Office Professional 2024 Review: What to Buy for Access Instead

Fix it now

Microsoft’s one-time-purchase range for this generation is two editions, Office Home 2024 and Office Home & Business 2024, and neither includes Access. There is no retail Professional tier in the 2024 wave and Publisher is not in Office 2024 at all, so the real question is which of the remaining routes to Access fits you.

1. Buy standalone Access 2024 if one or two people design databases on Windows and you want a one-off purchase rather than a subscription.
2. Buy Office LTSC Professional Plus 2024 through volume licensing if you need the whole suite plus Access on managed or offline devices.
3. Buy a Microsoft 365 plan if you would rather have Access alongside the rest of the apps on subscription: Apps for business, Business Standard, Business Premium and the enterprise plans all include it on Windows.
4. Skip a full licence for anyone who only runs somebody else’s database. The Access Runtime is a free download and its design interface is removed.
5. Skip all of it on a Mac. Microsoft states plainly that Access is available for PC only.
6. Do not buy anything for Publisher. It reaches end of life in October 2026 and is not part of Office 2024.

If a supplier offers you an ‘Office Professional 2024’ key, ask which SKU it actually is. Microsoft’s 2024 consumer line-up is Home and Home & Business, and Professional Plus 2024 is a volume-licensed product sold under an agreement.

If that answers it you can stop here. The rest covers what Access 2024 changed, the ceilings that decide how long a database will last, and what to do about Publisher files.

Why it happens

The tier this article is named after did not carry over. When Microsoft announced the 2024 perpetual release it listed two editions for consumers and small businesses: Office Home 2024 with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, and Office Home & Business 2024 which adds Outlook and commercial use rights. Microsoft’s own Office 2024 FAQ describes the same two editions and then places Access in Office LTSC 2024, the volume-licensed line, on Windows only. There is no shelf edition of Office called Professional in this wave.

Access itself is very much alive, and it is sold three ways. There is a standalone Access 2024, bought once; there is Office LTSC Professional Plus 2024, which is the volume suite with Access in it; and there is the subscription route, where Microsoft lists Access as part of Microsoft 365 Business Standard, Business Premium and the enterprise plans, as well as Microsoft 365 Apps for business. What is not on that list is the consumer subscriptions: Microsoft 365 Personal and Family do not carry Access.

The 2024 release of Access is a more substantial update than the Office wave around it. Microsoft’s own list includes a rebuilt SQL editor with syntax highlighting and auto-completion, ten new modern chart types, a Dataverse connector for moving data into the Power Platform, an Edge-based browser control for forms, digital signing of VBA projects, and Large Address Aware support that lifts the memory the application can use from 2 GB to 4 GB. The limits on open tables and connections went up as well. If your mental picture of Access is a decade old, it is out of date.

What has not changed is the ceiling that decides architecture. An Access database file is capped at 2 GB including all objects, and Microsoft documents a maximum of 255 concurrent users. The documented maximum and the comfortable maximum are different numbers: a shared .accdb on a file share degrades with network reliability rather than with row count, and the corruption stories people tell come from that arrangement rather than from the application. The supported answer for a database that matters is to split it – the forms, queries and reports stay in a front end on each PC, the tables move to SQL Server and are linked over ODBC.

Publisher deserves a plain answer rather than a hedge. It is not in Office 2024 or Office LTSC 2024, Microsoft has set its end of life for October 2026, and after 1 October 2026 Microsoft 365 subscribers will not be able to open or edit Publisher files in Publisher at all. Perpetual Publisher from Office 2021 keeps running after its support ends on 13 October 2026, but nothing new should be built in it. Migrate the files you care about to Word or PowerPoint while an application that can open them still exists.

Full reference

Every current route to Access, and who each one suits

That last row is where the money is. The runtime is a free download in 32-bit and 64-bit versions, and Microsoft describes it as having all design-related interface either removed or disabled. A department of ten with one developer needs one full Access licence, not ten.

The ceilings that decide the architecture

Read the concurrency figure as a documented ceiling rather than a design target. Long before 255 people, a shared file over a network is the constraint, and the fix is the same one it has been for twenty years: keep the interface in Access, move the tables to SQL Server, link them over ODBC. SQL Server Express costs nothing to start with, the 2 GB file limit disappears, and the people using the application see no difference.

What Access 2024 added

• A rebuilt SQL editor with syntax highlighting and auto-completion, and direct access to SQL view from query navigation.
• Modern charts, including area, radar, bubble, funnel and waterfall types.
• A Dataverse connector, which is the supported bridge into the Power Platform when a database outgrows the desktop.
• An Edge-based browser control for displaying web content on forms.
• Large Address Aware support, lifting addressable memory from 2 GB to 4 GB.
• Digital signing for VBA projects, and higher limits on open tables and connections.

Publisher: the dates that matter

Checks worth making before you order

• Search file shares and user profiles for .accdb and .mdb files and find out who owns them. Finance, quality and laboratory teams are where they usually turn up.
• Split the list into people who design databases and people who only run them. The second group needs the free runtime and no licence.
• Check whether the organisation already pays for a Microsoft 365 plan that includes Access on Windows. A lot of Access licences are bought by tenants that already had it.
• If the database is going to grow, plan the SQL Server split now. Doing it while the application is small is a day’s work; doing it after it has become critical is a project.
• Be careful with cheap ‘Professional Plus 2024’ keys. That is a volume SKU, sold under an agreement, and a retail key card for it is a reason to ask questions.

Questions people ask about this