Microsoft's classic boxed Office 2024: No subscription, no new features

Microsoft has released a new, classic "boxed" version of the Office 2024 suite. Unlike the Microsoft 365 variant, it does not require a subscription. However, the boxed Office does not receive new features, especially in the LTSC variant.

The naming of Office variants can be very confusing, and for the first few years, many people thought that the subscription version (called "streamed") Office 365 was browser-only, while the classic applications were still sold with a lifetime license. With the advent of Office 2016, the default method of purchasing Office became a subscription model, but it provides the same classic applications as the "lifetime" version.

Purchasing the non-subscription version has become increasingly difficult and costly since then.

Office in the non-subscription version receives only five years of updates today and, importantly, no guarantee of connectivity with Microsoft's cloud services for the entire support period. It also does not include AI tools or expanded OneDrive disk capacity.

Although it requires only a one-time payment for consumers, it may prove insufficiently flexible precisely because of the lack of cloud collaboration. It will also receive very few new features—what is available at the start will remain roughly unchanged until the support period ends in 2030.

An extreme case is the LTSC variant, available under volume licensing for businesses and institutions. Its purchase is even more complicated than the regular lifetime license version, and here we won't see any changes. LTSC will be supplied only with security updates. However, these will be delivered via the exact Click-to-Run application streaming mechanism as subscription versions.

The "boxed" Office is currently created based on snapshots of the subscription variant. Approximately every three years, Microsoft "freezes" a set of continuously developed features and sells it as a classic version that does not require a subscription or network access (except for activation). Office has now been created in a "rolling release" mode without new significant releases. The main version number has been 16.0 for nearly a decade, and new features are added gradually with constant intensity.

What are the new features in the 2024 version? In Access, these include integration with Teams and Edge and macro signing. Excel has received 14 new text and table functions and the ability to insert images into cells using the =IMAGE function. PowerPoint includes features for creating seminar presentations with captioning and exporting to video formats.

All applications support new accessibility features, a new interface, and compatibility with the OpenDocument 1.4 format. This last one is a peculiar course correction. A suite once known for its lack of interoperability, then for open but extremely complex formats (DOCX), and subsequently for faulty compatibility (ODF 1.1) today offers compatibility with an open format... in an unreleased version.

Office 2024 includes Publisher, though it will lose support after two years and will no longer be installed. It's also pleasing to see Outlook's presence in the classic version. Despite vigorous promotion of the "new Outlook version," built from scratch with cloud support, in the business version, Microsoft shares the opinion of thousands of users: the new Outlook is far from ready to replace its predecessor. Office 2024 will, therefore, include the classic Outlook. However, there is no certainty that it will not quickly lose its ability to connect to Microsoft's consumer email services.

The "lifetime" version of Office can now only be recommended to individuals who prioritise not needing network connectivity and who do not use any of Microsoft's cloud services, including email and OneDrive. In all other cases, the subscription version makes much more sense. Provided, of course, that we need Office at all.