Official support for Office 2004 for Mac will end in October of this year, Microsoft said today. The company's Mac BU said that it plans to put its full focus on Office 2008, as well as the next version of Office for the Mac.

"In line with Microsoft's standard Support Lifecycle policy, Office 2004 for Mac Mainstream Support will be retired October 13, 2009," Microsoft said in a statement to Macworld. "The MacBU is continuing to work on updates for Office 2008 for Mac and is hard at work on the next version of Office for Mac." Because Microsoft has a standard policy of retiring its software approximately five years and three months after introduction, Office 2008 has until April of 2013 before it heads to the grave.

Indeed, Office 2004 has been around for a while (well, since July of 2004), though there are still a number of Mac users who are stuck on that version of the software. Come October, however, they'll either have to keep truckin' without any further security or compatibility updates, or be forced to upgrade. I must admit—if I wasn't forced to upgrade a couple of months ago in order to edit some Ars-related documents, I would still be one of those users myself. Now's a better time than ever to check out that new Office 2008 trial, huh?

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