Microsoft 365

[camdave]

My wife has a Windows desktop and I have a Mac. We have used MS Office/Microsoft 365 for many years and we are both happy to stay with it despite it having a number of features that neither of us use.

My question is; we currently have two subscriptions to 365, one for each computer, as I worry that if we moved to the Family Edition (which is cheaper overall) there is a risk that Microsoft, in its wisdom, will want to combine our files in some way whereas we need to keep everything separate.

We have portable hard disc backups and do not save to the cloud in any way.

Is anyone in a similar position, are my fears justified or will the two users' data remain totally separate?

[zappaDPJ]

I have a subscription for the same product running on multiple devices including a PC and an iMac. As far as I'm aware, if you set up sharing via Microsoft's online invitation system you should be able to keep everything private including OneDrive should you choose to use it. Everyone has their own login so only that individual has access to their files unless they choose to share it.

One thing you might have to be mindful of is the actual transfer from the existing subscriptions. I don't imagine there will be an issue but I have had problems getting Outlook to recognise stored account data.

[camdave]

Thanks for reply, very helpful. I think Word, Excel documents for example should be OK as they are filed away safely on the computer. My concern, as you imply, would be emails in Outlook, I dread to think what Microsoft might decide to do with them!

I will give it some thought before the next subscription is due.

[nowster]

LibreOffice for documents and Thunderbird for emails.

https://www.libreoffice.org/

Why pay Microsoft a subscription for something that you can already get for free, especially if you're concerned about things leaking to the cloud?