back to article Scared of that new-fangled 'cloud'? Office 2019 to the rescue!

Microsoft has shed light on next year's preview of Office 2019, talking up the new productivity suite as a boon for those who may prefer to work outside of the cloud. The Redmond giant says the first builds of Office 2019 will arrive in the back half of 2018. It will be considered the first major "perpetual release" version ( …

  1. BongoJoe

    Copyright

    I'm dead chuffed how you managed to get permission so easily for the title image.

    I've tried before to get a similar but, alas, failed.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Boffin

      Re: Copyright

      "Fair use" afaik.

  2. Frenchie Lad

    Full Circle

    Is this the beginning of the end? Like offshoring, it will be better in-house.

  3. fidodogbreath

    In my day, we just had blue sky

    "Old man yells at cloud" neatly sums up the comments on many Reg articles...

    1. Geoffrey W
      Trollface

      Re: In my day, we just had blue sky

      It's the cheese in the click bait mousetrap and probably summarizes what the reg varney expects in the following comments.

    2. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

      Re: "Old man yells at cloud"

      Hey, whatever happened to "old" equating to "wise"?

      Disclosure: I have an Oyster Freedom Pass.

    3. I3N
      Pint

      Re: In my day, we just had blue sky

      Hell, I represent that comment ... and just starting to use the "windows" key.

  4. DNTP

    Small-minded men

    Believe that if one dislikes, distrusts, finds practical fault with, has negative user experience with, or doesn't have practical business use for a particular technology, than one must be "scared" of it. As in, "scared of the cloud".

    Also let's just take a census of the people in this building who are actually excited for new Powerpoint animations and then write a policy forbidding them to ever give presentations or lectures.

    1. Robert Moore
      Coat

      Re: Small-minded men

      Also let's just take a census of the people in this building who are actually excited for new Powerpoint animations and then write a policy forbidding them to ever give presentations or lectures.

      Your ideas intrigue me and i wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

    2. Youngone Silver badge

      Re: Small-minded men

      It will be a coolish day in Hell before we begin storing our Office stuff on anyone else's computers.

      Apart from losing control of some very valuable information (formulas for various very valuable products being an example), we prefer to have control over where data is, and who has access to it.

      Not scared, just cautious.

      1. Phil Kingston

        Re: Small-minded men

        "Not scared, just cautious."

        Add "informed" to that list. The problem with a lot of pro and anti-cloud arguments seems to be that those making the decisions either don't understand or don't care what they're championing.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Small-minded men

          Also add "bound by local governmental agencies", and "data is not permitted to leave the area of operations" to the list as well.

          anon for [redacted] reasons.

      2. chrisw67

        Re: Small-minded men

        If you run Windows 10, which will be a pre-requisite for this software, then you are already storing everything on someone else's computer... at least that is how Microsoft see it.

    3. Korev Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Re: Small-minded men

      Also let's just take a census of the people in this building who are actually excited for new Powerpoint animations and then write a policy forbidding them to ever give presentations or lectures.

      You're being too gentle; nuke them from orbit, it's the only way to be sure ->

  5. razorfishsl

    Coming to OSX sometime in 2027.....

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Am I the only one who hears 'new formulas for Excel' and knows people will be asking all day why I'm giggling and excited??

    1. veti Silver badge

      I presume that's some combination of hysteria and panic?

    2. cambsukguy

      What could they be?

      Surely all known formula(e/s) are catered for?

      Is it like Quantum Coin thingys or is it simply bigger formulas; The formula for computing antenna transmission bubble shapes springs to mind from a century ago when I was at college.?

  7. Unicornpiss
    Happy

    I eagerly await..

    ..the new "features" we will have to work around and/or repair.

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: I eagerly await..

      can it get worse than 'clippy' ?

      /me mentions obligatory clip from 'Salmon Days' regarding BOFH vs Clippy... "I'm NOT! WRITING! a F'ING! LETTER!, you STUPID! F'ING! PAPERCLIP!!!"

      [if you've seen the video clip, you'll also know how to properly interpret the capitalization and punctuation]

  8. D.A.

    Will the Mac version finally get voting buttons in Outlook?

    1. yoganmahew

      Ah, is that why Hillary lost?

  9. ellisgl

    And everything will ether have a GUI update or functions removed.

    Outlook will probably only get a small GUI face lift, and nothing that people have been requesting for years. One example would be having a signature per "Send As...".

    Exchange upgrade from 2010 to 2013 (from a multi-tenant deployment) has shown to make things worse. Trying to force SharePoint on people by trying to take away share folders has been a bitter point. Who like SharePoint?

    1. Korev Silver badge

      Re: And everything will ether have a GUI update or functions removed.

      I'd like an intelligent signature function, ie if the email is being sent internally then I'd put my phone number and link to the SharePoint "mysite", external then I'd put my LinkedIn profile link instead.

      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Trollface

        Re: And everything will ether have a GUI update or functions removed.

        "external then I'd put my LinkedIn profile link instead."

        I'd just take some random words strung together to appear in the form of a sentence. "Bat intestine repossesses sinking horse thought" or similar

        otherwise, sigs are pointless, except in USENET or blogs

        1. Justin Case

          Re: And everything will ether have a GUI update or functions removed.

          BB >> sigs are pointless

          Too right. My email signature includes both landline and mobile numbers. Nobody notices. People still ask me for them.

          1. fidodogbreath

            Re: And everything will ether have a GUI update or functions removed.

            sigs are pointless

            What? You don't carefully read and abide by all of the terms in those "This email is the property of..." signatures?

      2. TonyJ
        Thumb Down

        Re: And everything will ether have a GUI update or functions removed.

        "..I'd like an intelligent signature function, ie if the email is being sent internally then I'd put my phone number and link to the SharePoint "mysite", external then I'd put my LinkedIn profile link instead..."

        Pretty sure you can (or could, at least) use transport rules to achieve this. Not graceful, but do-able.

        Now...give me a version of Skype for Business where I can add multiple accounts / logins please, such as I can with frigging Outlook.

        1. J. Cook Silver badge

          Re: And everything will ether have a GUI update or functions removed.

          I implemented those using the stock E2010/2013 interface to insert a sig block in everyone's mail- what was supposed to be a quick n simple task turned into a multi-month debacle and a lot of pain and suffering for me from our user base. (some of which howled rather loudly that we were forcing a standardized signature on them)

  10. davidp231

    "and chart options for Excel spreadsheets"

    So putting back the ones they binned when 2010 came out?

  11. Tezfair

    am i missing something here?

    All the office installations I have done for clients from 1997 have all been buy once, install, keep forever. So why is MS raving on about this one being perpetual?

    1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

      Re: am i missing something here?

      It may be a "promise" to not intentionally introduce "incompatibilites" between older Office application versions and the Operating System that they run on.

    2. Spanners Silver badge
      Alert

      Re: am i missing something here?

      I think it is just a product differentiation from its cloud/vapour ware preferred item.

      Also they would really rather we forget about all previous versions. You remember them. Announced as world shakingly wonderful when they come out but when the next one appears, the older version is vile, shoddy and unreliable.

    3. fandom

      Re: am i missing something here?

      The perpetual license is going to be so expensive, they want us into 365 after all, that they need to start early with the hype.

  12. Buzzword

    Pricing

    At £119 for Office Home, it's looking expensive. Apple's iWork is free (though granted it's not nearly as powerful); LibreOffice provides maybe 80% of the same features & quality for free.

    The old Microsoft Works was just £40. Microsoft desperately need something at that price point to hook new users in; otherwise they don't have that valuable chain of users migrating from Works to full-blown Office as their needs expand.

    1. Halfmad

      Re: Pricing

      Openoffice > LibreOffice.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Pricing

      LibreOffice provides maybe 80% of the same features & quality for free

      Agree that LO works well, but it's just so...damn...ugly. The ribbon, with all those chunky and out-of-proportion icons, looks like something from Baby's First Word Processor. I'm not someone who obsesses over the finer points of design, but LO makes my eyes hurt.

      1. Buzzword

        Re: Pricing

        I'm not going to defend the quality of Open / Libre Office here, and I've lost track of which one is better on any given day of the week.

        But if you read non-techie forums such as Mumsnet, people are actively recommending (Libre|Free)Office for home users. By pricing out those home users, Microsoft will lose valuable feeder users who both build brand loyalty and who may eventually graduate to full-blown Office.

      2. fandom

        Re: Pricing

        "LibreOffice provides maybe 80% of the same features & quality for free"

        Sure, and I use it myself exclusively, but for most people the one feature they care about is format compatibilty and LO is not there yet, maybe almost good enough, but not quite.

      3. Updraft102

        Re: Pricing

        "Agree that LO works well, but it's just so...damn...ugly. The ribbon, with all those chunky and out-of-proportion icons, looks like something from Baby's First Word Processor. I'm not someone who obsesses over the finer points of design, but LO makes my eyes hurt."

        You can change the icon set in LO really easily. I didn't like the default set either, and at first that made me gravitate toward OO instead, but given that OO seems to be at death's door, I decided to try LO again, and I soon found I could fix the icon issue, not to mention the poor choice of default (blindingly bright) colors.

        Also: Ribbon? LO has a ribbon?

        Why?

    3. fidodogbreath

      Re: Pricing

      A lot of companies and organizations participate in the Home User Program. I've bought four personal copies of Office Professional over the years, and I've never paid more than $10 for it.

      If your employer makes that option available to you, it's a great deal.

  13. Captain Scarlet Silver badge
    Coffee/keyboard

    Skype for Business

    Wait what they arent going to rename it again to something else?

    Will the exe be Skype related (As Lync I remember being messenger.exe and current Skype for Business is lync.exe)

    1. DavidRa

      Re: Skype for Business

      Now Teams, as I recall seeing.

      Says the bloke who has happily deployed Exchange Chat, Live Communications Server x2, Office Communications Server x2, Lync x2 and SfB so far...

      1. Captain Scarlet Silver badge

        Re: Skype for Business

        Apologises for the one person I apparenly insulted, but IBM are probably worse renaming the web access client in IBM Notes nearly every other release

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    But at what price?

    MSFT may offer Office 201x on a perpetual license but unless you've religiously paid Software Assurance, then the up-front license cost is going to be immense, so most peeps will opt for the Office 365 subscription.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Everybody knows

    Everybody now knows that "the cloud" is just other people's computers i.e. they and the gov't are going though your stuff and reading your communications. Sort of like calling ISIS "the light", or a communist gov't "democratic".

    So, yeah, I'd consider Office 2019. And while they're on the roll, how about a non-cloud version of Windows Professional?

  16. Nimby
    Trollface

    Can I just buy the MS-approved LibreOffice plugin please?

    MS, I don't want your cloud. I don't even want your user interface. I just want to be able to save a "Word" document in LibreOffice and have a colleague using MS Office actually see it the way that I wrote it. I'll even pay an MS tax for this "feature". Come on. Twenty bucks for an official plugin from MS that makes File->Save actually work "right". (And by "right", I mean reproduces all known MS file format bugs in correct order to duplicate Word's results.) I have money! I just have no interest in, well, pretty much anything that you sell, especially if it involves anything that you claim makes it "better" than the previous version. Come on MS. Just meet me half way. Please!

    1. Alan Bourke

      Re: Can I just buy the MS-approved LibreOffice plugin please?

      Isn't that a LibreOffice problem?

      1. elgarak1

        Re: Can I just buy the MS-approved LibreOffice plugin please?

        The problem is that people insist on sharing files using .doc/.docx (and similar for the other components), which are crappy formats for file sharing (include significant information about the systems where the files are used, and poorly to not documented, to name just two of their problems). Sharing Office files is problematic, even if you do stick with Office. I do not want to use Office (buggy, bloated, bad UI), but if the sharing fails, and I don't use Office, it's MY fault. If I stick to Office (despite the fact that I struggle and have to invest twice of my time to do the same tasks, to not mention the fact that I have to pay a LOT of money to legally use it compared to other software), and sharing fails, it's Microsoft's fault.

        I wish people would stop requiring Office files altogether, and use proper, system-agnostic document files. OpenOffice file formats would be a first recommendation – at least they're properly documented, and reasonably system-information free. One do not even have to use Open-/LibreOffice to work with them.

  17. MrKrotos

    Haven't been abandoned just yet

    Microsoft wants the businesses that opted out of Office 365 to know they haven't been abandoned just yet.

    Too little...................too late...............

    1. Rich 11

      Re: Haven't been abandoned just yet

      On the plus side, this gives me the argument I need to counter the usual "But... but... we're all doing cloud these days, aren't we?" approach. Well, yeah, but in several use cases it's just a little bit more complicated than that.

  18. The answer is 42

    The problem is...

    How do I get Access?

  19. Trigonoceps occipitalis

    Office 2019

    Only for sale on 10 Hygiea.

  20. Eduard Coli

    Google luv?

    Perhaps M$ will grow up and support Oauth2 in their Mac and Pee Cee versions?

    One can only hope...

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