Microsoft is canceling Office 2019 for Mac next month

Microsoft Office 2019 software for Mac will stop working next month, because the company is not renewing the certificate that verifies Office certificates. Owners of Office 2019 for Mac are be warned they will need to purchase Office 2024 or a Microsoft 365 subscription if they want to continue document processing.

Microsoft it was already promised that “all your Office 2019 applications will continue to work,” as it announced the end of support in 2023. The company is silently changed The post last month removed the mention of programs that continue to work, replacing it with “Know that all of your Office 2019 programs will not lose anything.”

Starting July 13, Office 2019 for Mac and Office 2021 for Mac will both run in “limited mode,” allowing people to open files but not edit, save, or create new documents. The reduced functionality will affect Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote.

While Microsoft is providing certification updates to Office 2021 while it is still supported until October 13, 2026, the company is leaving Office 2019 for Mac users out in the cold because support for these programs ended a few years ago. “Office 2019 for Mac reached the end of support on October 10, 2023, and will no longer receive updates,” says Microsoft. “Because Office 2019 cannot be updated to the original version, this issue cannot be resolved by updating or reinstalling Office 2019 for Mac.”

JimmyTech shows that older versions of Microsoft 365 apps on Mac and iOS are also affected by this certificate issue, but a simple change will fix it for users.

Microsoft always ends support for software and there is always the risk that you will run into problems using older software or versions of Windows. It’s still surprising to see Microsoft doing something different here, especially since this certificate issue breaks the functionality of an app that you paid for once.