Microsoft is cutting off support for Office 2021 in roughly four months.
On October 13, 2026, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and the rest of the Office 2021 suite officially lose Microsoft support. The company says apps "may continue to function" after that date but warns of "serious and potentially harmful security risks." Users who want to stay on a perpetual license have an exit ramp: Office 2024 offers a one-time purchase with permanent access to the core apps, no subscription required. Everyone else gets nudged toward Microsoft 365, which charges a recurring fee.
The pressure is real but not urgent for most people. Office 2010 and Office 2013 still technically run on modern Windows machines years past their own end-of-support dates, so the sky is unlikely to fall on October 14. The more meaningful risk is for businesses running Office 2021 on internet-connected machines without active patch management — unpatched productivity software is a well-documented entry point for malware.
Microsoft has run this playbook before with every perpetual Office release, and the cadence is getting shorter. The real goal, as ever, is moving users onto a subscription that generates predictable recurring revenue — the security warnings are accurate, but they also happen to serve that purpose neatly.