If you’re a Microsoft 365 subscriber who relies on Microsoft Office apps, you may have a big decision ahead. Microsoft decided to remove Office support from Windows 10, in what seemingly amounts to another obvious attempt at making you upgrade to Windows 11.
That means either buying and installing Windows 11, if your PC supports it, or buying a brand-new computer that comes with Windows 11 out of the box. For many Office app users, the latter path might be the only way to make the most of Microsoft 365 come October. That’s because many people still use Windows 10 PCs that don’t support the upgrade to Windows 11.
The somewhat good news is that Office apps won’t stop working completely when Microsoft pulls the plug on October 14th. However, you can expect performance issues after that deadline.
October 14th, 2025, is the day when Microsoft will end support for Windows 10. That’s why Microsoft is urging Windows users to upgrade to Windows 11 in a blog post. The company reminds users that the Windows 11 upgrade is free “for a limited time only” while also addressing the big elephant in the room: Some users can’t upgrade because of hardware requirements.
It’s in this blog post that Microsoft drops the bad news that Microsoft 365 Office apps won’t be compatible with Windows 10 PCs:
Lastly, Microsoft 365 Apps will no longer be supported after October 14th, 2025, on Windows 10 devices. To use Microsoft 365 Applications on your device, you will need to upgrade to Windows 11. Listed below are the following steps to upgrade your device.
If your PC doesn’t support Windows 11, you only have one option if you want to keep getting Office 365 updates: buy a new computer.
Microsoft notes in the same paragraph that users can keep their Windows 10 computers. However, to keep getting security updates, they’ll have to enroll in the Windows 10 Extended Updates (ESU) Program, which is a paid program.
Microsoft 365 will continue to work on Windows 10 machines after the deadline. Here’s how Microsoft explains it in a support document:
Support for Windows 10 will end on October 14th, 2025. After that date, if you’re running Microsoft 365 on a Windows 10 device, the applications will continue functioning as before. However, we strongly recommend upgrading to Windows 11 to avoid performance and reliability issues over time.
In other words, you don’t have to upgrade to Windows 11 to keep using the Office apps. You just won’t get security updates or other fixes anymore.
The support document does say that people who don’t upgrade can always use Office on the web as an alternative to running Microsoft 365 on their PC.
As The Verge points out, this is all part of Microsoft’s larger push to have more people run Windows 11 than Windows 10. Microsoft made this clear a few days ago at CES, calling 2025 the year of the PC refresh.
“We believe that one of the most important pieces of technology people will look to refresh in 2025 isn’t the refrigerator, the television or their mobile phone. It will be their Windows 10 PC, and they will move forward with Windows 11,” Microsoft concluded that blog post.
I’d say there’s a lot of wishful thinking in that statement, though I’m a longtime Mac user who isn’t likely to switch to Windows anytime soon. While I’m on the subject, Microsoft 365 continues to work well on 10-year-old Macs that no longer support the latest version of macOS.
