Microsoft has just published a first preview of its Office 2024 office suite, in its LTSC version intended for businesses and professionals. A good sign which announces the imminent arrival of the general public version.
Last month, the Redmond firm officially confirmed the existence and upcoming release of a new standalone version of Microsoft Office in 2024. As we spoke to you at length in this article, the company will therefore offer a formula without subscription for its office suite, available in two distinct versions, Office 2024 for individuals and Office LTSC 2024 for businesses. Unlike Office 365, renamed Microsoft 365 for some time now, it will be possible to purchase a perpetual (lifetime) license for Office 2024 and to use all of the applications in the office suite without a permanent connection to the Internet, which is necessary for many companies with specific security and stability constraints.
Office 2024 LTSC: a test version for professionals
In its initial announcement, Microsoft announced the publication of a first preview of the 2024 vintage of Office for the month of April, and this promise was kept. In a blog post published on April 18, 2024, the company has just announced the availability of a preview version of Office LTSC 2024, which can now be downloaded, installed and tested for free. Be careful however, this LTSC version, for Long Term Servicing Channel, is primarily aimed at professional users, and its installation is not as easy as downloading an .exe or .msi file to run on your computer. As indicated the preview overview And the page dedicated to its installation, the procedure requires using the Office Deployment tool, a utility to be run on the command line, in conjunction with a settings XML file to write yourself. A manipulation not really within the reach of the average user and rather reserved for IT administrators.
However, the publication of this first preview of Office LTSC 2024 is a good sign, because it shows that Microsoft is currently meeting the deadlines announced for the development of the next version of its flagship Office suite. In addition, this availability will certainly allow experienced users and knowledgeable tinkerers to start dissecting the new version of Office, in order to discover new functions and improvements in advance. Finally, there is no doubt that some clever people will be happy to recover the binary and executable files of this preview and publish them on pirate sites and other file sharing networks. So be careful if you are fond of this kind of sulphurous addresses and you see software entitled “Microsoft Office 2024” offered for download, these will probably be illegal copies of the LTSC pre-version, which is not at all intended for individuals, as Microsoft clearly points out in the various notes on its subject.