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The only question I need answering is what will be available to replace MS Office 2007 next year?
And please do not tell me it is Office 365 .....
IT administrators take note: Microsoft's Office 2007/Exchange 2007 wave of client and server software is set to exit support in October 2017, and extended custom support agreements are going away.
It may seem like a long way away, but Microsoft's Office 2007 products are hitting their end of support dates in 2017.
For larger enterprise shops which, in the past, have been able to extend support a bit longer with a custom contract as part of their Premier status, there's a new wrinkle next year. Microsoft will not be offering this group custom support agreements as in the past.
I heard about the no more custom support for Office 2007 on-premises client and server products from a reader and a Microsoft spokesperson has confirmed it -- attributing the change to growth in Office 365 subscriptions.
Here's the statement acknowledging the change from a company spokesperson:
The Office 2007 wave of products will be reaching end of support over the next 12 months, as per Microsoft Lifecycle Policy. After those end of support dates, we will no longer offer custom support on any version of Office products (Exchange Server; Office Suites; SharePoint Server; Office Communications Server; Lync Server; Skype for Business Server; Project Server and Visio).
In the past we have offered custom support for a subset of Office products to customers with Premier support contracts. We have seen demand for custom support decline as more customers move to Office 365. Note that this change applies only to custom support, but does not impact any of the standard support offerings.
As always, customers should consult with their account manager regarding their individual migration plans, and may consider services such as Software Assurance Deployment & Planning Services for on-premises upgrades, and Microsoft FastTrack for cloud migrations.
Read more: Microsoft won't provide extended support for Office 2007 products beyond October 2017 deadline | ZDNet
The only question I need answering is what will be available to replace MS Office 2007 next year?
And please do not tell me it is Office 365 .....
Your copy of Office 2007 will be available next year and will work for as long as you need it.
Just the support is stopping, the product will still work as well as it always did, if you have a problem however you will no-longer be able to pay Microsoft to sort it out for you.
This is normal in the planned usage lifeline of this, (and all Microsoft, (and other developers), products, Office 2000 has not been fully supported for some time now and has only been receiving security updates which will also stop next year
For a home user with a decent security routine, (firewall, Anti-Virus, Anti-malware, Good web practice), it should be safe to use, even without the security updates, for any new vulnerabilities discovered.
If you are running a business on Office 2007, although your are strongly advised to upgrade to a later supported version, you should be able to manage but may need to find a private contract IT specialist for support required.
If it is simply a case of financial restraints applying to a new Microsoft office - there are a number of supported Free Alternatives to Microsoft Office available, which often duplicate the older layout and functionality of products like Office 2007
Thank you for all the replies.
I do not like the whole concept of Office 365, because previous experience with such services has been bad. I want a product that is installed on my PC from a medium that I control and can re-install whenever I wish to and is thus guaranteed to work off line. Anything that is dependent on an Internet connection being available is unacceptable, simply because in the environment I work in I do not have guaranteed Internet access all the time. Maybe my understanding of what Office 365 offers is not that good?
So it is Office 2016? That sounds like what I will want to get. Is there any talk of a new version coming out next year?
2007 has served me extremely well up until now. All I need to do is understand what the upgrade path is.
Thank you for the info much appreciated.
I have a clear idea of what to do October next year.
(unless of course financial muscle power has prevailed on MS to extend support for 2007 by then !