Unless Microsoft hadn’t already made it very clear that it wants you to upgrade your Windows 10 PC this year, the company has announced it will stop supporting Office apps on the older OS come October.
In a blog post, Microsoft confirmed that to continue using the Microsoft 365 suite of apps on your machine, you will “need to upgrade to Windows 11” by October 14—the same day that support will also cease for Windows 10. And in many cases, upgrading to Windows 11 will require upgrading your machine too.
That’s because Windows 11 has some pretty hefty hardware requirements that millions of older machines can’t meet, and Microsoft has already confirmed it has no intention of budging those prerequisites.
It’s so confident in the move that Yusef Mehdi, Microsoft’s chief marketing officer declared 2025 the “year of the Windows 11 PC refresh.”
“Whether the current PC needs a refresh, or it has security vulnerabilities that require the latest hardware-backed protection, now is the time to move forward with a new Windows 11 PC,” he wrote in another blog post, earlier this month.
It’s fair to say that some of the machines that won’t reach those minimum hardware requirements could be approaching 10 years old, and could probably do with an upgrade anyway. But it’s also true that the sheer number of Windows 10 machines out there—data published by Statcounter in December 2024 suggests there are almost double the number of PCs running Windows 10 than Windows 11—means getting them all switched over before support ends is unlikely.
There is some good news for any Windows 10 users hoping to cling on and still use their Office apps. Just like the operating system itself, Microsoft 365 won’t fall off a cliff and stop working come October 14. Microsoft has confirmed that Office apps “will continue to function as before,” but that there could be “performance and reliability issues over time” as security and feature updates stop coming through.
If this is your tactic, it might be worth considering Microsoft’s Extended Security Updates, which are being offered to consumers for the first time. Users can pay $30 to keep their PC secure with updates for a year, while businesses can protect their machines for up to three. It won’t stop your apps from falling out of date, of course, but will at least help to keep the nasties out while you plot your next move.