Microsoft’s Office Mix PowerPoint extension tool is heading for the software graveyard. The company used the downtime of the weekend to announce the feature will shuttered next May. Features in Office Mix will be folded into general abilities on PowerPoint in Office 365, expanding the feature set of the app.
In its announcement (delivered via email), Microsoft says the cut-off date for the service is May 1, 2018. Despite that being seven months away, Microsoft is urging users to start saving files now and prepare for the exodus from Mix.
If you are unfamiliar with Office Mix, it was a free add-in for PowerPoint. It allowed users to turn presentations in interactive online recordings. Because Microsoft is integrating the same features directly into Office 365, there is no need for the separate extension.
In Office 365, users can find the Mix features in the Recording Tab in PowerPoints. To prepare users for the closure of the extension, Microsoft has provided the following timeline:
- 2October 20, 2017: If you have an existing Office Mix account, you’ll still be able to view, edit, publish, download, and delete your existing content. If you have a qualifying* Office 365 work or school account, you can sign in to migrate your mixes as videos to Microsoft Stream. If you don’t have access to an Office 365 work or school account, you can download your Mixes as PowerPoint files (.pptx), and you analytics data as Excel files (.xlsx) to save to a storage location of your choosing.
- January 1, 2018: You’ll no longer be able to sign up as a new user or download the Office Mix add-in from the website. Existing users who already have the Mix add-in installed will still be able to use it to upload, edit, view, and download their existing content.
- May 1, 2018: The Office Mix site and all its content will be officially discontinued. The site will no longer be accessible after that date. Any links to your Office Mix content that you previously shared with others will stop working after this date.”
Continued Office Mix Support
While Microsoft is keeping the Mix features by migrating them to Office 365, some users will miss out.
That’s because the Recording tab is only available for subscribers running Office 365 on Windows PC. Users subscribed to Microsoft’s productivity suite on Mac will simply lose all the Office Mix features. At least that’s the situation right now. Perhaps Microsoft will introduce the Recording tab between now and the cut-off date.
