Microsoft reminder: Support for Office 2016 and 2019 ends next year

Microsoft is reminding customers that support for its Office 2016 and Office 2019 suites and related productivity servers will end on Oct. 14, 2025. 

Microsoft issued the reminder this week that applications in the two Office suites — including versions of Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word, and others — will no longer receive security fixes, bug fixes, and technical updates after the support date passes. 

That’s also true for Exchange Server 2016 and 2019, as well as Skype for Business Server 2015 and 2019, Microsoft said in a blog post Monday (Oct. 14, 2025 also happens to be the same date for Windows 10 support to end.)

Using these products after the end of support  leaves  business users vulnerable to “potential security threats, productivity losses, and compliance issues,” said Mariana Prudencio, senior product marketing manager at Microsoft. 

Not surprisingly, the company is pushing customers to cloud-based options. Microsoft recommends customers update to cloud-hosted versions of the software such as Microsoft 365 E3. Another option for Office 2016 and 2019 users is the Office Long-Term Servicing Channel, Microsoft said, which extends support into 2026.

Those that want to continue running Exchange Server on-premises are advised to prepare to migrate to the upcoming Exchange Server slated to arrive in 2025 prior to the end of support date. Microsoft recommends customers move to Exchange Server 2019 to ease this transition.

Businesses should be particularly wary of the looming end of support for Exchange servers, said Jack Gold, founder and principal analyst at J. Gold Associates. 

A lack of security updates would expose them to “a lot of risk,” he said, “since a large portion of threats are targeted against email and email servers, and stolen identities pose a big risk here.” Businesses that continue to run Exchange on-prem tend to be smaller, so it might be more difficult or costly for them to migrate, said Gold. 

“The larger companies have mostly migrated to online already,” he said.

End of support for the Office suites, on the other hand, is less problematic, said Gold, particularly for small business users. While security updates are important, smaller firms tend to run third-party antivirus and other security tools that can mitigate many potential threats. 

Some smaller business will look to migrate to Microsoft’s cloud-based Office apps, but many will opt to remain on the outdated versions past the support date and update the software in line with upgrades of other equipment. 

“And it is still possible to buy a standalone Office suite if you’re not in need of back-end servers, as many smaller businesses don’t require, so you can update that way,” said Gold.