Microsoft 365: Deadlines for on-prem connection
As of 13 October 2020, the connection of some on-premise variants of Microsoft Office to the cloud services of Microsoft 365 has expired. This affects, for example, the connection of on-premise Office variants to Exchange Online.
Microsoft has here lists for which on-premise variants a connection to Microsoft 365 services is still supported. This link is also a very good overview of general resources regarding Office 365 and different Office variants.
Particularly in the point about the Office 2013 Suite and standalone applications, October 2020 is mentioned as the end of support. Under this link you will also find the end of support for the connection of Office 2019 to Microsoft 365 services, this is listed as of today for October 2023.
Microsoft does not actively prevent access by older on-premise variants, but also notes in the docs that there may be connection issues when using them.
Currently supported are Office 2016 and 2019
Currently Office 2019 and Office 2016 variants are still supported to connect to Microsoft 365 services, older variants may experience issues as described.
Examples of problems that can result from the discontinued support of these variants include performance and reliability issues, as well as increased risk in the area of security.
You can read about these possible problems and also the statement from Microsoft that accesses are not actively hindered. here.
ABAX recommends the replacement of such versions, if these older versions are still in use at companies, mainly because of the security issues that can result from this.
This post is also based on a May 2021 post by Daniel Penzel / IngramMicro.
Image source: Microsoft/Adobe Stock
