Using Office Home & Students? Microsoft may soon rename it to just "Office Home"

Microsoft, once again, seems to have a thing for renaming or rebranding its services for whatever reason. This time, the Redmond company seems to be moving on its Office Home & Students service and renaming it to just “Office Home.”

Folks in the insider community have spotted this change, as shared by @technosarusrex on X (formerly known as Twitter). In version 2405 (Build 17609.20002), Microsoft also warns that “On Tuesday, April 16, 2024, most features of Word will be disabled” for folks with these licenses.

But this small renaming could go further than that. It may signal that a unified experience should be ramped up by then. 

Microsoft “rebranded” its Office 365 productivity suite as “Microsoft 365” a while ago, although to call it a complete rebranding is not entirely accurate. MS365 is a subscription service that gets you access to apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, which you pay monthly. 

Office, on the other hand, is a one-time purchase for a specific version of the Office suite (like Word, Excel, PowerPoint) to install on a single computer. One of the offerings that it has is Office Home & Students 2021, as well as Home & Business for enterprises.

Not too long ago, Microsoft also renamed Bing AI Chat to Copilot after almost a year of running. And on top of that, the DALL-E 3-powered Bing Image Creator has now become Image Creator from Designer.