Amazon tweaks its word processor for easier online Office edits Earlier this week we reported that Amazon Web Services appears to be planning the launch of a new end-user computing service that we speculated could be a competitor for Office 365. And today Amazon has given a hint we might just have been right with news of an update to its US$5/month-with-a-terabyte-of-storage WorkDocs …
After doing a routine network security audit I determined that my non-365 version of Office 2016 had installed a Windows Service that was permanently phoning home chatting to numerous M$ servers.
When I tried to disable this Stasi Service, Office applications such as Excel would then refuse to start up, and there doesn't seem to be anyway around it short of Air-Gapping the host PC.
By allowing you to have multiple installations, there has to be some way for MS to enforce it.
Original OP complained it was 'permanently dialling home', even if it is only a little exaggeration, how paranoid are MS and do they really need 'real-time' response on the matter. Are their lawyers on 'fireman level' readiness to leap into action on a 'bat signal' signal that a customer has fired up one extra copy of Office than they have paid for while those that have no intention of paying are allowed to keep going, as better that than cracking down and forcing them onto other alternatives which potentially weakens theri hegemony.
Office 365 has to check that it's still licenced.
Reread the GP - it was very clear that it is normal office. Not 365.
That defeats the whole purpose of purchasing offline software which is exactly that - to be able to use it offline on machines which may for one or another reason not be allowed to phone home to their software vendors. There are plenty of reasons to have an air-gapped system and there are cases where an air-gapped system may need to work with office documents. People should be allowed to have these reasons and pay for it.
Further to this, once they have paid for it, they should receive what they paid for - an offline software package. Microsoft has been surfing very "close to the reefs" on this one for a very long time. It is about time someone takes them to court for that.
Nope, Office 365 also allows on-prem installs. To the end user, there is no difference other than the presence of the Office 365 logo in some of the settings.
On my E3 licence: From the Office website, you are allowed to install on 5 PCs. If you want to install on a 6th, you have to disable the installation on one of the existing. The dialing home the OP mentions is checking that the PC still has a valid licence.
I agree that it happens more often than appears necessary, but it doesn't mean it never needs to check.
"Reread the GP - it was very clear that it is normal office. Not 365."
Office 2016 is available in both click to run and MSI installer versions. Click to run is licenced per user (O365), and MSI per device. If he has CTR installed then he IS using Office 365 although is apparently unaware of that.
"Office 365 has to check that it's still licenced."
It only does that when you Launch an Office application. For instance a PC might be shared by different users so some might have it as a valid device and some not.
"By allowing you to have multiple installations, there has to be some way for MS to enforce it."
If for some reason the 5 device limit is not enough, it's easy to disable:
Just add a DWORD string value of SharedComputerLicensing with a setting of 1 under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\Configuration
Libre Office is a good product in itself. The problems come when you have to repeatedly work with others who use Microsoft Office. I wondered for years how Munich managed that, until the answer came that they failed.
El Reg should consider writing an article that reviewed compatibility problems between Microsoft Office, Libre Office, Google Docs (and Sheets), and other sundry products. Not just documents but spreadsheets and databases. Even presentations, if people are really interested.
Also look at integration with OCR software, which seems to be a Microsoft lock-in.
"The problems come when you have to repeatedly work with others who use Microsoft Office."
The problems are also when you need to use any of the vast volume of business software that relies on Office add-ins, behaviour, integration, VBA or macros.
"It's odd that those of us who use LibreOffice as our only office suite don't find that. Perhaps our experience is more extensive than yours."
If you can get by with Libre Office then you are almost certainly not in an enterprise and likely make only basic use of the product. As is commonly stated on here it's a valid alternative to MS Office, for non power / home users. What it is not is a valid replacement for MS Office in the vast majority of enterprises.
If you are really a power user and have not experienced any bugs then you are definitely lucky. If you thought MS Office was buggy, just take a look at 7 DAYS! Of Libre Office bug reports:
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/buglist.cgi?chfield=%5BBug%20creation%5D&chfieldfrom=7d
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"When I tried to disable this Stasi Service, Office applications such as Excel would then refuse to start up"
And what would be the name of this mysterious service? Office 2016 certainly doesn't require internet access to work. Smells like bs to me. Otherwise why post AC?
It's called "Office 2016 Click To Run" service
So that's simply a streaming installer service. A more modern version of MSIexec. It doesnt collect user telemetry. So comms will likely be related to software updates, licensing, certificates, etc.
"Not quite sure the format itself is very popular, nor would be Office given decent alternatives."
Well the last several versions of office have offered a non preselected choice of Open Document and Microsoft formats as the first thing it asks when you first launch the product and over 90% of users choose Microsoft's formats.
Given that Amazon recently dropped the support for storing your music on their servers as part of prime, I'm not sure I'd trust them with another GB of my data.
Personally, if I didn't want to use MS, I'd just use dropbox and one of the umpteen freebies out there for editing.
Trust? Dropbox? Really?
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/16/dropbox_ftc_not_good_enough/
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/24/preserve_enterprise_security_age_of_dropbox/
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/24/dropbox_brings_old_files_back_from_dead/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/17/edward-snowden-dropbox-privacy-spideroak
https://techcrunch.com/2014/10/11/edward-snowden-new-yorker-festival/
I'm not sure how "new" this is, I am fairly certain I remember seeing this when going through AWS offerings as part of their partner training 3 years ago.
In theory, AWS can build a new ecosystem, in practice Excel and all the accounting apps (and others?) built on top of it give MS Office a very strong legacy position many organisations.
"When idiots send me a .doc or .docx I use Libre Office to send it back as a .pdf"
So they are idiots for using the worlds most common office document format? Even if say created on Libre Office? And how is sending it back in another proprietary vendor format an improvement?
Anyway, I guess you are unaware, but Office quite happily opens and converts PDFs back to editable Word documents.
I currently pay £7.99 for a 5 user license of 365. This includes 1TB per user syncing nicely through onedrive to my NAS for offline backups. This includes full installations of all the Office suite. Something the other half insists on as when she tried the online version she refused to use it as it didn't do half the stuff she needs. The AWS offering seems to do even less.
No thanks.
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Why would anyone with an iota of intelligence want to use an internet based service for document creation and editing? Or are these lazy experts firm in their belief that only the other guy will get hacked, not me. Kind of like the idiots who who shoot horse or sniff a line believing they can handle it.
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