Microsoft announced last month that a new one-time purchase version of Microsoft Office would be available this year, replacing Office 2021. Now we have a few more details about the package.
Microsoft has now released a preview of Microsoft Office LTSC 2024, currently only available to corporate customers. Office LTSC is intended for use cases “such as regulated devices that cannot accept feature updates for years at a time, manufacturing process control devices that are not connected to the internet, or medical testing equipment running embedded apps.”
Even though Office LTSC isn’t the same package as the Office package available to home customers, the commercial preview does provide a few clues about the Office 2024 package that will be available for home use later this year. That will replace Office 2021 (also called “Office Home & Student” and “Office Home & Business) as the one-time purchase version of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Microsoft previously said that Office 2024 would be supported for five years, and there likely won’t be a price change, so it should cost $150 for a license on one computer.
The Windows system requirements for Office LTSC 2024 includes 4GB RAM and at least 4GB of available disk space “for each product that you’re installing.” It works on any version of Windows 10 or Windows 11, and both 32-bit and 64-bit versions are available. However, ARM-based PCs need Windows 11 at a minimum. The Mac version requires 4GB RAM, at least 10GB of available disk space, and either an Intel or Apple Silicon (M1, M2, etc.) chipset.
Microsoft’s documentation doesn’t mention which versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other apps are included, but it should be a pretty close experience to the versions available right now through Microsoft 365. However, all AI and cloud-based features are unavailable. That means you can’t edit a Word document at the same time as another person, and Copilot features are unavailable. That might actually be a selling point to some people—if you are annoyed by AI in everything, Office 2024 might be for you.
Office LTSC 2024 on Windows includes Access, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Skype for Business, and Word, while the Mac version has Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word. However, the home release of Office 2024 will almost certainly exclude Skype for Business, and it’s not clear if Outlook will be available. The current Office 2021 package only includes Outlook in the more expensive “Office Home & Business” edition, and Microsoft recently made Outlook a free app on Mac. The new Windows version is also free to download, but not the classic Outlook, which is still restricted to Microsoft 365 and Office packages.
There’s still no official release date for Office 2024, but it is happening sometime this year.
Source: Microsoft
