, you need one of the latest 3 versions of the Mac OS. So if I understand that right, that would be 26, 15, and 14…but not 13…
Also note that the license from SoftMall is an “Office LTSC Standard for Mac 2024” license. That means SoftMall is selling commercial/educational/government licenses:
I’ll not say anything else about that
Without wanting to intrude too much on this thread, I’ve been a member of a WordPerfect Mac user group for many years. It currently resides at [email protected] | Home and has guides to installing WP 3.5 on all flavours of Mac from 680x0 to PPC to Intel to Apple Silicon.
But remember that there’s a difference between “supported on…” and “will run on…”
The fact that Microsoft only supports particular versions does not automatically mean that the software won’t run on anything else.
Right. The current build may run. If not, you can probably just install an earlier build than the current one, which I would assume is available to download on the MS site.
The usual reasons I hear people give are 1) familiarity/inertia, and 2) the need to exchange documents with other MS Office users, often on a PC platform.
Personally, I’m in the #1 group. The occasional needs I have to exchange documents with MS Office users could likely be accommodated by “Save As” or “Export” functionality in other apps, but I’m so used to MS Office apps that an annual subscription that covers my wife and me is an acceptable price (for us) to pay compared to the anticipated (maybe imagined) pain of switching. Especially for her. Happy wife…
So far so good for me too. I’ll post again if things unexpectedly go south, but I don’t expect that they will.
So this is amusing. I’ve been contemplating the standalone version that people have been talking about because I feel that I need to have the Office apps available on my Mac for research and troubleshooting reasons, but I don’t really use them. In the process of figuring out how I’d cancel my $99 annual Microsoft 365 subscription, I was offered this downgrade to Microsoft 365 Basic, which is only $20 per year.
https://account.microsoft.com/services/microsoft365/cancel?fref=billing-cancel
I would prefer not to, but my work environment uses Word. My choice was to use the loathsome Word on a loathsome PC at the office, or use the loathsome Word on my own Mac. The lesser of two evils and all that.
Dealing with Pages or OpenOffice I could cope with, but would rather not.
Even though I don’t have a 365 subscription, I am going to try your link and see what might offered.
Really? I need to see if I can find that. I have no interest in that extra stuff anyway. Just Word and the occasional Excel excursion.
Edit to add: I just checked the Microsoft website. Basic appears to be only Outlook mail and some cloud storage, but no other apps.
The cheapest plan that includes Word and Excel appears to be Microsoft 365 Personal, at $10/month. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/microsoft-365-personal/cfq7ttc0k5bf
I have the Microsoft 365 Family subscription for $129.99/yearly. When I pull up this “Cancel subscription” page the Microsoft 365 Basic description is different than you posted. The last bullet in my “Basic” column says, “Basic does NOT include: ‘Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneDrive desktop apps.’ ” Your post says,” in the second bullet, "Basic does not include: Productivity apps with Microsoft Copilot 1,2.” Has this page of your post been clarified since your screenshot or is there a difference in the Basic offering based on what your current subscription is? Is it saying the the apps are provided but without Copilot, or the apps are not provided at all?
The version I bought was labeled “Microsoft Office Home & Business for Mac 2021: Lifetime License”. Like “perpetual”, I guess it’s just marketing hype.
Or maybe the fine print would’ve defined “lifetime” as the lifetime of the software license, not the hardware or the human owner
Maybe the 365 BASIC license provides an @Outlook email account address, but not the Outlook app to access the email account. What sense does that make?
Note, however, that the Basic tier does not include the desktop apps. Web, iOS and Android only. The desktop apps will be read-only.
It’s only marginally better than the free tier, which is also web/mobile apps only, but with only 5GB of storage.
Oh drat! Sorry for getting people’s hopes up. When I read that it didn’t include “Productivity apps with Microsoft Copilot,” I read that as the apps were present, but didn’t have Copilot.
It’s a standard Microsoft cloud account with extra storage and no ads on the webmail version of Outlook.
It’s basically the Microsoft equivalent of a Gmail account with 100 GB storage and no ads, and it’s priced the same as the Google equivalent.
For only $20 more, Softmall offers Office 2024 without VMWare Fusion, and mentions “Official updates from the App Store”
Just for amusement I started up Sheepshaver on the M2 Studio (Sequoia 15.7.7) and was able to get my ancient copy of Word 5.1a to read some very old documents (ca. 1994).
Interesting. If I already have iCloud and my MacMini for storage and and my personal domain on FastMail for ad-free secure email, does Microsoft Basic give me anything I need? All that I need on the higher levels are Word (which I need for Change Tracking and ability to write equations and other sophisticated math or science stuff that I send and receive from other people). I haven’t tested how compatible Keynote is with PowerPoint, but I haven’t given any talks lately. My spreadsheet needs are minimal and I have no interest in Copilot. Maybe I’ll see how long I can go without Office 2024.
That’s interesting. I have the Microsoft 365 Basic subscription, charged at $69.99 yearly. That’s what a Personal subscription used to cost before MS added AI and raised the price to $99.99. But I found out that the $69.99 price point was still available without the CoPilot integration, so I changed my product from Personal to Basic. Maybe if a person is about to cancel they offer a lower price.
EDIT: Ooops, I misspoke. My subscription is called “Microsoft 365 Personal Classic,” not Basic. I have all the locally-installed apps, plus the 1TB of cloud storage in OneDrive. Of course that all changes come July 13.
Sorry for being pedantic, but I’m pretty sure that you have licensed the “Microsoft 365 Personal Classic” edition.
As others have said, Microsoft 365 Basic is $20/year for an annual subscription, so I’m just trying to avoid adding to the confusion.
Then export the Pages & Numbers files to Word & Excel format. Alternately, use LibreOffice, or other non-MS software.
Or stay with Word & Excel, which don’t require the export.
And pay Micro$oft’s protection racket,
Yes, pay for the tools you need. I’ve written books in Pages and in Word and they’re about the same if you take time to set them up. So, yes, I pay for the tools I need, either software or hardware.
True…but that’s mostly long use muscle/brain memory. Numbers is different but not really better or worse overall.
I just looked at Pages 14.5 and it does offer ways to do change tracking and add in equations, but that will at best require more of my time to figure out the work-around. More likely the work-around will yield a Pages version of docx that does not exactly work with MS Word, which is likely to cause problems for my clients and take even more time to fix.
It’s like why I use tax preparation software software. I worked for H&R Block one tax season long ago, and I could sit down and file a return by hand to save money if I needed to. But paying for the tax software usually saves a lot of time and grief.
Those options can work well for many people, but if you are part of a team that is routinely sharing or exchanging documents that go beyond basic formatting, you can run into some real headaches. Examples include tables, equations, placed graphics, and comments/tracking features.
Just download the $10 SoftMall version and be done with it. No web-based Office apps, no need to keep your Office docs in the cloud. Note that VMware Fusion they are “packaging” is actually a free download from VMware. And I have to assume the “official updates from the app store” just means updates via the Microsoft app store – security updates, bug fixes, minor feature improvements. Again, been using this for a week now. No issues at all.
It works fine on both my Mac running macOS 13 and my wife’s computer running macOS 26. I think when MS says the latest 3 versions that they are talking at the time of release.
I don’t actually think that’s the case. I think what Microsoft means is that as they roll out Office updates—security updates, bug fixes and stability improvements, compatibility updates, minor feature enhancements and refinements, and performance improvements—their stated system requirements are based on the three most recent macOS versions. So Office 2024 may work fine on macOS 13 now, but at some point you may no longer be able to install the latest Office updates if you continue running macOS 13. That is generally how Microsoft has been referring to Office for Mac system requirements over the past five or more years.
But I’m glad it’s working for both of you!
Well. It took two solid weeks of work – research, hours-long AI chats, trials and errors, testing, trying again, and then finally hunkering down for grunt work – but my Catalina Mac and I are finally off of the Microsoft 365 applications. I’m using SoftMaker FreeOffice 2024 to replace Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and Thunderbird to replace Outlook. The replacements are not nearly so elegant as the MS apps, but since MS was kicking me and my subscription fee out, I had no choice.
The Outlook migration was particularly difficult since all my data was local and most migration solutions would not work for me, primarily due to the age of my OS and Outlook database, but also due to limitations that MS places on exporting from free Outlook.com accounts, and on copying events within Outlook that were created by accepting invitations.
The worst part was the calendar, where nothing would work. I ended up dragging and dropping 20 years of calendar data, one event at a time, into individual ICS files in a desktop folder, and then concatenating them and cleaning them up using scripts that Gemini composed for me. Which left me with a couple of big ICS files that imported well into Thunderbird. There was some cleanup within Thunderbird, such as to correct all-day events which ended up marked as starting at 12AM, but I was able to get through it.
I understand why people think of Microsoft as evil. I had a happy, productive, if older, system that purred along very well, was properly licensed and paid for, and for the want of a tiny installer to update an expiring security certificate, I had to jump ship and find a way to stay afloat. Well, at least July 13 is no longer a threat to me, and when fall comes and my M365 subscription would renew, I will cancel and save the $70. If anyone wants more details on how I migrated my Outlook data, without using OLM files, just let me know and I will be happy to share.
I wonder if exporting from Outlook is supported once Office 2019 goes “read only” in July.
My guess is that exporting still will work, but I wouldn’t want to bet on it if I had important local email in Outlook.
There are a few ways to export email from Outlook 2019, including dragging-and-dropping email messages to various destinations, saving entire mailboxes as OLM archives, and others.
It can be tricky to import OLM archives into other email programs, but I’ve had good success on several occasions using Emailchemy as an intermediary to convert the OLM archive into more easily imported formats, like MBOX.
I don’t think Outlook will permit saving data externally come July 13. I don’t think it will even permit printing to PDF files, although CoPilot says otherwise. Saving my local mail folders outside of Outlook was one of the easier parts. I dragged each mail folder into a desktop folder to create a set of MBOX files. Getting Thunderbird to import those MBOX files was a little harder, but not bad in the overall scheme of this project. [If anyone wants the procedure that worked for me, I can write it up here.] Regarding working with OLM files, I could export them, but no utility I tested was able to import them successfully into Thunderbird. Even ones that were compatible with Catalina messed up the data, which CoPilot told me was due to the very old format of my Outlook database (Office 16.57). Also, from what CoPilot told me, OLM exports do not contain complete data, although Microsoft does not document this. For example, when exporting calendar data as an OLM, it does not include events that were created by accepting invitations (which was about 1/3 of my calendar).
Just to clarify, I have not been working with Outlook 2019, but with Outlook that is part of Microsoft 365. My version 16.57 may be a little newer, from January of 2022.