Microsoft has released today the first preview versions of Office Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) for Windows and Office 2021 for Mac. For commercial customers, Office LTSC for Windows will offer five years of support and the same Office apps as Office 2019 with “faster performance and expanded accessibility,” the Microsoft 365 team said today.
It’s important to note that Office LTSC is different from the upcoming Office 2021 for Windows for consumers. “The next perpetual version of Office for commercial customers is built specifically for organizations running regulated devices that cannot accept feature updates for years at a time, process control devices that are not connected to the internet in manufacturing facilities, and specialty systems that must stay locked in time and require a long-term servicing channel,” the team explained.
For commercial customers, the first preview of Office LTSC will be installed using the Click-to-Run installation technology instead of Windows Installer (MSI). Installation instructions for this first commercial preview can be found on this page.
As Office 2021 for Mac, the next perpetual version of the productivity suite will also bring performance improvements to the Mac versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well as new accessibility features. However, this version of Office won’t have all the features available with the Microsoft 365 version of Office for Mac, which gets updated every month.
Installation instructions for the Office 2021 for Mac preview can be found on this page. “This is the first in a series of preview announcements for the on-premises wave, and in the coming months we’ll also announce commercial previews for SharePoint and Project Server,” Microsoft said today.
