TLDR: can I edit docx files on word without a subscription and if not what are some apps that can allow me to do so
Like the title says I need the ability to edit .docx for college (sadly other file formats aren’t accepted AFAIK) and my Microsoft 365 subscription is expiring and will not be renewed thanks to you lovely people getting me on the Proton family of software and obsidian for note taking.
However i created a .docx file today and and got a popup in word saying my Microsoft subscription is expiring soon (in march I believe) and that I would lose many feature.
This scary message wasn’t very helpful as to what features id lose (probably a lot of them I don’t even use) but the internet has not been helpful in telling me if I can still view and edit all my docx files that I have been collecting and creating over the years and have migrated to my proton drive
If I won’t be able to access docx files in word what are some apps that can open them from my proton drive (this is a hard requirement for me).
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without activation or a subscription, your current office installation will continue to read and view the files just fine, you just won’t be able to edit and re-save them or create new ones.
there are a number of ‘free’ or open source alternative to several of the microsoft office applications (word, excel, and ppt), such as onlyoffice, libreoffice, softmaker, etc. set the default save format back to microsoft office format (docx, xlsx, pptx) for a more seamless transition. if your online drive is mounted in your os, any of these would be able to read/write to it like any other installed application.
older versions of microsoft office (2010 and earlier) may be ‘out of date’ and unsupported, but they still work and can be bought second-hand for cheap.
there is also free-to-use online versions of microsoft office and google docs (their respective online account required–and their anti-privacy policies apply). these would by default use their respective online storage.
if you are in university, you may be able to get a low-cost or even free microsoft office key or subscription from your school. check with your student i.t. help desk or school-run campus bookstore.
if you work for a larger company or institution that uses volume licenses of microsoft software, they may have a ‘workplace discount’ for a microsoft 365 sub, it’s about $20-30 off per year (the more reasonable ‘home use program’ does not exist anymore).