In addition to reminding Mac users that support for these two perpetual Office versions ends today, Microsoft also is repeating its guidance that users are advised to go with Office 2016, Office 2019 or Microsoft 365 Apps (formerly known as Office 365 apps) to connect to back end Office 365 services. Microsoft won't block customers using older Office client variants from connecting to Microsoft 365/Office 365 services, but it has warned those who do so won't get all the latest feature updates and fixes.
Microsoft announced in February 2018 that business users would need Office 365 Pro Plus or Office 2019 clients in mainstream support to access the Office 365 back-end services. But it changed its policy due to customer feedback in September 2018, allowing users to continue to use the Office 365 services with Office 2016 through October 2023.
A couple other Office support dates worth noting:
- Office 2010 Service Pack 2 end of support is October 13, 2020. Office 2010 Personal, Professional, Professional Plus and Professional Academic and Home and Business end of support also is October 13, 2020.
- Office 2013 on Windows end of support is April 11, 2023.
- Office 2016 Home and Business end of support is October 14, 2025. Office 2016 Professional and most of the other Office 2016 variants also exits support on October 14, 2025. (Note: As I said above, the cut-off for Office back-end service connectivity for Office 2016 is in October 2023. This means users can keep running the Office 2016 suite until 2025 but without back-end Microsoft services access after 2023.)
- Office 2019 Home and Business end of support is October 14, 2025. The same end-of-support date holds for most of the other Office 2019 variants.
- Office 365 Pro Plus (Microsoft 365 Apps) on Windows 8.1 will be supported until January 2023.
- Office 365 ProPlus (Microsoft 365 Apps) on Windows Server 2016 will be supported until October 2025.
Microsoft recently announced it will be delivering new non-subscription (perpetual) version of its Office desktop clients for Windows and Mac in the latter half of 2021. These new perpetual Office clients will likely be branded Office 2022 if Microsoft sticks with past naming conventions. Microsoft also announced there will be another version of its on-premises Office servers coming in the second half of next year, but they will require a mandatory subscription for security updates, fixes and patches.
