Office 2010 Is Retiring: Get the Latest Version of Office

The popular Microsoft Office 2010 is reaching end of support next week. To avoid security risks, it's time to upgrade to a newer version of Office. The good news is that your nonprofit can get free Microsoft and Office 365 or donated Microsoft Office Standard 2019 from TechSoup. We also have affordable support services for email and data migration and a comprehensive set of training courses called the Microsoft Digital Skills Center for your staff and volunteers.

drawing of a man holding a laptop in front of a very large laptop with "update" on the screen and a wrench in front

What Does End of Support Mean?

Microsoft Office 2010 has been a popular version of the application over the last decade. The unfortunate news is that support for it ends on October 13, 2020. All of your Office 2010 apps will continue to function. However, using an unsupported version of any software exposes your computer to serious and potentially harmful security risks. Microsoft will no longer provide technical support, bug fixes, or security fixes for Office 2010 vulnerabilities that may be subsequently reported or discovered. This includes security updates that help protect your PC from harmful viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.

You'll no longer receive Office 2010 software updates from Microsoft Update.
You'll no longer receive phone or chat technical support.
No further updates to support content will be provided, and most online help content will be retired.
Another difficulty you may face is incompatibility with some of the newer programs and file formats.

If you're using Office 2010, it's probably a good time to upgrade your version of Microsoft Office.

Upgrade Options

The best way to protect yourself and your organization is to upgrade to a newer version of Office:

Cloud upgrade: Free and discounted subscriptions to Microsoft 365
On-premises upgrade: Office Standard 2019

Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 is an all-in-one cloud solution with a number of different licensing options (PDF) to fit your organization's needs. The best part about leveraging cloud-based applications is that you no longer have to worry about retirements, patches, and end of support. Cloud licenses are automatically updated with new features, new applications, and security updates. Many cloud subscriptions also include installed (or desktop) versions of the application, so you can have the same look and feel of the Office applications you are accustomed to using, but built with more robust features and benefits.

We recommend that all organizations look at Microsoft 365 Business Premium. This specific license includes cloud-based and installed versions of Office applications as well as Microsoft Teams for communications, cloud storage, Windows 10 upgrade rights, and device management solutions. It is designed for small and medium-sized organizations under 300 users. The best part is that eligible nonprofits can get up to 10 seats at no cost.

It includes all the features of Office applications, plus advanced security and device management features with apps like Microsoft Defender and Conditional Access.
You get desktop versions of Office apps: Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote (plus Access and Publisher for PC only).
It also features instant messaging and online meetings with Microsoft Teams.
One license covers Office apps on five mobile devices, five tablets, and five PCs or Macs per user.
You can easily add security to mobile devices, tablets, and computers that connect to your organizational data with an app called Intune.
You can control access to sensitive information using encryption to help keep data from being accidentally shared.
Each account comes with 1 TB of cloud storage for online file sharing and cloud backup on OneDrive for Business.
Eligible nonprofits can obtain Microsoft 365 Business Premium with up to 10 seats at no cost and then pay $5 per additional user per month.

To find out more, download the free e-book, Crash Course in Microsoft 365 Business for Nonprofits.

If you need more than 10 licenses, we recommend that you add either Microsoft 365 Business Standard, Microsoft 365 Business Premium, or Office 365 E3, based on the security needs of your organization. These licenses are available at a significant discount and will include installed versions of Office applications.

Microsoft Office Standard 2019

Microsoft Office Standard 2019 is the latest version of the on-premises version of the office suite and is a good option for you if you are not ready for the cloud version at this time. This version of Office includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, and Publisher. It is available for a $39 admin fee per license and is available in multiple languages.

For more information on the differences between Office 2019 and Office and Microsoft 365, check out our article Microsoft Office 2019 vs. Office 365.

Training Resources

Regardless of the version of Office you are using, TechSoup has powerful online courses for your organization that bring you great skill-building content from experts at Microsoft in the Microsoft Digital Skills Center.

The Skills Center features free beginner and advanced courses on Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and also very affordable courses on the new Microsoft Teams app and Power Bl, the powerful data visualization tool. Microsoft applications have long been TechSoup's most popular donated products. Now we bring you the knowledge on how to use them!

These courses are self-paced and feature contextualized learning with real use cases in bite-sized segments. Your staff and volunteers don't even need to have a TechSoup account to take the courses.

Some of the most popular course tracks are below (many are free and some are available in both English and Spanish!).

TechSoup Support Services

No matter what route you take and where you obtained these products, TechSoup has services and resources to help you set up and get the most out of these tools.

For Office 2019, TechSoup offers low-cost installation support.

The TechSoup Office and Microsoft 365 support services team can help you with

Email migration. It can be a complex process to migrate your on-premises email to Outlook and Exchange online. Office 365 has features that help nonprofits dramatically increase their productivity, collaboration, and security. See Joan Tharp's article on how we can help here.
Data migration: Data migration transfers your documents and data from either an on-premises or cloud datacenter to the Microsoft cloud. TechSoup offers experienced consulting and migration services to help you move to Office 365's SharePoint application, which lets you easily back up, share, and co-edit documents and files internally and externally.
Admin support: This service offers phone support for IT admins on configuration, security, email, and Azure — plus monthly reviews, IT planning, and training.

If your organization is still using Office 2010 — or even if not — we hope that you find all these resources for upgrading helpful!