sounds like a ‘service problem’ someone once spoke about…
acquire your ms office ‘elsewhere’ and never link it to a ms account. same with windows. no msa, no ‘cloud’ to save to.
and there is a service problem here.
You can turn it off. Opt-out is still bullshit.
The true opt out is to stop using Microsoft products
You can’t opt out, most healthcate providers use windows.
Mental health awareness? No thanks, I rather just write in a journal and talk to myself in the mirror as therapy.
The dentist asked me to sign a waiver so they could use AI…I’m looking for another dentist
You guys are getting healthcare?
you can turn it off (for now)
You can make yourself believe that you turned it off for now*
Yes Ms is secretly stealing from users across the world and yet not a single security researcher has found it. AND ALEXA IS LISTENING TO ME 24X365 DAYS A YEAR!
not a single security researcher has found it
They do find it regularly. Its not even a secret, they are openly advertising it as a feature.
AND ALEXA IS LISTENING TO ME 24X365 DAYS A YEAR!
It is… thats its purpose…
I think you are in the wrong place on lemmy if you are so willingly blind to the realities of tech companies.
Exaggerating what is quite literally happening to make yourself sound smart actually just makes you look like a total dumbfuck.
I don’t trust Microsoft not to flip that switch back when I’m not looking.
until your computer force reboots itself in the middle of the day to do updates it didn’t tell you about, and you log back in and later that night find it uploaded all your shit to the cloud and just for good measure deleted some of it too as a fuck you
it’s the Microsoft way
Microsoft all about opting out rather than opting in.
https://www.libreoffice.org/ for anyone who wants microsoft to stop messing with their office apps.
I second this. There’s a little bit of a learning curve on some of the functionality, but it’s not bad at all. And most of the functionality is very easy to find. I moved over to Libre Office several years ago and it’s been great.
Office would have a learning curve too if you hadn’t been using it since you were a child.
Tbf it was simplier back when people first used it
When people were first using it they were coming from DOS or older machines. Many were using a mouse for the first time. It wasn’t simpler to them.
This is very true. I hadn’t used Microsoft Office since 2007 and at my new workplace everyone’s using it. It’s really hard and I don’t find anything. Yesterday I was working with tables but I gave up and had IT install libreoffice instead.
You can now enable a tabbed interface similar to Microsoft Office
There is also only office which has better compatibility with MSOffice file types
Downside is ties to Russia and performance is really bad, as I understand it’s an Electron web app, not a native application. It also won’t save to network shares properly and will lose your file if you do.
Don’t ever save your files directly on a samba share with only office. Lost hours of work twice . It doesn’t keep recovery files.
This here.
I wish Only Office got as much fanfare as LibreOffice. The UI is much closer to Microsoft Office and it tends to have better compatibility.
I have both installed though and use them both lol.
OnlyOffice is Russian-owned, via a holding company in Singapore. When Russia invaded Ukraine and sanctions threatened the business, they obfuscated this, but it’s still Lev Bannov’s product.
The importance you attach to this is up to you, but they try quite hard to hide it.
Mm knowing that makes me never want to go anywhere near OnlyOffice now, oof.
LibreOffice has a ribbon UI too.
TIL! Thank you, kind stranger!
That it does :)
LibreOffice is awesome too. No complaints really.
Libreoffice their latest blogpost is from the 20th of August 2025. There have been a few releases in the past few months as well.
Openoffice their latest ( Apache Openoffice 4.1.15 ) was released almost 2 years ago ( December 2023 ).
Libreoffice seems like a more recent, better supported tool over Openoffice which hasn’t seen any updates since 2023 according to their own website.
I’m on my phone, so I didn’t search extensively. But I think that also plays a role in why there’s a much larger fanbase for libreoffice rather than Openoffice.
I’ve no recent experience with either so I can’t comment on how well either works.
I believe Open Office and Only Office are different products.
Only Office had a major release in June, 2025.
And you are correct that Open Office last update was back in December 2023.
openoffice is an apache project, created when oracle gave them the code and rights to the openoffice project. ibm later donated symphony to them. anyone familiar with apache knows they do things their own way, and usually slowly.
libreoffice originated from a fork when openoffice’s status under oracle was in doubt. it progresses faster than apache, as most developers also switched.
onlyoffice is an entirely different application. decent enough, but with its own quirks. it can also be slow on lower-spec systems due to the heavy reliance on js. originally a latvian-russian project, it was reorganized (via new corporate entities in uk and sg) to hide the russian ties for ‘reasons’.
Man, wouldn’t it be nice if both of our counties didn’t have ridiculous propaganda and fascism so that we could just cooperate on shit like this without having to worry as much about maliciousness on a state level?
Ah I see. Thanks for the information. I use both LibreOffice and OnlyOffice and generally am happy with both. I kind of just bounce around back and forth.
You are correct. I misread ( or my brain farted ) and looked up the wrong one.
Seriously, Microsoft!?!?
Is this on Macs too?!?
Is this on Macs too?!?
Not mine, then again I use nothing Microsoft on my Mac.
What if I’m using a pirated copy of windows and office?
You get deported to Uganda.
Uganda be kiddin’ me.
lmao
Kenya believe it?
I’m not Ghana believe it.
I suppose this means Microsoft will not count Word doc file sizes against users’ cloud storage quotas, right? Right??
It’ll be like Google: everything goes in, nothing comes out unless you jump through difficult hoops, price continually goes up.
Getting anything out is already almost impossible. I moved sway from 3rd party cloud storage a couple years back. I had to get 500gb from onedrive and it was refusing to download at anything more than 50kb/s (my internet was significantly better than that)
Where do you think Google learned it?
? Google invented it.
If you’re in the EU, you can apply for a GDPR request to get sent a copy of all your data in their cloud, same for iCloud. Takes about 48 hours in my experience.
How is this served? Do they send a usb drive? Or a download link of some sort?
It’s a download link, on their respective dashboard you can select between the catagories you want. Like on Google you can select if you want youtube, drive, gmail, or everything at once.
With GDPR they have 7 days to comply, and it should be available to any EU citizen even when outside of EU territory. So I’m assuming you can just change your region. Either way, takeout.google.com is where I’d go.
Yeah, i ised take out before, it took 2 weeks to download my photos, i think 8 60gb downloads. It was painful, I got hopeful that youbhad discovered a workaround.
Ah, that’s unfortunate. Tbh I’ve been downloading 200GB there frequently and haven’t had any issues.
GDPR can also be called upon using a registered letter and they are required to deliver as well. I’m not sure but that might be a way to recieve a physical copy.
🤣
Anakinsmirk.jpg
No, they upload your file, delete the local file, then oopsie, you ran out of cloud storage, please pay $99/month to access your files.
Mario_Kart8_deluxe.iso.docx
tip: do not write about the revolution, short stories, hatred of capitalism, your suicide plans, or your teenage angst and erotic anthropomorphic horse fan fiction.
Ensure to make sure every doc has 17 giant sized images saying FU MS
I love to kill cops in GTA
Tina Belcher?
Ha! Exactly where I was going with that.
I’ve just binged the entire series twice in a row. I’m on S10 in round 2. Dunno why I like it so much.
Tina is definitely one of my favourites
Marshmallow and Rudy for me. :)
tip: Only write about the revolution, short stories about your hatred of capitalism, your suicide plans, your teenage angst, and erotic anthropomorphic horse fan fiction.
For everything else, use LibreOffice.
directions unclear, now I’m directing a netflix special on sexy horse guerrillas.
Ugh, the ai spellcheck is broken and I’m writing a Netflix special in six hearse gorillas.
Season one was excellent, it ended on a cliff hanger though. Netflix did not renew for a second season.
would watch
Isn’t that… Just a bulky centaur?
So just bpmb threats and realistic beastiality. Got it.
I’m interested in how they’re gonna enforce this with my copy of word 2007.
They auto updated my 2007 to 365 when my firewall crashed (I had the updated blocked) and then required a subscription. This has happened twice and is such a pain in the ass to reverse. I switched to Libreoffice.
the new libreoffice won’t run on your vista.
I do wonder how my copy of Word 2010 at my work is going to do this.
Which means an AI scans it…
No for most it’s customers and an option for them all. MS is very clear in its policies. Any AI services you use, isn’t sent back for training. The policy is very clearly explained and one of the clearer ones.
Business or enterprise users data isn’t trained and individuals data can opt out
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie
A lie is an assertion that is believed to be false, typically used with the purpose of deceiving or misleading someone.[1][2][3] The practice of communicating lies is called lying. A person who communicates a lie may be termed a liar.
I remember when facebook had a policy to require users to opt-in to having third parties scrape users data, but then it turned out a “bug” caused FB to sell everyones data anyway and they made billions more money than they would have.
I have no doubt a similar “bug” will make its way to the MS servers if one hasnt already.
Let’s say this huge breach of security and privacy is okay.
How are Microsoft ensuring these sensitive documents are not being transferred via or stored on servers located in hostile countries with lax data laws (such as foreign nations like the USA?).
wdym, that’s the point
Microsoft has already said it doesn’t matter where your data is stored, it isn’t safe from the United States.
But you can change this behaviour in settings, it’s just the default for now.
So, if you don’t trust Microsoft to handle your documents, but still somehow use MS Word and OneDrive, for the moment you can still stop it from saving your Word documents to their servers.
You can change it for now.
Yes, that’s what I meant with my “for now” and “for the moment”.
Ms office 2016 install still going strong with zero cloud function. That day I lose it is the day LibreOffice copies itself from the laptop to the desktop. Aint paying for O365
I actually appreciate this. The only place I use Word is at work, and nothing I create in Word at work is ‘mine’. I do not care at all about the security of things I do at work (that’s for our IT Security team to care about), and all this means is that if I accidentally screw up, or if my computer just up and dies on me… all of my work files should be ‘safe’.
My employer has been going very hard towards ensuring that our work computers can ONLY be used for work purposes. Once I accepted this and embraced it I found that I’m now 100% free of Microsoft for anything personal, and it is amazing.
there is a reaching hand that goes further than just using it for work.
lets say you open libreoffice writer and write a party invite. you send this party invite to a friend - they are invited to your party.
your friend opens it in MSWord, its uploaded to the cloud and scraped for all of your personal data to train their AI and to be sold to the lowest bidder.
you had and want nothing to do with microsoft, but they are still harvesting your data.
I agree, however you’re never going to be able to fully control things that you’ve sent out for other people. Even this post can, and likely will, end up as training data for AI. ‘The only winning move is not to play’ applies to a lot of things in life, and if you truly want to protect your data then the best move is to not create any data. The second best move is to not share any data that you’ve created.
Export to a .pdf, automatically opens by default in user browser via local storage as a reader, bypasses MS
This is still problematic shit though, on the same level as enabling Recall by default and encrypting W11 storage devices by default.
i have been trying to understand what information i send to people and how i send it in an attempt to try and get as lottle data into msrecall as possible.
im not quite there yet (and probably wont be before the oct cutoff) because my mother still uses windows & emails me sometimes, and a few of my friends on discord use windows. its really difficult because i have no control over my data being scraped by products i do not use and have never accepted a eula for. its… aggravating :(
The unfortunate fact is if a user who views what you post is using a windows machine, the likelihood of the information on their screen being captured by Microsoft is overwhelmingly high.
I guess you may have to approach the issue how you would the public-facing internet at large: if you cannot verify who and how people are viewing your material, do not post any material that can be accessed by windows. If you must, post it through a trusted circle of users who also understand the issue.
Part of why I still hate it at work; work knows almost everything about me. People with poor understanding of PII have my personal information, and use MS products. Microsoft knows all of that, and everything that I type, the notes I make, the phrases I use, inferences on my interests, and can combine that with other profiles. It helps put together a much more complete picture and profile of me and why I interface with. And I can’t opt out, can’t use Linux, and can’t just go somewhere else to avoid it.
I mean, I’m in the same boat. This doesn’t effect me except for work stuff. But here’s the thing, all of my documents are already backed up to the cloud via OneDrive settings. So this is redundant at best.
At the end of the day, one of the reasons I hate the MS experience is because they push things on you. Its not your PC, its theirs. Hey, you want to use OneDrive? No? Are you sure? No? Are you really sure? No? Why don’t I just turn it on for you so you can see how great it is. You must have turned it off by accident, let me turn it back on. OK, OK I get it you really don’t want to use onedrive. Oh, I forgot that fact once our annual update came out and undid that setting. You straight out uninstalled onedirve and altered your registry? Ok, how about we just upload Word documents for you.
I don’t get it, does Microsoft WANT everyone to stop using their products? First they fuck up their OSes, then they start planting shady shit in their OSes, and now it’s down to every single goddamned piece of software they poop out! What in the fuck are they even doing!
I’m pretty sure most regular users will not even notice the charge, and find it useful down the line. Cause one day they will mess something up, complain to MS that they “lost their work”, will be pointed to the cloud where everything was synced, and rejoice. Most users don’t really care about the implications that their documents are in the cloud.
Office is the product that helped keep Microsoft ticking over. The world is too dependant on Office and people won’t abandon it just because of this.
My fat fingers keep trying to type Microsoft Orifice.
They’re rent-seeking, more than they already are. The data must flow for training, actively burned bridges be damned.
This will be good for the post I saw yesterday where someone was working on some story for weeks and lost it all because they didn’t have a backup lol
Munoz backs up the decision with half a dozen advantages for saving documents to the cloud. From never losing progress and access anywhere to easy collaboration and increased security and compliance.
Munoz kept out the little details where nobody wants this and this is only a good thing for Microsoft
Silence! The great Microsoft has decreed that from this day forward your documents belong to them! No dissension!
Proceed to the payment portal to pay your offerings immediately. Only those worthy enough to pay for the ExtraTM and PremiumTM tiers will be allowed to use the File menu.
