One of the great strengths of Microsoft and Office has been their continuity. Word, Excel, Outlook and so on have worked fairly seamlessly across all our old documents and new ones, and files on our PCs, servers and in the cloud. It’s even worked from our mobile devices, like our iPads and phones.
It has been obvious that Microsoft really want us all using their 365 cloud service. They have been making the subscription more compelling, and adding more capabilities to it to draw us in. The last year has seen some changes to license prices and terms.
Now, some of their older products are approaching End-Of-Life and there are some changes that will impact a few of our clients. We will be in touch to work through the details of what this means for you.
The summary is that MOST non-365 versions of Office will no longer connect to Microsoft 365.
In the main, that means older versions as almost everyone who has updated Office in the last few years has moved to 365 versions already.
For the few people still on older versions, you will find that, from October of this year, these older versions of Word or Excel etc will no longer be supported to open files in Teams and SharePoint, and possibly even OneDrive. Older versions of Outlook will not be supported accessing Microsoft 365 hosted mail. The key here is ‘supported’ – it may still work but if it stops working then there will be no support available.
What to watch for :
- If you are using the Basic Microsoft Office 365 Business Essentials or Basic license, then you are probably using a non-365 version of Word, Excel and Outlook etc. You will need to migrate to a different 365 plan such as Business Standard, Business Premium or Enterprise.
- If you work via a remote desktop server (RDS). Many RDS servers are on standalone Office versions due to an historical requirement. These can now be updated. However, that may only be a stop gap. Microsoft have advised us that even newer versions of this RDS server solution will be become unsupported over the next three years.
The use of the 365 versions of Office is an important foundational aspect to your cyber-security protection. There are many layers of cyber-security protection needed, and one of the absolute basics is keeping your software current so that any vulnerabilities are eliminated as they come to light, and Microsoft’s proactive defences can be deployed.
Refer
Windows Server end of support and Microsoft 365 Apps – Deploy Office | Microsoft Learn