Forum Discussion
Office 365 "The fine print" popup message - is it legitimate?
Glenn and folks troubled with Office 365,
I am very disappointed with Office 365 and will be looking for alternatives and compensation.
Before I leave I did further investigating and ended up reinstalling Office 365, a product I already paid for. The steps I took under Windows 10 were as follows....(please backup your computer and track down your account/password info before trying the following).
1. Open "Apps & Features". Easiest way is to find this is type "Apps" in the search box next to the Windows start button/start menu
2. Scroll down to find "Microsoft Office 365" in the right hand side of Apps & Features and click it. This should open up a couple buttons (modify & uninstall). Click the "modify" button.
3. After clicking the modify button you should be presented with options on how to repair Office.
Sadly the quick repair option didn't work so I selected "Online Repair" then clicked the "Repair" button.
Best of luck.
What I'm not understanding is why a 'so-called' legitimate company is holding subscribers hostage unless they accept "the fine print"!!!! The product was working fine and now I cannot use it unless I accept. That's the same as me coming to your house and telling you how and when to clean it.
If you're going to hold subscribers hostage unless they accept your terms, you owe us full reimbursement for subscribing. I don't think anyone who posted their disgust with this 'accept our bloated update' expected to NOT BE ABLE TO USE A PRODUCT THAT THEY PAID TO HAVE ACCESS TO FOR A YEAR! As it currently stands I am unable to work at home. Why not give us an option to either accept or not....We paid for it!
Hi Helene
If you are on Office 365, I would equate it more to you renting a house and your landlord adjusting the terms of your rental per your rental contact.
The Microsoft End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) would specify clearly the right to do updates to their service as needed where users must accept the EULA to continue to use the Office 365 subscription. Of course no one ever reads the EULA and if you want to see some hilarious examples of EULA, take a look here: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-ridiculous-eula-clauses-agreed/.
When you stop using Office 365, your data will eventually be deleted and the apps you use will become read only (not sure if they cease to work after a while or not as it's never happened to me).
Per the post I made just after yours, if you shift to Office 2016 you will have control over your software and will only receive security updates (and possibly service packs with new features) to maintain your product.
This sort of thing happening is common and will continue as more software shifts to Software as a Service (SaaS). Adobe does the same thing as an example.
Hope it all goes well and best wishes to you!
Cheers
Damien
P.S. Having just seen your other post in relation to something I said earlier. If you are using Office 2016, you may have had auto update give you an update that could have triggered the EULA prompt. It's hard to tell as I don't use Office 2016 but I wouldn't discount the option.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4340798/july-2018-updates-for-microsoft-office
Thanks Damien....I understand that MS has the rights to change/update EULA. However, we all know that not every user applies every win update, etc. My major concern is that as a subscriber, I have the same right, to update or not. Also, I should (I say this loosely), have the right to use the product 'as is' and if it fails to perform as intended it's on me.
Most importantly, my major concern is that no one seems to know whether or not this is legit. Also, not getting any response from MS doesn't alleviate my concerns either. This whole situation is eerily similar to what happens with ransom ware and I really, don't want to blow up my unit on a lark.
To further clarify, when I repaired Office 365 I had one additional step to "activate" it by simply opening an Office application and activating it with an email and password for the account. The good news was when I reinstalled Office 365 and opened Outlook I did not loose any emails. This sure wasted a lot of time, business, and sanity though.
Hope Microsoft gets this under control soon.
