14 DAY TRIAL // Connecting to Office 365 will be soon restricted only to the latest version of Office software, with Microsoft planning to retire certain releases of its productivity software.
More specifically, beginning with October 13, only users running Office 2016 and Office 2019, as well as customers of Microsoft 365 Apps for business and enterprise will be able to connect to Office 365 services.
The software giant explains that giving up on certain versions is something that just needs to be done because of improvements made to cloud infrastructure.
“After October 13, 2020, ongoing investments to our cloud services will not take into account older Office clients. Over time, these Office clients may encounter performance or reliability issues. Organizations that use these older clients will almost certainly face an increased security risk and may find themselves out of compliance depending upon specific regional or industry requirements,” Microsoft says.
Big changes for Office users
Office 2016 for Mac will no longer be supposed for connecting to Office 365 services because it’s projected to go dark on October 13 too.
And of course, Microsoft recommends users to switch to the subscription-based Office 365, which guarantees continued updates without any interruption because the client is always up-to-date.
At the same time, Office 2016 and Office 2019 are supported until October 2023, but at that point, migration to Office 365 will once again be the recommended step going forward for everyone.
“We recommend that you upgrade older Office clients to a subscription version of the Office client, such as Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise. The most up-to-date subscription versions of the Office client are always supported connecting to Office 365 services,” Microsoft says.
Another important change for Office 365 services is the retirement of TLS 1.0 and 1.1, so clients must use at least TLS 1.2 to be able to connect.