Microsoft announced in April 2017 that they be ceasing support for legacy Office clients into Office 365 services, however this stance has now changed based on customer feedback to Microsoft
- Office 2013 and below will cease as expected on 13th October 2020
- Office 2016 will now be extended until October 2023
With this announcement it also includes a number of changes to the supported operating system versions of Windows.
Office 365 ProPlus delivers cloud-connected and always up-to-date versions of the Office desktop apps. To support customers already on Office 365 ProPlus through their operating system transitions, we are updating the Windows system requirements for Office 365 ProPlus and revising some announcements that were made in February. We are pleased to announce the following updates to our Office 365 ProPlus system requirements:
- Office 365 ProPlus will continue to be supported on Windows 8.1 through January 2023, which is the end of support date for Windows 8.1.
- Office 365 ProPlus will also continue to be supported on Windows Server 2016 until October 2025.
- Office 365 Pro Plus will also continue to be supported on Windows 7 (ESU) Extended Security Updates through Janaury 2023. Windows 7 ESU will only be available for Windows 7 Pro/Enterprise customers with Volume Licensing.
Other big news is four changes Microsoft have also announced (Longer support windows for Windows 10):
- All currently supported feature updates of Windows 10 Enterprise and Education editions (versions 1607, 1703, 1709, and 1803) will be supported for 30 months from their original release date. This will give customers on those versions more time for change management as they move to a faster update cycle.
- All future feature updates of Windows 10 Enterprise and Education editions with a targeted release month of September (starting with 1809) will be supported for 30 months from their release date. This will give customers with longer deployment cycles the time they need to plan, test, and deploy.
- All future feature updates of Windows 10 Enterprise and Education editions with a targeted release month of March (starting with 1903) will continue to be supported for 18 months from their release date. This maintains the semi-annual update cadence as our north star and retains the option for customers that want to update twice a year.
- All feature releases of Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Pro, and Office 365 ProPlus will continue to be supported for 18 months (this applies to feature updates targeting both March and September).
In summary, our new modern desktop support policies—