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.
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.
If you're using Office 2010, it's probably a good time to upgrade your version of Microsoft Office.
The best way to protect yourself and your organization is to upgrade to a newer version of Office:
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.
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 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.
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!).
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
If your organization is still using Office 2010 — or even if not — we hope that you find all these resources for upgrading helpful!