End of support for older Office and Windows Server pile on the pain for admins

Windows 10's free support has shuffled off this mortal coil for most customers – but that's merely the headline act in Microsoft's October support massacre. Older versions of Office and Windows Server have also been shown the door.

Support for Office 2019 (including Office 2016) and Exchange Server 2019 flatlined on October 14. While Microsoft will sell orphaned Windows 10 users an extra year or so of life support via its Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, Office users are out of luck – it's either a move to Office 2024 LTSC or biting the bullet and signing up for Microsoft 365's subscription treadmill.

The latter might not be an option for companies that need to run in a disconnected fashion for compliance or regulatory reasons, or just because they prefer a perpetual license to a subscription. The former, Office 2024 LTSC, will be supported by Microsoft until 2029, but will miss out on the feature updates that will arrive as part of Microsoft 365.

Esben Dochy of Lansweeper told The Register that he worries Office might fly under the radar of organizations fixated on the Windows 10 doomsday clock. Office reamins a juicy attack vector, even considering Microsoft's hardening efforts, such as neutering VBA macros by default.

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Still, at least there's a perpetual license available for Microsoft's productivity suite. Users of on-premises Exchange email or Skype for Business servers must make the move to the Subscription Editions to keep the patches flowing. Exchange 2016 and 2019 and Skype for Business 2016 and 2019 also dropped out of support on October 14. Again, administrators should have planned for this, however, organizations might be so laser-focused on the end of Windows 10, that other migrations slid to the bottom of the to-do pile.

It isn't just perpetual versions of Microsoft products that fell out of support on Tuesday. Even Windows 11 felt the cold steel of Redmond's ax-wielder. Windows 11 22H2 for Enterprises and Education will no longer receive updates – Microsoft would rather customers moved to a later version.

Considering the publicity surrounding the end of Windows 10 support, observers would be forgiven for thinking that it was the only bit of Microsoft-induced pain facing administrators. We're sad to say this isn't the case.

For many, the end of support for recent versions of Office and the perpetual licensed server products spells just as much pain, if not more so, for harassed administrators. ®