2026-10-20

This page contains notes on how to get along without the programs provided by Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Cloud. Doing this will save the expense of monthly subscriptions to these programs.

If you collaborate with others who require that you use Microsoft and Adobe tools, then you probably can't avoid subscribing to their products. Trying to use substitutes for Microsoft Word and Adobe Photoshop to collaborate with users of the official products can lead to frustrating compatibility problems. But if you don't need the products for actual paying work, it may not be worth the expense.

Microsoft

Microsoft no longer sells a "lifetime" version of Word. You have to buy a "cloud" version and pay every month.

According to Slashdot, 'Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac will reportedly drop into "reduced functionality mode" on July 13, 2026, when a license-validation certificate expires, leaving perpetually licensed apps able to open files but not edit or save them.'

You can subscribe to Microsoft 365 for $99.99/yr: this gives you Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote desktop apps with Microsoft Copilot AI. A "Family plan" is $129.99/yr for 1-6 people, but only one gets AI.

Adobe

Adobe has also made its products subscription-only. You can't buy a "lifetime version" of Photoshop, Illustrator, and so on, and keep getting updates. Instead you have to subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud, and then sign up for the Adobe tools you need, each with a separate price. When you sign up for Photoshop, for example, Adobe will occasionally update your version of Photoshop over the Web as they add new features and fix bugs. Same for other Creative Cloud tools.

Creative Cloud costs 34.99/mo for the first 3 months and $69.99/mo after that. This includes Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere, plus Adobe Firefly creative AI. Other Adobe tools can be added to Creative Cloud for video and sound production, and Acrobat for document editing, signing, and management ($24.98/mo).

Alternatives

LibreOffice

LibreOffice is a free open source replacement for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It provides Writer(text editor), Calc(spreadsheet), Impress(Presentation), Draw(drawing), Math(formula), and Base(database). It can create XML and HTML documents, labels, and business cards, and PDF documents.

If someone sends you a .docx file created with Microsoft Word or .xls created with Microsoft Excel, you can probably open it with LibreOffice, and files you create with LibreOffice may look OK to a Microsoft user. I use LibreOffice to look at and edit Word files sent me by other users, and to maintain an .xls spreadsheet that was created with Excel... but these files don't use a lot of fancy features.

Affinity

Affinity Photo 2 is free and is a replacement for Photoshop. Affinity Designer 2 is free and is a replacement for Illustrator. I use these programs for photo enhancement and generating labels and they are fine for me. I don't use AI or most Adobe features.

Homebrew

The free Homebrew package manager provides free access to many Unix tools. You can use your Mac to share data and collaborate with Unix users. I use Homebrew to install MySQL, Perl, ImageMagick, gnuplot, go, exiftool, ruby, and mysql, and the current website uses these tools to generate its pages.

iWork

Macs come with the iWork applications: Pages (word processing), Keynote (a powerpoint clone), and Numbers (a spreadsheet like Excel). These programs use Apple frameworks and work well with Apple's iCloud. Collaborating with PC users may encounter incompatibilities and formatting problems. I don't use them much at all.