Is it because Microsoft stopped advertising that they exist?

yea. pretty much. they certainly don't make it known that it does exist.

1 time fee over monthly anyday.

as far as pricing. if you're gonna pay for cloud storage somewhere, anyway..

i know it kinda sucks ass, but you're basically paying for that extra onedrive space and getting office 'free' while you do.

so it does make sense for some users.

but for the love of clippy, don't share a cheaper 1 user/5pc 'personal' plan with other people because they also share your onedrive space. that can get messy and/or really awkward, really fast. get the one you can share with other users and add their msa to your 365 sub.

Yeah, I had Office 2010 and used that for years - probably up to 2022. It allowed installs on 3 devices at a time, and included Word, Excel and Powerpoint. I only switched to Office 365 when my work made it freely available, and I have it set up inside a windows VM on my Linux desktop for the very rare times I need to use office at home. Work are paying for all the redundant tools no one at work uses - like copilot. Don't see it as my problem.

But I can't recommend Office 2024 when it costs £120 for a license with online activation and install restrictions to one PC. Not when the alternative Libre Office is free, unlimited installs on all devices, and does everything a home user would ever need. Joplin is also a superb alternative to One Note.

I personally would never buy another version of Office; I have libre office installed and use that for my personal documents (like my budget spreadsheet and occasional word processing) and Joplin for my notes. And while Libre office doesn't have integrated cloud storage, all you need to do is add your preferred cloud storage system to your file manager in Linux or Windows.

Office 2024 doesn't really offer a good value proposition. And if you're really in the market for Office, then ebay to get valid licenses for Office Professional Plus 2019 or 2021is better value; £40 for the full suite (inc Access, Outlook, Publisher) is far better value than a direct license from MS for 2024. But it's just a product key card, so there is always the risk a license and access to downloads gets revoked eventually.

I have no reason to pay for the office suite when LibreOffice Is nowadays a very valid alternative which is completely free.

365 on the other hand, despite being a steaming piece of shit, is something to which a real alternative does not exist. I really hope an alternative comes up, hopefully this euro office becomes something usable.

publisher just flat-out got the axe. it's even getting taken away from '365' subscribers in a few months. i have a few users that will be affected. they are not happy campers.

if you have it as part of your particular edition and version of (perpetual) office, yea. it should continue to function.

Have you tried Scribus? It's a good open source alternative to Publisher and if it meets your needs it could spare you having to do a lot of faff around trying to keep Publisher going into the future.

But I get wanting to stick with something familiar. It's unlikely you'll lose access to Publisher in the short term. But I'd consider moving to something else now so you're not scrambling should Publisher stop working for whatever reason.