Industry Updates

Support For Microsoft Office 2010 Ending Soon Upgrade Recommended

Are you still using Microsoft Office 2010?

If so, Microsoft recently issued a reminder you’re not going to like hearing.

Extended Support for Office 2010 expires on October 13th, 2020, so time is running out to upgrade. The company’s official recommendation is to upgrade to either Office 365 ProPlus, or Office 2019.

In addition to that, “We also recommend business and enterprise customers use the deployment benefits provided by Microsoft and Microsoft Certified Partners, including Microsoft FastTrack for cloud migrations and Software Assurance Planning Services for on-premises upgrades.”  This, according to the Office 2010 End of Support Roadmap, published by Microsoft.

Elsewhere on Microsoft’s site, the company seems to be pushing hard for Enterprise users to upgrade to Office 365 ProPlus. In particular, they added the following information:

“Upgrade to Office 365 ProPlus, a product built for today’s challenges and literally getting better all the time, as we continue innovating across–and investing in–the experience.  Consider just a few benefits:  AI and machine learning to advance creativity and innovation, real time collaboration across apps, and Microsoft Teams as the hub for teamwork.”

All of that is well and good, and certainly true. However, for some Enterprise users, office 2019 might simply be the better fit, even if the company isn’t pushing it as hard. In any case, the takeaway is simply this:  Support is ending for Office 2010.  If you’re still using it, you need to be making migration plans now and begin using one of the two aforementioned products before the support period ends.  You’ll find detailed instructions on how to migrate on the company’s website if you don’t already have a clear understanding of the process.

In a related vein, note that the Windows 10 Creators Update (version 1703) has now reached end of service and will no longer receive any quality or security updates.