Microsoft office 2024 is almost here!

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There is good news for everyone who wants an LTSC-variant of Microsoft Office: Microsoft has now released Office LTSC 2024. This release will set the ground for the next Microsoft Office 2024, the consumer-focused package which should be out soon.

Office LTSC 2024 was first revealed in March and it is considered to be the new Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC-version of the Office LTSC 2021. It is an MS package without a subscription, and it doesn’t connect to the cloud, with no regular updates. Most especially, it does not come with AI Copilot features, which one needs to subscribe to Microsoft 365 together with the Copilot Pro.

Office LTSC 2024 consists of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook the old and the standard interface not the browser version of Outlook, OneDrive, OneNote, and Microsoft Access for Windows Edition only. This application may be used on a single PC or Mac at a time but does not enable capabilities on Office mobile and web designs. It will get security updates for five years while new features will not be added to the device for the same duration as well.

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Notably, Microsoft Press serves Office LTSC 2024 without Microsoft Publisher, the applications of desktop publishing that Office US Introduced to the public in 1991. Microsoft continued to note that Publisher which was previously included in the Office Suite would be retired in 2026 but Office LTSC 2024 would continue attracting support up to about 2029. Also, Skype for Business seems to have been eliminated in the 2024 release, with most of its features integrated into Microsoft Teams.

Now there is Office LTSC which is available only for business and organizational customers and is designed for workstations that cannot be updated or connected to the Internet regularly. But, Microsoft has confirmed that the consumer version that you may be looking forward to is also in the pipeline and it will be known as Microsoft Package 2024, while more information will be forthcoming in the next couple of weeks.

The subscription-based Microsoft 365 will likely remain the best option for most users, given its multi-device compatibility and cloud storage features. Nonetheless, it’s good to see Microsoft still offering one-time purchase options for Office apps. We need to wait a bit longer to release the home version of Office 2024.

Source: Microsoft 365 Blog