Microsoft openly admits it would prefer all customers to join its cloud first movement and subscribe to Office 365/Microsoft 365. However, the company is also willing to keep supporting those who are holding onto the perpetual (non-subscription/cloud) versions of Office. That includes cooling fears customers on Office 2016 and Office 2019 were to be left behind.
According to Microsoft, it will stop access to Microsoft 365 back-end services next year (2023). This is two years before Office 2016 and Office 2019 reach end of support. Customers became concerned Microsoft was going to block those customers access Microsoft 365 back-end services after next year.
Microsoft has now confirmed that is not the case. Users running Office 2016/2019 will still be able to access Microsoft 365 back-end services. Although, the company says there may be some usability issues once those back-end services are cut off next year.
“Important: We won't take any active measures to block other versions of the Office client that are still supported and are up to date, such as Office 2013 with Service Pack 1, from connecting to Microsoft 365 services. But these older clients may encounter performance or reliability issues over time.”
Support Puzzle
Office 2013 is going to be cut off as it ends support on April 11, 2023. Office 2016 will end support on October 14, 2025, alongside Office 2019. It is worth noting mainstream support – which includes new features – ended for Office 2016 in October 2020, while Office 2016 will lose mainstream support in October 2023.
Those 2025 cut-offs are for extended support, which includes relatability and security updates.
It seems Microsoft is willing to support perpetual Office customers long term. At the same time, the company is obviously going to make licensing and support issues as complex as possible. Confused customers could lead to more jumping ship and heading to the cloud safety of Microsot 365.
Even so, Microsoft says the current position is this:
“Microsoft will NOT be blocking supported and up-to-date Office clients from connecting to M365 cloud services. However, as announced in April 2017 and clarified in February 2018, Microsoft plans to stop supporting Office clients out of mainstream support when connecting to Microsoft 365 cloud services.
“Practically, this means that as we make updates to Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and other Microsoft 365 services, we will not be building around the constraints inherent in the older perpetual Office clients that are already out of mainstream support. Customers will not be blocked in connecting, but they may not get the full value out of new investments in our cloud services. Over time, they may run into unexpected issues.”
Tip of the day: The Windows Clipboard history feature provides the functionality across device, space, and time, letting you copy on one computer and paste the text days later on a different PC. All of it is possible via the Windows 10 clipboard manager, which lets you view, delete, pin, and clear clipboard history at will.
In our tutorial we show you how to enable the feature, clear clipboard history, and enable/disable clipboard sync to meet your preferences. You can also create a clear clipboard shortcut for quick removal of stored content.
