Microsoft regularly pushes out updates to Microsoft 365 Apps including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, OneNote, Visio, and more. These updates are governed by Microsoft's Modern Lifecycle Policy, which means that a product will remain supported as long as a customer stays current as per the product's servicing and system requirements and has a license to use said software. Under this policy, Microsoft 365 Apps are about to run out of support on three older operating systems in June 2023.
Microsoft has published an advisory stating that Microsoft 365 Apps will become completely unsupported on Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows Server 2008 R2 from January 10, 2023.
Although Microsoft 365 Apps on the aforementioned operating systems were already unsupported, they still received security updates under the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program that some customers were paying for. This program ends for the three operating systems mentioned above on January 10, 2023, which is why support for Microsoft 365 Apps on them will be fully retired on the same date too. Apart from losing access to security updates, new installations will be blocked as well.
As expected, the only workaround involves updating to a newer and supported operating system immediately. Microsoft has encouraged customers to have a look at this support matrix to figure out which OS would best suit their support and compatibility needs.
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