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stated in August this year that it would offer continued security updates through so-called "micropatches" for the outdated software, but you'd need to pay for that protection.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.