2026-10-04

This page contains notes on how to remove Microsoft Word and associated programs, and Adobe Creative Cloud and its programs.

Not keeping current with Microsoft and Adobe will lead to problems if you try to collaborate with PC users and much frustration on both sides. But if you don't need them for actual payig work, it may not be worth the aggravation.

Microsoft

If you bought Microsoft Office 2019 with a perpetual license, you will be screwed by Microsoft in summer 2026. According to Slashdot, 'Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac will reportedly drop into "reduced functionality mode" on July 13, 2026, when a license-validation certificate expires, leaving perpetually licensed apps able to open files but not edit or save them.'

Microsoft no longer sells a "lifetime" verson of Word. You have to buy a "cloud" version and pay every month.

If you bought Microsoft Office 2019 with a perpetual license, you will be screwed by Microsoft in summer 2026. According to Slashdot, 'Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac will reportedly drop into "reduced functionality mode" on July 13, 2026, when a license-validation certificate expires, leaving perpetually licensed apps able to open files but not edit or save them.'

You can buy Microsoft 365 for $99.99/yr, includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote desktop apps with Microsoft Copilot AI. Family plan is $129.99/yr for 1-6 people, only one gets AI though.

Adobe

Same deal with Adobe. You can't buy a lifetime version of Photoshop and keep getting updates. Now you have to subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud, and then sign up for the Adobe tools you need. When you sign up for Photoshop, Adobe will continually update your version of Photoshop as they add new fetures. Same for other Cretive Cloud tools.

What it costs: 34.99/mo for the first 3 months and $69.99/mo after that. Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere, plus Adobe Firefly creative AI.

Alternatives

iWork

Macs come with the iWork applications: Pages (word processing), Keynote (a powerpoint clone), and Numbers (a spreadsheet like Excel). These use Apple frameworks and work well with iCloud. I believe that they don't work well for collaborating with PC users.

LibreOffice

LibreOffice is a free open source replacement for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It provides Writer(text editor), Calc(spreadsheet), Impress(Presentation), Draw(drawing), Math(formula), and Base(database). It can create XML and HTML documents, labels, and business cards, and PDF documents.

Affinity

Affinity Photo 2 is free and is a replacement for Photoshop. Affinity Designer 2 is free and is a replacement for Illustrator.

Homebrew

The free Homebrew package manager provides free access to many Unix tools. I use it to install MySQL, Perl, ImageMagick, gnuplot, go, exiftool, ruby, and mysql.