Office 2007 is just one of Microsoft’s 2007 product line that is reaching end-of-life.
And, unless you’re an IT tech, it’s probably the product with which you are most familiar. After all it brought us The Ribbon.
Remember when it came out, how Microsoft’s menu banner or, The Ribbon, was the first update to their Office interface in more than ten years? Most of us hated it. Learning The Ribbon was like starting all over again in Office. We all complained about how the commands we used most frequently in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint were suddenly hidden under menu headings that made no sense. There was a lot of frustration and whining from users. Yet, it survived and so did we. For some of us, Office 2007 is the only suite of Microsoft Apps we’ve ever used.
On October 10, 2017, Office 2007, as well as several 2007 servers, will reach their end-of-life. And, by October 31, Outlook 2007 connectivity to Office 365 will be lost. The entire list of Microsoft 2007 products that have, or will reach their end-of-life this year is available on Microsoft’s website.
What that means to you
Soon, Microsoft will no longer support any 2007 products, except for Communications Server 2007, which will lose support in early January 2018. When products are no longer supported by Microsoft there will be:
- no updates
- no security patches
- no technical support
In short, you’ll be vulnerable to critical system failures and hackers.
What you should do
You should have a conversation with your IT Services provider as soon as possible. For security reasons alone, it’s important to migrate to a newer version of these products right away. Microsoft certified partner can help you put together a plan for upgrading your organization to a newer, more reliable, and fully support product as quickly as possible.