Microsoft warns Office 2016/19 users to switch to the cloud as support ends soon

Back in April of 2024, Microsoft announced that it would be ending support for its Office 2016 and 2019 suites. This affects a whole list of products, including applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Publisher, along with productivity servers like Exchange Server and Skype for Business Server.

After October 14, 2025, there will be no more bug fixes, security updates, or technical support for any of them. Following this decision, cybersecurity firm 0patch stated in August this year that it would offer continued security updates through so-called "micropatches" for the outdated software, but you'd need to pay for that protection.

Now, the company is back once again, warning users to get their migration plans in order as we approach the October 14 end-of-support date. The software giant is listing out the options for companies that need to get off the aging platforms.

Microsoft's "recommended path" forward is the cloud powered by Microsoft 365, its subscription-based Office replacement that the company claims is "AI ready" thanks to 365 Copilot. This assistant is integrated into the apps and allows you to do some interesting work; for example, in Word, you can ask it to summarize a twenty-page report or draft a marketing email from a few bullet points.

The Redmond giant promises that its cloud service offers things like automatic updates, ongoing support, better security, and more when compared to the on-premise versions of Office.

If you know Microsoft, you'd understand that the company has been pushing the cloud a lot on customers lately. For example, it recently began testing a feature that will save Word documents created on Windows to the cloud by default. Microsoft claims this is to prevent data loss, and it plans to roll out the same default behavior to PowerPoint and Excel before the year runs out.

For customers who don't want to move to the cloud, there is another option. This path is for devices that cannot, for whatever reason, connect to the internet or receive regular feature updates. For these specific scenarios, Microsoft recommends a switch to the newest perpetual-license version, Office LTSC 2024.