Report reveals Office PWAs ended up installed on Windows 10

Oct 13, 2020 15:37 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft Office PWAs allow you to access the online versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint right from the desktop, all powered by a browser of your choice on Windows 10.

However, the way PWAs have been designed requires the user to manually access a website offering such an app and then manually request the installation. In other words, if you want the Office PWAs to show up on your Windows 10 desktop, you need to connect to the online version of the productivity suite with a browser that supports PWAs, such as Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge, and then manually choose to install the apps.

Nevertheless, something strange happened recently on a series of Windows 10 devices, according to BornCity.

More specifically, the Microsoft Office PWAs ended up installed on Windows 10 computers for no clear reason, even without users specifically asking for the whole thing.

How this is possible nobody knows for sure, but by the looks of things, all PWAs were installed on October 10 on these Windows 10 computers. Dedicated entries for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook were created in the Start menu, and all apps appeared under the recently installed section too.

Needless to say, those who don’t want the PWAs on their devices can simply remove them, but on the other hand, Microsoft installing them without first asking users is something that could generate more criticism against the Redmond-based software giant.

The company hasn’t offered an explanation for what exactly happened, so I reached out to the company to ask for more details and will update the post if an answer is offered.

At this point, it’s still not clear who got the Office PWAs and who didn’t. I checked my Windows 10 devices and none of them received these unwanted apps, though I do have an Office 365 subscription, so apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are already installed on my computers.

As the aforementioned source notes, this unexpected installation of Office apps on Windows 10 devices could be in some way related to the Office add-on for Microsoft Edge.

By the looks of things, all PWAs that were installed quietly on Windows 10 came from Microsoft Edge, the new browser that the company configured as the default option on its operating system. So theoretically, the PWAs were served through Edge, though right now, we still don’t know if this also happened on computers where Microsoft’s browser isn’t set as default.

BornCity suggests that the Office add-on for Edge might be the culprit, though judging from the information published on its official page, the last update was shipped on October 12, whereas all PWAs were installed on Windows 10 on October 10, two days earlier.

On the other hand, providing access to Office apps is exactly the purpose of the Edge add-on.

“Office browser extension puts an icon on the Microsoft Edge toolbar that gives you direct access to your Office files, whether they are stored online or on your computer. Office web extension can open files stored in OneDrive and OneDrive for Business. You get the features of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Sway right in your browser without needing Office installed,” Microsoft explains.

At this point, everything is still super-vague, so it remains to be seen how the Office apps ended up on Windows 10 computers all of a sudden. For the time being, the good news is that it takes only a few clicks to get rid of them all, though it goes without saying this isn’t necessarily convenient since nobody asked for the installation of the apps in the first place.