Unless Microsoft had not I already did very While it clearly wants you to upgrade your Windows 10 PC this year, the company has announced that it will stop supporting Office apps on the older operating system in October.
in a blog postMicrosoft confirmed that to continue using the Microsoft 365 suite on your machine, “you will need to upgrade to Windows 11” by October 14, the same day it will also drop support for Windows 10. And in many cases, upgrade to Windows 11 will also require updating your machine.
This is because Windows 11 has some pretty important features. hardware requirements that millions of older machines cannot meet, and Microsoft has already confirmed that it has no intention of changing those prerequisites.
He’s so confident in the move that Yusef Mehdi, Microsoft’s chief marketing officer, declared 2025 as the “year of the Windows 11 PC upgrade.”
“Whether your current PC needs an upgrade or 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 postearlier this month.
It’s fair to say that some of the machines that won’t meet those minimum hardware requirements could be close to 10 years old and could probably do with an upgrade anyway. But it is also true that the large number of Windows 10 machines that exist (data published by statistics counter in December 2024 suggests that there are almost twice as many PCs running Windows 10 as there are Windows 11, meaning it’s unlikely to change them all before support ends.
There’s good news for any Windows 10 user who wants to keep and continue using their Office apps. Like the operating system itself, Microsoft 365 won’t fall off a cliff and stop working on October 14. has confirmed that Office apps “will continue to work as before,” but that there could be “performance and reliability issues over time” as security and feature updates stop arriving.
If this is your tactic, it might be worth considering. Microsoft extended security updatesoffered to consumers for the first time. Users can pay $30 to keep their PC secure with updates for one year, while businesses can protect their machines for up to three. Of course, it won’t prevent your apps from becoming obsolete, but at least it will help you keep the unpleasant stuff away while you plan your next move.