ONLY CERTAIN FUNCTIONS AVAILABLE TO OFFICE USERS

[lukemaura]

I am a long time(30+ years) user of Microsoft products, both at home and at work. I am also a new father and need to work from home to support my family.

I recently purchased two copies of MS Office, one for my desktop and the other for my laptop,  because my profession requires the interpretation of large amounts of data and I wanted to have the most current version of Excel.

To my dismay the "=SORT" function and other features are not included in Excel for Office and I'm therefore stuck with two copies of Office that are essentially useless to me. I thought this was an error on MS' part so I called the support line and was greeted by a recording that said I would be unable to get live help unless I was a monthly subscriber, this after I had just purchased their products!

After going through the prompts and acting like I was going to buy something else I was finally able to speak with a helpful woman who had no idea that =SORT isn't available across the Excel platform. She put me in touch with a supervisor who also didn't understand why this wasn't offered across the board. He, the supervisor, was kind enough to offer me a 3 month trial to the 365 product so I could at least continue to do my job until I figured out how to (hopefully) get a refund from the Office vendor and figure out what to do. However, once installed that too didn't work!

So after more than 2 hours on phone with 3 different people and $230 spent on software that doesn't do basic tasks, I'm sitting here waiting for yet another person to get in touch with me and try to figure out what's going on. 

I've heard many people talk about how ruthless Microsoft is to upstarts that could pose a threat. I didn't know they applied similar tactics to customers in an effort to up-sell them to their subscription model.

To say I'm disappointed is an understatement.

As of last quarter, Microsoft had $136bn in cash. Why would they try to nickle and dime hard working people who pay for their software? Why not make essential features and functions available to people like myself who paid hundreds of dollars for their products?

What a shame.

[#2]

@lukemaura 

It is quite simple. You can choose either the retail version or the subscription version.

The latest retail Version is Office 2019. You get only security updates but no feature updates. The SORT() function was developed after the release of Office 2019. The next version probably will be Office 2022. Just wait for two years.

The subscription version gets updates every month. It may take some time before the updates are rolled out to every user. The licence covers up to five devices.

https://www.windowscentral.com/office-2019-or-office-365-which-one-you-should-get

[#3]

@lukemaura 

I guess you have perpetual licenses as Office 2019. Microsoft never positioned it as full functional software. It is upgraded from one major release to another, e.g. 2016, when 2019, perhaps next 2022. In between are minor updates. New functionality is added on regular basis only for the subscriptions. How often and which one it depends on subscription. In brief, there is no just Excel, set of functionality provided depends on platform and license purchased.

Bit more about that is here What's the difference between Microsoft 365 and Office 2019? 

[#4]

Hi@Sergei Baklan , yes I purchased the perpetual Office 2019 thinking that I'd be able to embed a sort command in my formula and save myself multiple steps. I'd imagine that of all the functions that an "Office" would use, sorting would be right up there among the top and therefore included in the offering. Unless, however, it was so obviously important that Microsoft would withhold it to drive their "subscription" offering. Everybody knows that subscriptions are more valuable to a company and command a higher multiple from a valuation perspective, so it makes sense they would try to maximize that part of the business. Would be curious to know how many people would think of sorting as a premium offering.

[#5]

@lukemaura 

I do not consider SORT as premium functionality, that is basic one, just icing on the cake, which appeared due to fundamental changes in Excel calculation engine.

Money is always the point, but that's not the only reason why we have different functionality for different versions of the product. First one is platform - Excel for Windows Desktop, for Mac, for Android, Excel Online, etc obviously have different functionality. No one company has enough resources to support complex product synced for all platform. Cloud platform is much more suitable for gradual deployment of new functionality, that's another technology reason. And subscription model naturally supports cloud platform. Or vice versa.

Within subscription there is also "premium" and basic functionality. Full functional high level enterprise subscription has much more functionality compare to Home or Student subscriptions. At the same time some functionality for consumers is not available for enterprise users.

Again, SORT() and like is quite basic functionality for the subscription model. Another story such functionality is deployed step by step, the way from insiders to so called semi-annual channel could take up to one year. But you may always shift from one channel one another for the same money  exchanging reliability on more modern just appeared functionality.