Microsoft is demoting older Macs and iPhones to read-only status in its Office apps next month.
Microsoft announced it is ending full support for older macOS and iOS versions across Microsoft 365, Office 2019, and Office 2021. Starting in July 2026, users on those older operating systems will still be able to open and view existing documents, but creating or editing files will be disabled. The move follows a pattern Microsoft applies across its app portfolio: a graceful degradation before a hard cutoff, giving users just enough runway to act and just enough friction to make waiting uncomfortable.
The practical problem is that upgrading the OS is not always possible. A meaningful share of older Macs are hardware-limited from running recent macOS releases — not by choice, but by Apple's own support cutoffs. Those users will find themselves locked out of editing work documents on machines that otherwise function fine. For organizations running standardized environments that haven't completed OS migrations, this accelerates a timeline they may not have budgeted for.
Microsoft has done this before with Windows-side legacy support, and the playbook is the same here: read-only access is generous enough to avoid a PR blowup, but useless enough to move people along. The Office suite still runs — it just won't let you do any actual work.