Keep up to date with Microsoft Office 2024, the next version of Office. It’s features, price, support and requirements. The page will be updated as information is released so bookmark this page and return to see what’s happening.
Office 2024 is what Microsoft calls a ‘perpetual licence’ version of Office. A single payment for ongoing use of the software with no annual payments (aka ‘subscription). It’ll replace Office 2021.
Office LTSC 2024 is similar software with fewer features for volume licence customers. LTSC = Long-Term Servicing Channel.
If you have Microsoft 365 – Do NOT buy Office 2019 or Office 2021 like Microsoft 365 Family (formerly Home), Microsoft 365 Personal or an enterprise plan. In other words, you pay for Office as an annual fee.
In the meantime we can make some educated guesses based on over twenty years delving into Microsoft Office and knowing Microsoft’s conflicted attitude to perpetual licence versions of Office.
Microsoft much prefers to sell their Microsoft 365 annual payment plans (‘subscriptions’). They overprice and under-resource Office 2019/2021/2024 to encourage a move to their more profitable plans. In other words, Microsoft would prefer not to sell Office perpetual licence products at all.
What’s in Office 2024
Office 2024 should include in all bundles for Windows and Mac:
- Word 2024
- Excel 2024
- PowerPoint 2024
Depending on the bundle / package of Office 2024 it might also have:
- Outlook 2024
- Access 2024 (Windows only)
OneNote is also included but it’s the same as in Office 2019 and Office 2021.
Also Visio 2024 and Project 2024 for volume licences.
NO Publisher since that app is being “retired” see , Microsoft Publisher is ending – what you need to know
Which versions of Windows and Mac?
Office 2024 for Windows will only work on Windows 11 and Windows 10 – 32 and 64-bit versions Windows ARM devices need Windows 11.
For Mac computers, Microsoft’s policy is to support the current and previous two releases of macOS. At the moment that means Sonoma (v14 2023), Ventura (v13 2022) and Monterey (v12, 2021). Office 2021 works on both Intel and Apple M1/2/3 based computers and that will probably continue for Office 2024.
Features
Microsoft is being vague and all they’ve said is:
- Outlook: new meeting creation options and search enhancements
- Excel: Dynamic Arrays and Charts
- and Microsoft standard promise of better performance, security, and accessibility.
Office 2024 will have all the features of Office 2021 plus a limited range of extras. As a guide, Office 2021 had only an official short list of seven changes from Office 2019. There were other minor changes but Microsoft only mentioned seven in their promotion.
We’ll just have to wait and see what Microsoft offers. It’s likely to be as little as possible because Microsoft has to balance offering enough new/changed features to encourage sales but not too much that might discourage a move to a subscription based plan.
Price
Office 2024 for consumers will be the same price as Office 2021.
Office LTSC 2024 will be 10% more expensive.
Keep in mind that Microsoft much prefers to sell their Microsoft 365 annual payment plans (‘subscriptions’). They overprice and under-resource Office 2019/2021/2024 to encourage a move to their more profitable plans. In other words, Microsoft would prefer not to sell Office perpetual licence products at all.
Support
Office 2024 has only five years of support, perhaps less or other conditions since Microsoft can and does change the support rules at any time.
Officially all Microsoft Office products have a ‘fixed’ support lifecycle of ten years. But that policy has been consistently broken for the Office perpetual licence products.
With Office 2019, Microsoft changed its own support promise. From 10 October 2023 they stopped supporting connections from Office 2019 to Microsoft’s own cloud services even though support still has another two years to run. See Office 2019 & 2016 lose an important part of their support
When?
Microsoft just says “later this year” but there’s a commercial preview of Office LTSC 2024 released in April 2024.
The future …
Microsoft has said they are committed to a future release of perpetual licence Office beyond the upcoming Office LTSC 2024.
All about Office 2021 for Windows & Mac
