The rumors have now become facts. Recent speculation suggested that Microsoft would offer the latest version of Office (officially Microsoft 365) not only as a subscription, but also as a one-off purchase again. Well, Microsoft has made it official!
The next version of Microsoft 365 (aka Microsoft Office) will be released later in 2024. In addition to Microsoft offering it as a one-off purchase, there will also be a Mac version of the program and it will support both 32- and 64-bit versions. Here’s what we know about Office 2024.
Microsoft Office 365 Home Premium
In a blog post about the upcoming preview of Microsoft Office LTSC 2024, the company emphasizes that you can buy Microsoft Office 365 2024 and use it permanently. Of course, this only makes sense until the end of support after five years. Once support ends, you will no longer receive any security updates for Microsoft Office 2024, making it unsafe to use.
This statement only applies to Office LTSC, i.e. a variant of Microsoft Office that is intended for commercial customers and public authorities. For private users, however, the question of whether Microsoft will release Office 2024 as a non-subscription version is much more exciting. And the blog post does indeed address this:
“We also plan to release a new version of Office for home users later this year, Office 2024, which will also be supported for five years with the traditional ‘one-time purchase’ model. We have no plans to change the price of these products at the time of release. We will provide more details on the new features in Office 2024 shortly before general availability.”
Here’s what you can expect from the latest Microsoft Office 364:
- The next version of Microsoft Office 364 for home users will launch in 2024 as Office 2024
- Microsoft will provide updates for the next five years
- You can purchase Microsoft Office 365 as a one-off payment
- Office 2024 will also be released for macOS
- Office 2024 supports Windows 10, except on ARM devices
- Office 2024 supports 32-bit
- The price remains unchanged
Microsoft Office Home and Business 2021, price comparison
If you’re in favor of the subscription model with annual costs or the variant with a one-off payment and no follow-up cost, the new features are only available for the subscription model. The standalone version only receives security and repair updates.
The preview of Microsoft Office LTSC 2024 will be available for testers in April 2024. Microsoft is discontinuing Microsoft Publisher and Teams is missing because the company is making Teams available for download separately.
This article first appeared on PCWelt and has been translated from German to English.
