Microsoft will soon be bringing two Office packages with classic licenses onto the market. And that explicitly means: The Redmond company is not forcing users to use the 365 suite – local installations with conventional updates and no subscription fees will continue to be available for Word, Excel and PowerPoint in the future.
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One last classic office?
There is still little information about Office 2024, which is important for many users. This is the successor to the previous packages – however, no details are yet known about the scope of the program, and a release date has not yet been set. Office 2024 will be released as usual for Windows and macOS, the price should remain the same.
In the announcement, however, Microsoft goes into more detail about Office LTSC 2024. With the Long-Term Servicing Channel, the provider promises, as with its predecessors of the same name, long-term support for “niche scenarios”. What are meant by these? The developers understand this to mean systems that cannot receive updates for a long period of time, devices without an Internet connection or embedded installations such as in the medical sector.
Like Windows 11 LTSC, which is also released this year, Office LTSC 2024 will receive five years of support and will be offered in Professional Plus, Standard and Embedded variants. Microsoft is raising the prices by 10 percent compared to the previous licenses – but here too there is no information about the range of functions. It was only previously known that the Publisher would no longer be included in Office.
Finally, Microsoft has decided that there will be further Office releases after 2024 – but only mentions the LTSC variant. It remains to be seen whether the upcoming package for end users will be the last regular Office package. In the announcement, Microsoft also promises that there will be new information about the local versions of Visio and Project in the coming months.
Preferred by Microsoft: 365
What is also particularly important to Microsoft is what will not be included in the new Office 2024. In contrast to the 365 suite, users have to forgo the functions for collaborating with other users, cannot use the AI writing assistant Copilot and are not protected by the Redmond company's cloud security. Furthermore, the MS Teams app is not on board either.
Accordingly, the announcement encourages regular users to switch to Microsoft 365. Only those who rely on such “niche scenarios” should continue to rely on the classic Office – but these customers would also be supported in the future.
(fo)