Microsoft has announced that it has ended support for Microsoft Office 2010 and 2016 for Mac. This means that neither product will receive technical support, bug fixes, or security updates.
The last patch was issued on Tuesday October 13th and there will be no further patches issued.
You can still use both MS Office 2010 and 2016 on your Mac but they will both become increasingly unstable with new updates to macOS and will also be vulnerable to security holes and exploits.
You’ll still be able to connect both versions of Microsoft Office for Mac to Office 365 but there won’t be any support in the event of sync failures or connection problems.
Microsoft clarified this important point for many Mac users stating:
The requirements for connecting to Office 365 services have also changed—and customers will now need Microsoft 365 Apps, Office 2019, or Office 2016 to connect to Office 365 services like Exchange Online and SharePoint Online. While we will not take any active measures to block legacy versions of the Office client from connecting, these older clients will fall out of step with the service enhancements and may present performance and/or reliability issues over time.
The move to end support for Office for Mac 2010 and 2106 is part of Microsoft’s plans to move all of Microsoft Office to a subscription only payment model.
The news comes in the same week that Microsoft released a new version of Outlook For Mac which does not support IMAP or iCloud mail protocols.
Not sure how others feel but I would never move to an online only service for my important documents. If MS stops producing a desktop version of their suite, I’ll be relying on other products that fill the gap.
It’s so like the big giant to try to block MAC users from having updates. They have never seen themselves as a support for the “God forbid” snob Mac users. I have to rely on my own Mac security which is by far surpassed in reliability to any Windows security, and I’m not about to start using an Office 365 subscription just to have access to online documents. With these tech giants looking at everything they can get their hands on, I would never trust Microsoft to keep my documents safe. I’m infuriated by their high hatted approach. So be it!