104 PCWorld JANUARY 2020FEATURE MICROSOFT ENDS SUPPORT FOR OFFICE 2010
Word or another Office program:
That’s right: Microsoft Office 2010 support
ends on October 13, 2020 (go.pcworld.com/
sped). This means no more technical support, no
more patches, and no more security updates.
The good news is you have a lot of
options, and most are reasonably priced. The
bad news is that each new version gets closer
and closer to subscription-based products,
which means, eventually, subscriptions will be
the only option available.
We’ll walk you through those options so
you can decide what to do.WHAT HAPPENS IF I STAY
WITH OFFICE 2010?
If you are dead-set on keeping Office 2010, youO
ffice 2010 users, we know you’re
out there. As recently as 2017,
according to a survey published
by IT marketplace Spiceworks
(go.pcworld.com/spwk), Office 2010 was
being used in 83 percent of the companies
surveyed. Most companies seemed to have a
mix of Office versions active, with Office 2007
the next most prevalent, at 68 percent.
While time and Microsoft’s relentless
efforts to get users to switch to Office 365
subscriptions have surely shifted the data
somewhat in the past two years, it’s very
likely that Office 2010 is still popular. And if
you’re one of those Office 2010 users, you
might have seen the screen at the top of the
next page pop up recently as you launched