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Microsoft Office update question

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  Microsoft Office update question Amanda Ripanykhazov <licensedtoquil@gmail.com> - 2025-02-10 14:50 -0500
    Re: Microsoft Office update question Alan B <alanrichardbarker@gmail.com.invalid> - 2025-02-10 20:08 +0000
    Re: Microsoft Office update question TimS <tim@streater.me.uk> - 2025-02-10 22:00 +0000
      Re: Microsoft Office update question Amanda Ripanykhazov <licensedtoquil@gmail.com> - 2025-02-19 12:33 -0500
    Re: Microsoft Office update question Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> - 2025-02-11 10:54 +0000
      Re: Microsoft Office update question Amanda Ripanykhazov <licensedtoquil@gmail.com> - 2025-02-19 12:20 -0500
    Re: Microsoft Office update question RJH <patchmoney@gmx.com> - 2025-02-20 04:02 +0000

#180180 — Microsoft Office update question

I have had and used Word since the dawn of time It has never given any 
problems. It just always seemed stable on my Mac. I often used to try to 
update it, usually when some windows product was updating,  but it never 
seemed to update anything in Office

Suddenly about 6 month ago I got an urgent message to update Microsoft 
Office.  Immediately I got scared.

To me,it sounded more like Microsoft fishing for people who had lost 
their product key, to stop Office from working until the user had bought 
the license again: (I Haven't got the faintest idea where my product key 
or license documentation is. I certainly havent even seen it for years)

Now I am up to 4 supposedly urgent product updates!

Does anyone know what is going on and have a view on whether I should 
dare to let Microsoft update anything?

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#180181

On 10 Feb 2025 at 19:50:38 GMT, "Amanda Ripanykhazov"
<licensedtoquil@gmail.com> wrote:

> I have had and used Word since the dawn of time It has never given any
> problems. It just always seemed stable on my Mac. I often used to try to
> update it, usually when some windows product was updating,  but it never
> seemed to update anything in Office
> 
> Suddenly about 6 month ago I got an urgent message to update Microsoft
> Office.  Immediately I got scared.
> 
> To me,it sounded more like Microsoft fishing for people who had lost
> their product key, to stop Office from working until the user had bought
> the license again: (I Haven't got the faintest idea where my product key
> or license documentation is. I certainly havent even seen it for years)
> 
> Now I am up to 4 supposedly urgent product updates!
> 
> Does anyone know what is going on and have a view on whether I should
> dare to let Microsoft update anything?

I'm not sure if this helpful but here goes! I have a subscription to MS Office
365 as I use it on several devices and I'm not aware of a serial number.
Presumably it's licensed via the email address I supplied at purchase time.
All my updates to MS Office are done via an app called Microsoft AutoUpdate
which resides in /Library/Application Support/Microsoft/MAU2.0 which, as you
might expect, runs on system start/restart and presumably periodically. If you
have got this app installed you could run it manually to double check if you
really have any outstanding updates.

-- 
Cheers, Alan

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#180182

On 10 Feb 2025 at 19:50:38 GMT, "Amanda Ripanykhazov"
<licensedtoquil@gmail.com> wrote:

> I have had and used Word since the dawn of time It has never given any
> problems. It just always seemed stable on my Mac. I often used to try to
> update it, usually when some windows product was updating,  but it never
> seemed to update anything in Office
> 
> Suddenly about 6 month ago I got an urgent message to update Microsoft
> Office.  Immediately I got scared.
> 
> To me,it sounded more like Microsoft fishing for people who had lost
> their product key, to stop Office from working until the user had bought
> the license again: (I Haven't got the faintest idea where my product key
> or license documentation is. I certainly havent even seen it for years)
> 
> Now I am up to 4 supposedly urgent product updates!
> 
> Does anyone know what is going on and have a view on whether I should
> dare to let Microsoft update anything?

What you do is look in your Applications folder to find an item called
Microsoft updater or similar. It may be in a folder. Then you put it in the
Trash and empty it.

I have Office 2016 and there are no further updates for that, so there's no
reason for me to have an updater program.

(I had Office 2008 before that, which was better because that was pre the
ribbon nonsense, but it was also only 32-bit).

-- 
Tim

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#180369

On 2/10/25 5:00 PM, TimS wrote:

> What you do is look in your Applications folder to find an item called
> Microsoft updater or similar. It may be in a folder. Then you put it in the
> Trash and empty it.
> 
> I have Office 2016 and there are no further updates for that, so there's no
> reason for me to have an updater program.
> 
> (I had Office 2008 before that, which was better because that was pre the
> ribbon nonsense, but it was also only 32-bit).
> 


I am glad others have noticed that there never seem to be updates to 
these word processors!

I didn't realise that getting rid of a  Microsoft (or Adobe!) updater 
was as easy as that

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#180188

On 10/02/2025 19:50, Amanda Ripanykhazov wrote:
> I have had and used Word since the dawn of time It has never given any 
> problems. It just always seemed stable on my Mac. I often used to try to 
> update it, usually when some windows product was updating,  but it never 
> seemed to update anything in Office
> 
> Suddenly about 6 month ago I got an urgent message to update Microsoft 
> Office.  Immediately I got scared.
> 
> To me,it sounded more like Microsoft fishing for people who had lost 
> their product key, to stop Office from working until the user had bought 
> the license again: (I Haven't got the faintest idea where my product key 
> or license documentation is. I certainly havent even seen it for years)
> 
> Now I am up to 4 supposedly urgent product updates!
> 
> Does anyone know what is going on and have a view on whether I should 
> dare to let Microsoft update anything?

You're right to be slightly skeptical of "urgent" messages from anthing 
official sounding.

How did you get this message and what does it ask you to do?

Like others have said Office 365 (MS365) will only prompt you via the MS 
AutoUpdater app and it is never "urgent". You update when you want. 
However, I use it via my work and so if you've got a personal 
subscription you /may/ get a message via your MS account.

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#180368

> 
> You're right to be slightly skeptical of "urgent" messages from anthing 
> official sounding.
> 
> How did you get this message and what does it ask you to do?
> 
> Like others have said Office 365 (MS365) will only prompt you via the MS 
> AutoUpdater app and it is never "urgent". You update when you want. 
> However, I use it via my work and so if you've got a personal 
> subscription you /may/ get a message via your MS account.

No, my skepticism doesn't arise out of the origination of the message. 
It seems to come from the updater and says there is an urgent update in 
the updater, presumably for operation  or security purposes. Not that i 
urgently need to take immediate action,   NOW   Click-this-button etc 
etc for fear of the dreaded lurgie coming and getting me.

It's just that in a decade and a half of using Office, I have never been 
told to update anything and when I have ever checked manually 
(unprompted) there has never been any need to update anything.

It just made me think that this might be Microsoft's attempt to find out 
if I had kept a record of my product key and  that if I hadn't, it might 
force me to buy another one?

Oh, and the autoupdater starts with Word and has noticed that I haven't 
updated, -  moving from telling me that there is one update in Updater 
to telling me that there are four of them!

Oh,  and here is a bit more evidence that I am being hypersensitive: 
Checking "About Word" it does acknowledge that I have a 'LTSC STANDARD 
LICENSE FOR MAC' and cites a full device ID. So maybe I should just stop 
worrying?

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#180374

On 10 Feb 2025 at 19:50:38 GMT, Amanda Ripanykhazov wrote:

> I have had and used Word since the dawn of time It has never given any
> problems. It just always seemed stable on my Mac. I often used to try to
> update it, usually when some windows product was updating,  but it never
> seemed to update anything in Office
> 
> Suddenly about 6 month ago I got an urgent message to update Microsoft
> Office.  Immediately I got scared.
> 
> To me,it sounded more like Microsoft fishing for people who had lost
> their product key, to stop Office from working until the user had bought
> the license again: (I Haven't got the faintest idea where my product key
> or license documentation is. I certainly havent even seen it for years)
> 
> Now I am up to 4 supposedly urgent product updates!
> 
> Does anyone know what is going on and have a view on whether I should
> dare to let Microsoft update anything?

I updated my Office 2021 suite regularly. During the updates it morphed into
Office 365. Recently - exactly a year after I bought the license - it went
into read only mode. I couldn't create or save files.

Fixing involved following this procedure:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/how-to-remove-office-license-files-on-a-mac-b032c0f6-a431-4dad-83a9-6b727c03b193

-- 
Cheers, Rob, Sheffield UK

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