Microsoft Office LTSC 2024 preview starts in April; consumer version due later this year

In November 2023, leaked screenshots showed that Microsoft was internally testing Office 2024, the next stand-alone version of its suite of productive apps. Today, Microsoft confirmed it was working on Office 2024 for both businesses and consumers.

In a blog post, Microsoft announced that it will launch a preview of Office LTSC (Long-Term Servicing Channel) 2024 sometime in April for businesses and organizations. It stated:

New features for Office LTSC 2024 include: new meeting creation options and search enhancements in Outlook, dozens of new Excel features and functions including Dynamic Charts and Arrays; and improved performance, security, and accessibility.

The blog post added that the new Office LTSC 2024 will not include the Microsoft Teams app. It also won't include Microsoft Publisher. The company had already announced that it would shut down support for Publisher in 2026.

Office LTSC 2024 will enter general availability sometime later in the year. The blog post added that when that happens, users can expect five years of support. It also said that prices for Office LTSC Professional Plus, Office LTSC Standard, Office LTSC Embedded, and the individual Office apps will be going up by up to 10 percent compared to the previous Office release.

Microsoft also confirmed plans for a consumer version of Office 2024, which will launch later this year. It will get the same five-year lifecycle, but there will be no price increases.

Microsoft did confirm that Office 2024 will support both Windows 10 and 11, and that there will be both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. A Mac version will also be released. More info on the consumer Office 2024 will be revealed in the coming months. However, the company did confirm it does plan to release another stand alone Office version after the 2024 edition.

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