Microsoft announces that Office 2024 will be available without a subscription, but will only include a subset of Microsoft 365. The subscription model clearly remains its priority.
Microsoft Office LTSC 2024 Overview
Microsoft 365 delivers cloud-backed apps, security and storage that customers around the world rely on to do more in a connected world – and lays the foundation for leveraging generative AI to do even more. However, we recognize that some customers have specific but important scenarios that require a true long-term service channel: regulated devices that cannot accept feature updates for years, process control devices in manufacturing floors that are not connected to the Internet. and specialized systems. Such as medical testing equipment that runs embedded applications that remain locked over time. For these special cases, Microsoft Office continues to offer and support the Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC). Today, we’re pleased to announce that commercial preview of the next version of Office LTSC – Office LTSC 2024 – will begin next month, with general availability to follow later in the year.
About this version
Like previous perpetual releases of Office, Office LTSC 2024 will include only a subset of the value found in Microsoft 365 Apps, based on features included in previous releases. New features in Office LTSC 2024 include: New meeting creation options and search improvements in Outlook, Dozens New Excel features and functions, including dynamic charts and tablesas well as improvement of Performance, Security and Accessibility. Office LTSC 2024 will not ship with Microsoft Publisher, which is being retired, or with the Microsoft Teams app, which can be downloaded separately.
Although Office LTSC 2024 offers several significant improvements over previous versions of Office LTSC, as an on-premises product it will not offer the cloud-based features of Microsoft 365 Apps, such as real-time collaboration. Real, AI-powered automation for Word, Excel and PowerPoint or cloud-backed security and compliance features that deliver greater confidence in a hybrid world. Additionally, with device-based licensing and extended offline access, Microsoft 365 offers deployment options for scenarios like computer labs and submarines that require more than a device-based solution. User and always online. A Microsoft 365 (or Office 365) subscription is also required to subscribe to Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365; As a disconnected product, Office does not meet LTSC requirements.
As with previous versions, Office LTSC 2024 will still be a “perpetual” device-based license, Support for five years Under a fixed lifecycle policy, with Windows 11 LTSC, which will also launch later this year. And because we know that many customers only deploy Office LTSC on a subset of their devices, we will continue to support the deployment of Office LTSC and Microsoft 365 Apps on different machines within the same organization. Using a common set of deployment tools.
Office LTSC is a unique product that Microsoft is committed to maintaining for use in exceptional circumstances, and the 2024 release provides significant new functional value for these scenarios. To support continued innovation in this framework, Microsoft will increase the price of Office LTSC Professional Plus, Office LTSC Standard, Office LTSC Embedded and individual applications by up to 10% during general availability. And since we were asked at the time of version release if there would be another, I can confirm that we are committed to releasing another version in the future.
We will provide additional information about the upcoming release of Visio and Project On-Premises in the coming months.
Office 2024 for customers
We also plan to release a new version of Office on-premises to customers later this year: Office 2024. Office 2024 will also be supported for five years under the traditional “one-time purchase” model. We do not plan to change the price of these products upon release. We’ll announce more details about the new features included in Office 2024 as we approach general availability.
Integrate the future of work
The future of work in an AI-driven world is in the cloud. In most customer scenarios, Microsoft 365 offers the most secure, productive and cost-effective solution and allows customers to unleash the transformative power of AI with Microsoft Copilot. Especially as we approach the end of support for Office 2016 and Office 2019 in October 2025, we encourage customers who are still using these solutions to upgrade to a cloud subscription that best suits their needs as a small business or large organization. have And for circumstances where this is not possible – where an offline, time-locked solution is required – this new release reflects our commitment to support this need.
FAQ:
Will the next version of Office have a Mac version?
Yes, the next version of Office will have Windows and Mac versions for business and home users.
Will the next version of Office be compatible with Windows 10?
Yes, Office LTSC 2024 will be supported on Windows 10 and Windows 10 LTSC devices (except Arm devices, which will require Windows 11).
Will the next version support 32 and 64 bit versions?
Yes, the next version of Office will include 32 and 64 bit versions.
