Office LTSC 2024 Explained: What LTSC Means, LTSC vs Retail Office 2024 and Support Dates (2026)

Reviewed 9 November 2026 by Jen, Technical Support Advisor at Nerdused.

Office LTSC 2024 is the volume-licence release of Office 2024, sold as Office LTSC Professional Plus 2024 and Office LTSC Standard 2024. It is activated with a product key rather than a Microsoft account, and Microsoft supports it until 9 October 2029.

"LTSC" stands for Long-Term Servicing Channel: five years of security and stability fixes, but no new features. It is the edition behind the Office Professional Plus 2024 and Office Standard 2024 keys we sell. This guide explains how Office 2024 LTSC differs from retail Office 2024 and from Microsoft 365, who can buy it, and what the end of Office LTSC 2021 support means for you.

Office LTSC 2024 at a glance

Released	18 September 2024 (Microsoft lifecycle start date)
Support ends	9 October 2029: five years of Mainstream Support, no Extended Support phase
Windows suites	Office LTSC Professional Plus 2024, Office LTSC Standard 2024; Project Professional/Standard 2024 and Visio LTSC Professional/Standard 2024 are sold separately
Apps (Professional Plus)	Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access; Skype for Business optional at setup
Apps (Standard)	Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote
Not included	Publisher (dropped from every 2024 edition), Teams (separate free download), Copilot and OneDrive storage (Microsoft 365 only)
Activation	Multiple Activation Key (MAK): activated online or by phone, once per PC. Nerdused keys are MAK keys.
Runs on	Windows 11, Windows 11 LTSC 2024, Windows 10 LTSC 2019/2021, Windows Server 2022 and 2025; Windows 11 is the minimum on Arm PCs
Minimum hardware	1.1 GHz two-core processor, 4 GB RAM, 4 GB disk space, 1280 × 768 display
Nerdused price	Office Professional Plus 2024 from $29.99 (1, 3 or 5 PCs); Office Standard 2024 from $29.99

Sources: Microsoft's Office LTSC 2024 overview and lifecycle page, checked 9 November 2026.

What "LTSC" means in Office LTSC 2024

Microsoft now ships Office two ways. Microsoft 365 Apps is a subscription that is updated every month with new features. The Long-Term Servicing Channel is the opposite: a fixed release whose feature set is frozen on the day it ships. Microsoft describes Office LTSC 2024 as "designed for use in highly regulated or restricted environments that can't take feature updates", such as factory-floor PCs, medical devices, air-gapped networks or any organisation that validates software once and does not want it changing underneath them.

In practice the LTSC label matters less than it sounds for a single user. The apps are the same version 16.0 Word, Excel and Outlook as retail Office 2024, with the same ribbon, file formats and add-in support; they simply update on their own LTSC channel. What changes is how you license and activate them.

Office 2024 LTSC vs retail Office 2024: the real differences

Retail Office 2024 comes as Office Home 2024 and Office Home & Business 2024; Office 2024 LTSC comes as Professional Plus and Standard. The practical differences:

• Activation. Retail Office is redeemed into a Microsoft account and signed in on the PC. LTSC is activated with a 25-character MAK key typed into File → Account → Activate Product, or by phone, with no account needed.
• Apps. Only Office LTSC Professional Plus 2024 includes Access. No retail 2024 edition does, and Home drops Outlook as well.
• Commercial use. Both LTSC suites are licensed for business use. Among the retail editions only Home & Business is.
• Devices. A retail key covers one machine. The LTSC keys we sell come in 1, 3 and 5-PC versions; one key activates each PC up to its count.
• Platform. Office LTSC Professional Plus 2024 is Windows only. Office LTSC Standard for Mac 2024 exists for volume customers, but Access is not available on macOS in any edition; see our Office for Mac collection.

The full four-way comparison, including the Home editions, is in our Office 2024 editions guide.

Office LTSC 2024 vs Microsoft 365 Apps

Microsoft's own advice is blunt: if you already run Microsoft 365 Apps, you do not need Office LTSC 2024. The subscription gets Copilot, real-time co-authoring, 1 TB of OneDrive per user and a new feature set every month. LTSC gets none of that. What LTSC gives you in return is a one-time price, no renewal, no sign-in and a feature set that will still be identical in 2029. For a sole trader, a small office or a home user who wants Word and Excel to simply work, that trade is usually worth it; our lifetime licence vs Microsoft 365 cost comparison puts numbers on it over one, three and five years.

Who can buy Office LTSC 2024, and what kind of key is it?

Microsoft makes Office LTSC 2024 "available to organizations through volume licensing agreements", so you cannot buy it from the Microsoft Store. A Nerdused key is a genuine Microsoft MAK product key for the Office LTSC 2024 build, delivered by email in about a minute, with the Microsoft Office Deployment Tool installer supplied on our Office Professional Plus 2024 download and activation guide. The installer pulls the Office files from Microsoft's own servers, so there is no third-party package to trust. One key activates the number of PCs you bought.

What is new in Office LTSC 2024 compared with Office LTSC 2021

Microsoft's changelog for the 2024 release is short, which is the point of a servicing channel. The additions and removals it lists are:

• OpenDocument files save in the ODF 1.4 format by default.
• More Office Add-ins JavaScript APIs (Excel up to 1.17, Outlook up to 1.14), so modern add-ins that needed Microsoft 365 now run on LTSC.
• Publisher is gone from every 2024 edition; Microsoft retired the app in October 2026. Office Professional Plus 2021 is the last perpetual suite that includes it.
• Publish to Power BI has been removed from Excel.
• ActiveX controls are disabled by default (admins can turn them back on).

Add-ins and macros written for Office 2019 or Office LTSC 2021 are "likely to work" with minimal testing, according to Microsoft, because the major version number has not changed.

Office LTSC 2021 and Microsoft Office LTSC Professional Plus 2021: support ended 13 October 2026

Office LTSC 2021, including Microsoft Office LTSC Professional Plus 2021 and Standard 2021, left Microsoft support on 13 October 2026. The apps keep working, but no further security patches are issued. If you are still on either, the lowest-cost route to a supported suite is an Office Professional Plus 2024 key: you keep Access and Outlook, gain three more years of updates, and your .docx, .xlsx and .accdb files open unchanged. Remove Office 2021 first (Click-to-Run allows one Office generation per PC), then run the 2024 installer. The only reason to stay on 2021 is Publisher. Our Office 2021 end-of-life guide covers what stops and what still works.

Office LTSC 2024 FAQs

Is Office LTSC 2024 the same as Office 2024?

Yes, in everything you can see. Office LTSC 2024 is the volume-licence release of Office 2024; the apps, version and support date (9 October 2029) are the same as the retail Home and Home & Business editions. The differences are activation (key instead of account), commercial-use rights, the inclusion of Access in Professional Plus, and how many PCs one key covers.

Is Office LTSC 2024 a one-time purchase?

Yes. You pay once for the key and there is no renewal. Microsoft issues security updates until 9 October 2029, and the apps keep working after that date.

Does Office LTSC 2024 need an internet connection to activate?

Your key is a MAK, so it activates over the internet once per PC, or by phone if online activation fails. No server on your network is involved, and after activation the apps work offline.

Can I install Office LTSC 2024 next to Microsoft 365 or Office 2021?

No. Click-to-Run allows one Office generation per PC, so remove Microsoft 365 Apps or Office 2021 first, then run the 2024 installer. Your documents and Outlook data files are not affected by the uninstall.

Does Office LTSC 2024 run on Windows 10?

Microsoft lists only the Windows 10 LTSC 2019 and LTSC 2021 releases as supported platforms for Office LTSC 2024, alongside Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022/2025. The installer does run on a current Windows 10 build, but Windows 10 itself has been out of support since 14 October 2025, so a Windows 11 Pro upgrade is the sensible pairing.

What is the difference between Office LTSC Professional Plus 2024 and Office LTSC Standard 2024?

Access. Professional Plus has it, Standard does not; Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote are identical. If you do not use a desktop database, Office Standard 2024 on 3 or 5 PCs is the cheaper way to cover an office.