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Office 2013 'expiring' in 2017?

Microsoft makes Office updates very confusing with different support expiry dates depending, not just on the software, but how you bought it.

There’s talk around that Office 2013 is ‘expiring’ in about 4 months time, February 2017. But that doesn’t match with Microsoft’s own ‘Lifecycle’ subsite which is clear. The main support for Office 2013 ends in April 2018.

Two “Office 2013’s”

Microsoft itself is still coming to terms with the different ways of selling and supporting Office, so confusion by us, mere customers, is understandable.

For the purposes of lifecycle there are two distinct Office 2013 releases.  Note ‘for the purposes of lifecycle’ – there are various other ways to ‘slice and dice’ Office depending the reason.

 

The Office 2013 mentioned on the ‘Product Lifecycle‘ site is Office sold to consumers and organizations either as standalone ‘perpetual licence’ Office (as an Office 2013 bundle or separate programs) OR  Office 365 annual ‘subscription’.

Mainstream support for these types of Office 2013 (which is individual consumers and many others) ends on 10 April 2018 – more than a year away.

Office 365 ProPlus

‘Office 2013 ProPlus’ is treated differently and isn’t mentioned on the Product Lifecycle site, so there’s more confusion.

It’s more correctly called Office 365 ProPlus, a subscription plan hosted by Microsoft for organizations and educational institutions.  Right now, people using Office on the ProPlus plan can choose either Office 2013 or Office 2016.  But that won’t last.

From 28 Feb 2017:

  • No download or installs of Office 2013. Only the Office 2016 options will be available.
  • No Office 2013 language packs will be available.
  • Existing Office 2013 installations will continue to work but there’ll be
    • No new features.
  • Security updates will continue to 10 April 2018.
  • No support from Microsoft.

Network admins will have to manage most of these issues.  Universities have started encouraging users to switch to Office 2016.

There are options to prevent an automatic switch to Office 2016 for ProPlus accounts.

It’s worth noting that Outlook 2016 does not support Exchange Server 2007 or before.  You’ll need Exchange Server 2010/2013/2016 with autodiscovery to work with Outlook 2016.

Full details at Microsoft Support.

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