On July 13, an expired license certificate turns Office 2019 and 2021 on Mac, iPhone, and iPad into read only viewers, and Microsoft says reinstalling will not rescue the 2019 users.
The 32 days between now and July 13, 2026, are the working life left in Microsoft Office 2019 on a Mac. After that, the apps will open files and print them. Editing, saving, and creating new documents stop, per Microsoft's macOS and iOS Office support page. The proximate cause is the expiration of a certificate Microsoft uses to validate Office licenses, according to The Register's June 11 report. Microsoft frames the same event as the end of continued support for older Apple operating systems. Either way, the user experience is identical: a paid productivity suite becomes a reader.
The affected devices are Apple-specific. Office on Windows and Android is unaffected. On Mac, iPhone, and iPad, the reduced-functionality event hits Microsoft 365 subscribers running older macOS or iOS versions, and owners of perpetual Office 2021 and Office 2019 licenses, Microsoft's documentation says. The Register first reported the July 13 date and the certificate mechanism. The two sources agree on what users will see, and disagree on what to call it.
Whether a fix path exists depends on three things: which version of Office was bought, which version of macOS or iOS the device can run, and how much friction is acceptable.
Office 2019 on Mac is the worst case. Mainstream support ended on October 10, 2023, and Microsoft states the application cannot be updated to a version that resolves the July 13 event, per the same support page. Reinstalling does not help. The only Office 2019 owners with a clean escape are those whose Mac can run macOS 12 Monterey or later and who switch to a current Microsoft 365 subscription.
Office 2021 on Mac still has a path, for now. Mainstream support ends October 13, 2026, three months after the reduced-functionality event. Microsoft documents an update route that resolves the July 13 cutoff for Office 2021, according to its macOS update instructions. The window is narrow. Owners who do not run the manual update before October 13 will end up in the same place as the Office 2019 crowd.
For iPhone and iPad, the requirement is iOS 17 or later, per Microsoft's compatibility notes. Microsoft 365 subscribers on iOS can update through the App Store. The same certificate-driven reduction applies.
The off-ramps, ordered by friction, run from the cheapest to the most disruptive. Microsoft 365 on the web covers view, light edit, and share through a browser, with no install and no subscription, and is the path for users on hardware that cannot run a supported OS. A Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscription, with Office on up to five devices, is the most direct route for users with current hardware, and is the path Microsoft effectively steers users toward. The Office 2021 manual update is viable only before October 13, 2026, after which the perpetual-license path closes. A third-party suite covers users who want to leave the Microsoft ecosystem, with Apple iWork and Google Workspace as the obvious comparisons, though both lack the deep Outlook and Windows-format compatibility some users depend on.
The cleaner version of the criticism: Microsoft is converting a paid product into a viewer because a license-validation certificate expired, not because the underlying operating system is technically incapable of running Office, The Register reports. Microsoft frames the cutoff as the end of support for older Apple operating systems. The gap between those framings matters to users who bought Office 2019 in good faith and now have a working app on supported hardware that Microsoft has decided to stop licensing.
The honest summary: a 32-day clock starts now for Office 2019 on Mac, with no fix path on Microsoft's terms, and a narrower clock for Office 2021 that closes on October 13. For users on hardware that cannot reach macOS 12 or iOS 17, the only options are a browser, a new device, or a new vendor.