14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft will remove support for Office 2007 next year and, without a doubt, many users and companies will be caught off-guard because this is pretty much what happens every time the software giant pulls support for one of its products.
It goes without saying that many still hope to see Microsoft extending support beyond the cutoff date, as it happened with Windows XP, but the company says in a statement that there’s no way Office 2007 would receive updates and security patches beyond October 2017.
The purpose is obviously to convince users to switch to Office 365 or a newer version of the productivity suite, such as Office 2016, which the company is actively working on right now.
Custom support no longer offered
What’s important to know, however, is that Microsoft will no longer offer custom support either, so everyone will stop getting updates beyond the October 2017 deadline. Microsoft previously offered custom support to paying customers, such as companies or state department, in exchange for a fee, but this won’t be the case with Office 2007.
“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),” the company explained.
Microsoft says demand for custom support is dropping, and this is one of the reasons the company wants to completely pull the old Office 2007 suite.
“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,” the firm says.
According to reports, Microsoft is currently considering offering an extension for Premier customers on Exchange 2007 with Service Pack 3, but this might be the only exception the company has in mind.