From the launch of macOS Mojave, Office 365 and Office 2019 for Mac will support macOS 10.14, 10.13, and 10.12… the last three versions of the operating system. Microsoft says it is doing this to ensure the best user experience. Remember, cutting off support does not mean Office will stop working on older macOS builds. It does, however, mean that those older versions won’t have a support experience. That means no new features and no security update. The company explains how it will handle support for future macOS release. Needless to say, the company will continue to only support whatever the three newest builds are: “Moving forward, as new major versions of macOS are made generally available, Microsoft would drop support for the oldest version and support the newest and previous two versions of macOS. For example, when the next version of macOS is released, Office for Mac would support the newest version as well as 10.14 and 10.13 while macOS 10.12 would no longer be supported.”
— Erik Schwiebert (@Schwieb) September 4, 2018 As you may have noticed, the support window has been updated for Office 2019 and Office 365 for Mac. So, what about Office 2016? Well, Microsoft says users with the older productivity suite will not see their system requirements change.
Promised Change
We wrote last month that Microsoft had said it would limit Office 2019 updates on Mac. Taking to its Office blog, the company urged users to update to MacOS version 10.12 or later: “As of the Office 365 for Mac September 2018 update, macOS 10.12 or later is required to update to the new version of the Office client apps for Mac and receive new feature updates.”