MICROSOFT has announced a shakeup to their software products that will affect users everywhere.
The company will phase out Microsoft 365 apps from older operating systems – find out if your software still supports the Microsoft package.
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Microsoft’s family of apps are some of the most transformative software products in personal and professional computing.
Microsoft Excel, one of the flagship products of Microsoft 365, is reportedly used by more than 700,000 companies worldwide.
But Excel and other products in the Microsoft 365 apps package will be made incompatible with computers running on Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows Server 2008 R2 starting on January 10, 2023.
“We recommend that customers running these operating systems migrate to a supported OS before January 2023,” Microsoft wrote in a company blog.
NeoWin reported that Microsoft has already begun to stop tending to apps running on older operating systems.
Apps powered by Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 were updated by Microsoft’s three-year Extended Security Update (ESU) program, which provides security updates to “legacy” programs but at a hefty cost to users.
The ESU plan for Windows 7 costs $280 for the final year of support.
Microsoft encourages customers to update their operating system for both compatibility and security reasons.
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“Please remember that using unsupported software may increase an organization’s exposure to security risks or impact its ability to meet compliance obligations,” Microsoft’s blog concluded.
Microsoft publishes a calendar of expected retirement dates for many of the products in their lineup of software.
Microsoft has sunset several programs this year – the company celebrated Internet Explorer‘s last day online in June.
Within Microsoft, there are divisions working on the Xbox, artificial intelligence, personal computing products, and more – the company is focused on the future as it shuts down older programs.
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