Still Running Microsoft Office 2010? It’s Time to Upgrade Your Features — and Security — with Microsoft 365

Since the release of Microsoft  365, Microsoft has been recommending that Microsoft office users (on any prior version of Office) migrate, to that platform. However, the urgency to upgrade increased substantially the day support for Office 2010 ended.

What Does End of Support Mean?

Microsoft Office 2010, like almost all Microsoft products, had a support lifecycle during which the company provided new features, security fixes and support. This lifecycle lasted for 10 years from the date of the product’s initial release.

When Office 2010 reached its end of support, Microsoft stopped providing:

• Technical support for problems that occur.
• Bug fixes for issues that are discovered and that may impact the stability and usability of the server.
• Security patches for vulnerabilities that are discovered and that may make the server vulnerable to security breaches.
• Time zone updates.

Cybercriminals have been waiting for the Office 2010 end of life, salivating over the opportunity to target computer users no longer receiving the updates that help protect their PCs from harmful viruses, spyware and other malicious software.

There is no current figure for how many organizations still use Office 2010 and its apps, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint. At one point, the user base was estimated to be nearly one billion. Certainly, a large percentage may have transitioned to Office 2016 or Office 2019 and from there to Microsoft 365. (In April 2020, Microsoft announced that the Microsoft 365 user base had reached 258 Million — with 75 Million users having adopted Microsoft Teams.)

However, that still leaves a big gap. If even a quarter of the original Office 2010 user base is still running any of these apps after support ended for Office 2010 on October 13, 250 Million users may be operating with no security.

The longer this condition continues, the greater the exposure to serious and potentially harmful security risks for users and the organization as a whole. As a result, IT Solutions has developed a migration plan to help companies and their workers transition to the latest version of Microsoft 365. Although we recommend and support all versions of 365 for our clients, we have found that Office 365 ProPlus tends to be an excellent match for many companies. Not only does it work on every device, including mobile devices, but it also offers features only dreamed of in 2010.

Following are a few reasons we recommend this version of Office.

• Microsoft 365 ProPlus includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, Access, Publisher and Skype for Business.
• Microsoft 365 ProPlus is the most collaborative, secure version of Office, ever, with new features such as Focused Inbox and Editor.
• Its cloud-based update delivery model means new features and patches are released all the time. As of our last count, Microsoft 365 ProPlus had received more than 120 new features and capabilities that were not in Office 2016.

As a Tier 1 Microsoft Office 365 Cloud Solution Provider and a Gold Certified Partner, IT Solutions has the experience and product knowledge business leaders need for optimal management of Microsoft 365 environments. In addition to setting up new Microsoft 365 users and assisting with integration initiatives, we also provide migration service from Microsoft Exchange and Gmail.

We understand that Office 2010 still has its advocates. It came in a whopping eight versions, each of which targeted a different demographic and offered a correlated feature set. So, if we haven’t yet persuaded you to make the switch now, consider this. As of October 13 2020, licensed users also lost their ability to download and install Office 2010 from the Microsoft web site. If a firm’s server crashes, or user’s installations become corrupt, the company may be forced to perform a migration and upgrade without any planning. That’s disruptive to productivity and never a preferred approach.

Instead, let’s discuss a plan for migration.