Microsoft releases Office LTSC 2024 for commercial and government customers

Microsoft has made the Office LTSC 2024 release generally available as of September 16 for commercial and government volume customers. This release of Office is essentially a frozen-in-time version of Microsoft’s productivity suite for customers with specific scenarios that don’t require regular feature updates or cloud services.

In a blog post, Microsoft says Office LTSC 2024 includes a subset of features added to Microsoft 365 Apps over the past three years, such as dynamic charts and new array functions in Excel, enhancements to search and meeting creation in Outlook, and improved performance, security, and accessibility.

The company said that Office LTSC 2024 will be supported for five years under the Fixed Lifecycle Policy and can be deployed alongside Microsoft 365 Apps using a standard set of tools for organizations that need to manage hybrid environments.

Microsoft has published a series of resources to help customers get up and running with the new release, including a deployment guide and a plan comparison page that details the differences between Office LTSC 2024 and Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise.

In addition to Office LTSC 2024, Microsoft is releasing new versions of Project LTSC and Visio LTSC for commercial and government customers today. The company says these new LTSC releases will be generally available to all customers on October 1.

While the release of Office LTSC 2024 doesn’t come as a huge surprise — the company previewed the software earlier this year — it’s worth noting that Microsoft has been urging customers to migrate to its cloud-based Microsoft 365 and Microsoft 365 Apps subscription offerings for years.

However, more than a few customers have yet to leap into a cloud subscription, and for their sake, Microsoft is still willing to churn out new versions of Office LTSC. The company said earlier this year that it’s working on Office LTSC releases for the next decade.