Yeah, seriously guys - don't bother with Word at all. It's sad, over-priced crap, even for the cost of a $50 one-time purchase. I know free office software used to have a bad reputation for crappy UI and for missing fairly essential features, but that hasn't been true for years now.
These days, unless you're an absolute Visual Basic fiend, LibreOffice is probably a better choice for your word processing needs than Word is. OnlyOffice is pretty good too. Heck, if you're willing to go in on a Nextcloud server with some friends, you can even do real-time collaboration like in Google Docs, but in a full-fat office suite instead of Google Drive's dinky mini tools.
And to push back on the idea that buying Word will "make VERY clear to Microsoft that we DO want one-time-purchase products, not subscriptions"?
You know how I know it won't?
We've all been dutifully paying for Word since the 90s - through our school licenses, through our workplaces, bundled with Excel, doesn't matter! We took one look at the labor-of-love free alternatives, decided that they couldn't meet our needs and that we weren't interested in waiting for them or financially supporting them, and so we paid for Word instead. And what do you think Microsoft learned from this? The same thing Microsoft has always learned, of course: when you're a monopoly, you can force any damn thing down your users throats.
You want to make very clear to Microsoft that you're not going to take their bullshit anymore? Then stop using their crappy, overpriced software. Period.
No amount of one-time purchases will ever convince Microsoft that they can't squeeze you for even more via a subscription if, when push comes to shove, you blink first because you're just not willing to ever walk away from their products entirely. You want to show Microsoft that this shit is unacceptable? Start by taking your business elsewhere.
