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Office Home & Business 2024 vs Office LTSC Professional Plus 2024: Where Access Lives

10 min read Updated October 4, 2026 Microsoft Licensing Guides

Fix it now

Microsoft sells two perpetual Office 2024 editions to consumers and small businesses: Office Home 2024 and Office Home & Business 2024. There is no retail Office Professional 2024. Access appears only in the volume-licensed Office LTSC Professional Plus 2024, and Publisher is not in any 2024 edition at all.

  1. Buy Office Home & Business 2024 if you need Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook on one PC or Mac. That is the whole retail perpetual step above Office Home 2024.
  2. Buy Office LTSC Professional Plus 2024 through Commercial Licensing if somebody has to design or modify Access databases. Access is Windows-only and has no Mac version.
  3. Check the free Microsoft 365 Access Runtime first if your staff only run an Access application somebody else maintains. It installs without an Access licence.
  4. Buy Office Home 2024 rather than Home & Business if email is handled in a browser. It drops Outlook and costs less.
  5. Do not buy anything for Publisher. It is in no Office 2024 edition, subscribers lose access after 1 October 2026 and support for the perpetual version ends 13 October 2026.
  6. Do not buy Office again if you already pay for Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Business Premium. Those include the installed desktop applications.

Both Office 2024 and Office LTSC 2024 are supported until 9 October 2029. Office LTSC 2024 receives five years of mainstream support with no extended support afterwards.

If nobody in the building builds an Access database, Office Home & Business 2024 is the purchase and you can stop. Below is the exact application split, the channel difference that decides which SKU you can even buy, and what changes at the end of support.

Why it happens

The first thing to fix is the premise. Microsoft’s Office 2024 consumer line-up is Office Home 2024, with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, and Office Home & Business 2024, which adds Outlook. There is no Office Professional 2024 in that range. The Professional-tier perpetual product exists, but it lives in Commercial Licensing under a different name: Office LTSC Professional Plus 2024, sold alongside Office LTSC Standard 2024, Project 2024 and Visio LTSC 2024. If a quote offers you “Office Professional 2024” as a shelf product, ask which SKU it actually is.

Access is what the higher tier is for. Microsoft lists Office LTSC Professional Plus 2024 as containing Access, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word, with Skype for Business available as an optional install, and notes that Access is not available on macOS devices. The Office 2024 support FAQ describes Office LTSC 2024 as including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote and Access on Windows only. So the decision is genuinely binary: Access, or no Access.

Publisher is not a factor in this comparison any more, whatever an older article or an old quote says. Microsoft states plainly that Office LTSC 2024 does not include Microsoft Publisher, which is being retired. Microsoft 365 subscribers will not be able to access Publisher after 1 October 2026, and support for the perpetual version ends on 13 October 2026. Microsoft’s own guidance is to move that work into Word or PowerPoint and to convert existing Publisher files to PDF or Word before the cut-off.

One person builds databases and everyone else only uses them

You have this one if An Access application with a front end that staff open, click through and close, maintained by a single person.

  1. Licence the maintainer for Access – through Office LTSC Professional Plus 2024, or a standalone Access licence alongside Home & Business everywhere else.
  2. Install the Microsoft 365 Access Runtime on the users’ machines. Microsoft publishes it as a free download and it runs Access applications without an Access licence.
  3. The runtime opens and runs; it does not let a user change the design. If somebody needs to edit forms, queries or reports, they need the full application.

Somebody in the team is on a Mac

You have this one if A mixed estate, or one designer or director on macOS.

  1. Office Home & Business 2024 covers PC or Mac; the FAQ describes it as installable on one PC or one Mac.
  2. Access has no Mac version at all – Microsoft notes it is not available on macOS. A Mac user with a genuine Access requirement needs a Windows machine or a remote session to one.
  3. Do not solve this with a higher Office edition. There is no edition that puts Access on a Mac.

You want a perpetual licence but the SKU is only sold through volume licensing

You have this one if A small business that wants to buy once and does not have a Commercial Licensing agreement.

  1. Office LTSC Professional Plus 2024 is a Commercial Licensing product, not a retail box. Buying it means buying through a partner in the Cloud Solution Provider programme or another Commercial Licensing route.
  2. Since the Open License programme closed to new purchases on 1 January 2022, Microsoft has directed licence-only purchases to CSP partners, so this is a normal purchase rather than an obstacle.
  3. If the only reason for the higher tier is one Access user, price a standalone Access licence against a full Professional Plus one before committing.

Full reference

What is in each 2024 perpetual edition

Application Office Home 2024 Office Home & Business 2024 Office LTSC Professional Plus 2024
Word Yes Yes Yes
Excel Yes Yes Yes
PowerPoint Yes Yes Yes
OneNote Yes Yes Yes
Outlook No Yes Yes
Access No No Yes, Windows only
Publisher No No No – retired
Skype for Business No No Optional install
Platform One PC or one Mac One PC or one Mac Windows (Access excluded on macOS)
How it is bought Retail, one-time purchase Retail, one-time purchase Commercial Licensing
Hosted mailbox, OneDrive, Teams No No No
Feature updates after release No No No
End of support 9 October 2029 9 October 2029 9 October 2029

Perpetual means fixed, in both directions

Both the consumer Office 2024 editions and Office LTSC 2024 are supported until 9 October 2029, which Microsoft describes as five years of support from the 2024 release. Office LTSC 2024 receives five years of mainstream support with no extended support phase afterwards. That is the trade you are making: no new features arrive, nothing changes underneath your macros and templates, and there is a hard date at which security updates stop. Project 2024 and Visio LTSC 2024 sit on the same five-year mainstream term.

Outlook in these editions is a mail client, not a mailbox. None of the perpetual editions includes hosted email, cloud storage or Teams. If the business needs email hosting as well as installed applications, the comparison is not between these two SKUs but between a perpetual licence plus a mailbox service and a Microsoft 365 subscription that bundles both.

The Access Runtime is the saving most people miss

Microsoft publishes the Microsoft 365 Access Runtime as a free download. It lets a machine run an Access application – open the forms, run the queries, print the reports – without an Access licence on that machine. What it does not do is let the user change the design. In most Access estates that split is heavily one-sided: one or two people build and maintain, everybody else clicks. Licensing the builders and running the runtime everywhere else is usually the correct answer, and it is not a workaround.

Before assuming that split applies to you, ask who actually opens design view. People who create their own queries, edit reports or add fields are designers whatever their job title, and they need the full application. People who use a database that arrives finished are users, and the runtime covers them.

When perpetual is the wrong shape entirely

Two situations point away from these editions regardless of the Access question. If the machines will be replaced within about three years, a perpetual licence is competing with three years of subscription and rarely wins. And if you already pay for Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Business Premium, the installed desktop applications are already in that subscription – buying Office again is a straightforward duplicate purchase that we see more often than any other in this part of the range.

The other direction also holds. On a fixed-function machine that will still be doing the same job in seven years, with no need for cloud services, a perpetual licence bought once genuinely costs less over the life of the hardware, provided you accept a version that gains no features and has a published end of support you have to plan around.

Checking what is actually installed

Before ordering anything, confirm what is on the machines. The installed product name distinguishes a retail Office 2024 edition from a volume-licensed Office LTSC 2024 one, and it is the fastest way to find out whether somebody already has Access.

Run in an elevated PowerShell window on the client

Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\Configuration | Select-Object ProductReleaseIds, VersionToReport, UpdateChannel
Get-AppxPackage -Name *Access* | Select-Object Name, Version

When a licence is the actual fix

If somebody in your team designs or modifies Access databases, Office LTSC Professional Plus 2024 is the perpetual edition that includes Access, and no retail Office 2024 edition can be extended to reach it – there is no Office Professional 2024 on the shelf to buy. Arco supplies Office Home & Business 2024 and the Commercial Licensing Office LTSC editions, along with standalone Access, which is frequently the cheaper answer when one or two people build databases and everybody else only runs them. Tell us how many people open design view rather than how many open the database, and we will price the free Microsoft 365 Access Runtime into the plan for the rest rather than selling you licences those users will never use.

Questions people ask about this

Is there an Office Professional 2024?

Not as a retail perpetual product. Microsoft’s Office 2024 consumer range is Office Home 2024 and Office Home & Business 2024. The Professional-tier perpetual product is Office LTSC Professional Plus 2024, sold through Commercial Licensing alongside Office LTSC Standard 2024. If a quote says “Office Professional 2024”, ask which SKU it is before you order.

Which 2024 edition includes Access?

Office LTSC Professional Plus 2024. Microsoft lists it as containing Access, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word, with Skype for Business as an optional install, and notes that Access is not available on macOS devices. The Office 2024 FAQ describes Office LTSC 2024 as including Access on Windows only.

Does any Office 2024 edition include Publisher?

No. Microsoft states that Office LTSC 2024 does not include Publisher, which is being retired. Microsoft 365 subscribers lose access after 1 October 2026 and support for the perpetual version ends on 13 October 2026. Microsoft’s advice is to move the work into Word or PowerPoint and convert existing files to PDF or Word first.

Can staff run an Access database without an Access licence?

Yes, using the Microsoft 365 Access Runtime, which Microsoft publishes as a free download. It runs an Access application but does not allow design changes. Licence the people who build and maintain databases, and use the runtime for everyone who only uses them.

How long is Office 2024 supported?

Until 9 October 2029, which is the same date for the consumer Office 2024 editions and for Office LTSC 2024. Office LTSC 2024 gets five years of mainstream support and no extended support phase afterwards, so that date is genuinely the end rather than the start of a security-only period.

I already pay for Microsoft 365 Business Standard – do I need this?

No. Business Standard includes the installed desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook and Access on PC, on up to five desktop computers, five tablets and five mobile devices per user. Buying a perpetual Office licence on top of it is a duplicate purchase.

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