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Microsoft’s Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook apps have been bundled together under the Microsoft Office brand for more than three decades. But Microsoft is planning a rebrand in the coming months.

Goodbye Microsoft Office. Hello Microsoft 365.

The website currently known as Office.com

Microsoft says the change will hit Office.com in November, before rolling out to Office for Windows and the Office mobile apps for Android and iOS in January. You can expect new icons and “a new look” as well as a new name.

The Microsoft 365 name isn’t entirely new. Microsoft has been using that name for its subscription-based version of Office for the past few years (previously that subscription had been known as Office 365).

So does this move mean that Microsoft is moving to a subscription-only model? Not exactly… or at least not yet.

Microsoft says customers who would prefer to make a one-time purchase will still be able to buy Office 2021 or Office LTSC plans to get Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. But there’s no word on whether the next major release of Office will be available as a one-time purchase or if you’ll have to pay for a subscription.

via The Verge and Microsoft (FAQ)

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3 replies on “Microsoft Office is getting rebranded as Microsoft 365”

  1. Well they won’t be changing me away from my Office 2000😄 At age 80 with 60 years of computers behind me I reckon I must be off MS’s marketing radar by now

  2. The use of the name implies not just a move to subscription, but also, Microsoft 365 (as used up until now) includes more than just the Office applications, it has some computer management stuff in there too. You’ll have some control through Azure admin centers, but not as much as you used to, because you cannot be trusted with your own hardware because you have to assume that you or someone you know WILL engage in some kind of cyber attack, or what Microsoft thinks is a cyber attack, against it.
    Microsoft could likely move to a subscription-only model and get away with it, because they’ve managed to create a monopoly on programs that actually make that one little function or animation in every business’s spreadsheets and slide shows actually work.

    1. Of course, there is the more benign explanation that it also comes with a bunch of other things, like Teams, which aren’t EXACTLY something only an office would use, and a bunch of other random software and “apps” for your “apps” that I don’t understand the point of (like Yammer is completely redundant with Teams).
      But I doubt it, because whenever Microsoft does something totally benign, for some reason, I never hear about it.

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