Microsoft has announced the new Office 2024 version as a purchase license. The new Microsoft Office 2024 does not require a subscription, but can be purchased regularly. According to Microsoft, there will be two versions of Office: Office 2024 and Office LTSC 2024. Office LTSC 2024 will receive five years of support and will be offered in Professional Plus, Standard and Embedded versions. The price will be around 10% above the price of the previous licenses and Microsoft Publisher will no longer be included in the package.
Finally, Microsoft is committed to ensuring that there will be further versions of Office after 2024 - but only mentions the LTSC version. This means that there is no cloud or subscription obligation, which many had already feared and predicted. Likewise, no permanent online connection is required for activation or similar. However, you will have to do without the new AI features such as Copilot in the classic Office versions. Office 2024 will require at least Windows 10 and there will even be a 32-bit version and a Mac version. In principle, everything will remain the same with the new Office.
With the new Office 2024, there will also be a new Outlook, where Microsoft mentions new options for creating meetings and an improved search function. This would also be the new client for a new version of the on-prem Exchange Server.
The public preview of Office LTSC 2024 will start next month and the release is planned for this year. So it will probably be Q3 before the new Office version is generally available. Details on the new features will also be available later.
Here you can find the complete announcement from Microsoft:
As soon as the new Outlook version is available, I will test it and also briefly present it here.
