Microsoft announced the next version of Office, Office 2019, last year on September and they promised some new features in the new release. Well yesterday, Microsoft posted an article where they gave more information about Office 2019.
Office 2019 aps will be supported on any Windows 10 semi annual releases, long term release version of Windows 10 Enterprise and the next long time release of Windows Server. This means that Office 2019 will not be supported by users on Windows 8 or Windows 7.
Office 2019 will ship in the second half of this year and you will be able to get previews of it in the second quarter. Microsoft also says that Office 2019 client apps will be released with the “Click to Run” installation technology only and not the MSI deployment methodology which is through Windows Installer Packages.
Microsoft has a reason why they decided to make sure that Office 2019 only works with Windows 10. “Software that is more than a decade old, and hasn’t benefited from this innovation, is difficult t secure and inherently less productive,” they said.
However, Microsoft affirmed that Office will be given 5 years of mainstream support and approximately 2 years of extended support. This is different from how they treated Office 2016 and other past versions of Office where they were given 5 years of standard support and 5 years of extended support. This means that Office 2019’s extended support will end on 14th October 2025.
According to Net Market Share, Windows 7 is still the most popular operating system with 44.81% of the total. Combined with the other earlier versions of Windows, this means that Office 2019 won’t be compatible with 59.98% of desktop users. It looks like Microsoft wants more people to get Windows 10 so as to be able to enjoy Office 2019 as well as get security updates on both Office and Windows. Also judging by the end of extended support of Office 2019, we should expect it being released around October, but we have to wait and see.
