Microsoft has urged users of Office 2016 and Office 2019 to upgrade as both applications approach the end of their extended support deadlines next month.

Both applications will no longer receive updates as of 14 October, the tech giant confirmed last week. The move will also see a host of popular apps under the Office umbrella mothballed, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Similarly, Exchange Server 2016 and 2019 will be scrapped alongside Skype for Business.

This doesn’t mean these Office suites will completely stop working. However, Microsoft has been keen to emphasize that they’ll receive no more updates or technical support.

Opting to stick with these versions puts users at greater risk of security breaches, according to Jeremy Carlson, Microsoft's director of product marketing for the Microsoft 365 portfolio.

“Continuing to use software after end of support can leave your devices vulnerable to potential security threats, productivity losses, and compliance issues,” he wrote in a community notice.

“After that date [14 October], Microsoft will no longer provide security fixes, bug fixes, or technical support for these products.”

Microsoft urges users to upgrade

Naturally, Microsoft is urging users to sign up for Microsoft 365, its most up-to-date suite of applications. For those with fewer than 300 users, there is the option of Microsoft 365 Business Standard.

This, Carlson explained, represents a more cost-effective option based on their individual needs and budget.

“We know there is no “one-size-fits-all" approach for managing end of support – and we encourage you to explore our business and enterprise plans to find the right fit for your organization,” he wrote.

Notably, there is a lifeline for those that aren’t keen on switching to the cloud-based option, Carlson revealed. This comes in the form of the Office Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) 2024.

This option will give users access to the most recent supported on-prem versions of Office for commercial customers.

“The Office Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) is designed for devices that cannot accept feature updates or connect to the internet,” Carlson explained. “Office LTSC 2024 was released last year along with new on-premises versions of Project and Visio.”

A big month for Microsoft shops

October is set to be a busy month for Microsoft customers worldwide. In addition to Office 2016 and 2019 being scrapped, the end of life deadline for Windows 10 also falls on 14 October, meaning users will either be forced to upgrade or continue without regular updates.

Once again, there is a lifeline for those opting to stick with the older operating system – but it’ll come at a steep price.

Extended support for Windows 10 will set enterprises back $61 per device, and that’s just for the first year. Thereafter, the price doubles on an annual basis for a maximum of three years.

As ITPro reported earlier this month, the total cost worldwide could reach a staggering sum. Analysis from Nexthink found maintaining custom versions of the operating system could top $7.3 billion globally.

A significant portion of users appear to be content with the situation, or at the very least are taking their time ahead of the deadline. Figures from Statcounter showed the operating system still holds a 43% market share.

Based on the current rate of upgrades, this means that around 121 million devices worldwide will still be running Windows 10 by the October deadline.

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Microsoft Office has been through a lot of changes since its original release in 1990. One notable milestone was the introduction of the Ribbon interface in Office 2007, but perhaps the most significant moment of evolution came in 2010, with the launch of docs.com – a collaboration with Facebook that allowed users to share documents with friends, discover documents that their friends had uploaded and even edit them collaboratively. It was shortly followed by the full Office Live Workspace service, alongside simple web-based versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Those early online services may not have a huge immediate impact, but they laid the groundwork for Office 365, which came along in 2013 offering extensive cloud-based sharing and collaboration features. 

Fast-forward to the present day and the whole idea of Office has become cloud-centric. Rather than being a suite of individual applications, it’s now an all-round service for creating, editing, and sharing documents among teams and across all of your devices. The standalone Microsoft Office package has been retired, with no future updates planned after the current Office 2021 release: Office 365 (now rebranded Microsoft 365) has taken center stage, and the online tools and web versions of the core apps are a key part of the offering.

How to get started with Microsoft 365 Online

What you may not realize is that much of Office’s core functionality is available without a Microsoft 365 subscription. 

You can use the web apps for free by simply signing in with a Microsoft account; Android and iOS editions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote are also free to use on devices with screens of 10in and smaller. All of these apps integrate with the OneDrive service, which is free for up to 5GB of document storage and 15GB of email. 

You only need to pay if you want the full desktop applications for Windows or macOS – or if you want to extend your OneDrive storage. There are a variety of paid plans for individuals and for businesses.

Microsoft 365 Online vs Google Workspace: Which is better?

If you’re looking for a free online office suite, Google’s Docs, Sheets and Slides tools might seem the obvious choices. However, the Microsoft 365 web and mobile apps match most of Google’s key features and integrate better with friends and colleagues using Microsoft 365.

For example, Office has plenty of sharing and co-working features, with team members able to contribute to documents simultaneously or leave comments and suggestions. The free Outlook app for mobile devices adds integrated email and calendaring capabilities, similar to Gmail and Google Calendar, and for communication, there’s the free edition of Microsoft Teams.

Needless to say, Office users can open and save documents, presentations and spreadsheets in Microsoft’s native formats – and you don’t have to worry about interoperability, as Google’s office tools can also work with these files natively, without any need for conversion. The reverse isn’t true for documents created in Google’s web apps.

This makes Office Online a great choice if you need to collaborate with people using different platforms, either online or offline. While Google Docs and Sheets doesn’t support all the features of Microsoft Word and Excel, unsupported content is preserved, so everything will still be there when the document is reopened in a Microsoft application. Similarly, some Google-specific features aren’t available in Office-format documents, such as Apps Scripts, cell locking in Google Sheets, and document translation.

Finally, while Office’s web and mobile apps are free, going the Microsoft route means you also have easy access to paid-for desktop apps. For example, if you need to use complex formatting for a particular Word document, you can take out a one-month subscription to Microsoft 365 and seamlessly move your files into the most powerful office suite in the business. That’s something Google Docs can’t offer.

Five great features in Microsoft’s free online apps

1. Editor browser extension

Take advantage of Word’s grammar and spelling tools outside of the office environment. All you need is a Microsoft account and the Microsoft Editor extension for Chrome or Edge. The free version has basic spelling and grammar checking; paying subscribers also get recommendations to help with the clarity and tone of your writing.

2. File sharing

The free Office apps let you conveniently share files directly within the interface. It’s up to you whether those to whom you give access can edit files, or only read them. Microsoft 365 subscribers can also apply password protection, and create time-limited sharing links.

3. Open up your calendar

If you organize your life using Outlook, the online Bookings app lets you define your working hours and authorize team members – or even members of public beyond your organization – to book a slot with you, without needing to bother you with calendar cross-checking. You’ll find the Bookings tool at outlook.live.com/bookings

4. Simultaneous editing

One of the biggest benefits of a cloud-based office suite is the ability for multiple team members to collaborate simultaneously. This isn’t limited to the online apps: colleagues using desktop Office apps can make edits in real-time too. Each collaborator’s activities are shown in a different color so you can keep track of who is working on what.

5. Free mobile apps

When you only have your smartphone to hand, you can use the free mobile apps for Android and iOS to browse and edit documents. The interface is optimized for use on a smaller screen, and the apps include several mobile-friendly capabilities, such as saving to PDF and converting images to tables or text.

Which features are missing from Microsoft 365 Online?

If you’re using Microsoft’s browser-based Office apps with a free Microsoft account, you only get access to a subset of the full font pack that’s provided for Microsoft 365 subscribers, so your layout and design options are limited. 

And the apps themselves naturally lack some of the features of desktop apps. For example, Word Online lets you open and edit all native formats, but it can’t open RTF or HTML files.

It also won’t open password-protected files, nor PDFs. In the app, you can edit an existing table of contents but can’t delete or create a new one, and while themes and backgrounds are preserved in any document you open, they can’t be edited in the browser.

It’s a similar story with Excel, with the online and mobile apps unable to open the full range of formats supported by the desktop software. Workbooks containing digital signatures can’t be viewed in the browser either, and while you can open and edit documents and workbooks containing macros, you can’t execute the macros. You may also find that charts relying on external data sources, or which are part of a larger group of charts, don’t render the same in the browser as they do in the desktop edition of Excel.

PowerPoint is the most limited of the three core online apps: the web edition feels like a companion to the desktop application, rather than a productivity app in its own right. You can’t edit a master slide in the browser, nor add charts, and the choice of SmartArt graphics is limited. You can’t trigger animations either, and the available selection of transitions and animations is pared down from the desktop application. You can add speaker notes, but not create self-running presentations, nor record presentations for later playback.

Windows 10 users have reported a broken Microsoft 365 trial offer which prevents access to the desktop until credit card details are entered.

On booting up, some Windows 10 devices have shown a full-screen offer for a trial version of Microsoft 365, the tech giant’s suite of productivity apps.

Buttons at the bottom of the screen read ‘Use for free’ and ‘No thanks’, but each leads to a screen prompting users to enter credit card details.

One Reddit user posted an example of the issue on the platform's Windows 10 community, noting that they had to put in their credit card details to gain access to their desktop and cancel afterwards to prevent being charged recurring payments.

No other buttons on the window enabled the user to skip entering payment details.

Microsoft 365 costs between £4.50 and £16.60 per month for businesses. It is unclear whether the nature of this bug enables it to appear on devices that are already subscribed to a plan with the suite, which could decide the likelihood of it being recreated on business laptops.

Another user posted a similar bug on a subreddit designed to highlight bad user interface (UI) design. Their full-screen offer advertised 50% off Microsoft 365 Family, and identically to the other post pressing ‘No thanks’ took them to the payment details screen.

The offer is meant to be shown in the Windows out of box experience (OOBE), which users see when a device is first turned on after purchase or immediately following a Windows 10 factory reset.

As the bug has not been addressed by Microsoft, it is not clear if it is the result of an erroneous update or a flaw with the individual users' machines.

One Reddit user asked for the name of the device's original equipment manufacturer (OEM).

"Looks like a bug in their OOBE - e.g. strings got swapped in their translations," wrote one individual.

"Not a [Microsoft] problem - though I'm sure if it gets into the right channels could mean a big fine for the OEM."

IT Pro has approached Microsoft for more information.

Microsoft’s newly launched workplace app, Places, is designed to make adopting hybrid work models easier for both staff and workplaces themselves.

Among a host of features, it includes satellite navigation-style functionality for workers to more easily find meeting rooms around the office building.

By configuring the office’s layout and facilities within Places, workers will also be able to find the best hot desking spots in the office that are vacant at that time.

Places will exist as a standalone windowed program, rather than an extension to other productivity apps like Teams and Outlook, and will also offer other capabilities such as a streamlined view of what workspaces have been booked by colleagues.

“As business decision makers consider redesigning physical workspaces to better accommodate hybrid work environments, technology will be needed to form the bridge across two historically different worlds – in-person and remote work,” said Microsoft.

“Microsoft Places will use intelligence to optimise where work happens in hybrid work: connecting virtual and physical spaces to drive increased connections, engagement and productivity while providing the holistic picture of hybrid work that’s missing today.”

Intelligent booking of meeting spaces will also offer insights as to what rooms within the office will be best suited for different types of meetings, factoring in the technology needs of both remote and in-person attendees.

Workers will also receive notifications based on when the best time may be to leave the office, based on traffic data.

For example, one worker may be notified that it would be ideal to leave the office at 3pm since that would reduce their overall commute time, maximise their time spent at home, and still get them back in time to attend late afternoon meetings.

The hybrid scheduling feature will take data from Outlook and Teams to determine when workers are most likely to be in the office and recommend optimal times to book in-person collaboration sessions.

Microsoft said Places will also facilitate what it’s calling “serendipitous meetups”, a ‘feature’ which essentially allows workers to look at their office floor from a top-down perspective and book a five-minute mini meetup like a trip to the water cooler, just organised in a formal fashion.

From a sustainability perspective, office managers may benefit from Places as Microsoft said the new app will offer insights into how occupied an office will be on any given day, opening up energy-saving opportunities.

If the office is populated sparsely on one day, office managers could close a number of floors and turn the respective light and power sources off to save money and prevent energy waste, for example.

Announced at the company’s annual Ignite conference this week, Microsoft Places will be launching at an undetermined date in 2023. Interested organisations can learn more at Microsoft’s dedicated web page.

Microsoft is launching a smaller and faster version of its Outlook Lite app for Android devices.

The app is already available in Mexico, Turkey, South America and some countries in both Africa and Asia, with more regions set to be added to the list in the coming months.

Outlook Lite for Android is designed in a way that allows it to run on as many devices as possible. This is made possible by its smaller app size and low battery usage. The app will still offer fast performance and all the regular core features of the Microsoft Outlook mobile app, the tech giant said.

Outlook Lite is around 5MB in download size and has been optimised to run quickly on devices with as little as 1GB of RAM. And because it is so lightweight it should use very little of the phone's resources, ultimately saving battery life. What's more, it's built to work sufficiently across all mobile networks, including 3G and 2G, which are both still in wide use across many countries.

The reasoning behind Outlook Lite is to make the email app more accessible to users on lightweight mobile devices in more places around the world, according to Microsoft's senior product manager, Pradeep Elavarasan.

The company is also continuing to test the new Outlook app for Windows which is based on the web version of Outlook. This is expected to eventually replace the Outlook for Windows app in the future.

Streamlined versions of apps are quite common; Meta was one of the first to introduce a 'Lite' model of its original Facebook app which debuted in 2015 with just a 1MB storage requirement. Google has also launched "Go" versions of its apps for Android, such as Gmail Go which came out in 2018.

Microsoft has unveiled the latest version of its budget Surface clamshell, the Laptop Go 2, with an 11th Gen Intel processor and firmware-level protections.

The Laptop Go 2 is available for preorder, with shipping set to start on 7 June, at a starting price of $599 (£475).

It's the first Intel-based Surface Laptop to house Microsoft's secured-core PC, which is a layer of protection built into the hardware that protects from firmware vulnerabilities. The original Surface Laptop Go, released back in October 2020, was seen as a budget version of Microsoft's main Surface Pro series. The tech giant has spun out several different versions, such as the 2-in-1 Surface Go, but the Laptop Go was a budget clamshell with a lower quality build and a more frugal spec sheet.

The second iteration features a 12.4in touchscreen, with largely the same capabilities as its predecessor; a 1,536 x 1,024 resolution with a 148-pixel density and a 3:2 aspect ratio. This small scale display might make it difficult to work on multiple apps/projects without an external monitor, but the Laptop Go 2 will likely achieve similar high scores for colour accuracy and brightness as the original version did without calibrator benchmarks.

On the inside, there has been a CPU upgrade with an Intel Quad-Core i5-1135G7 processor replacing the i5-1035G1 that was in the 2020 Laptop Go. The consumer version is matched with either 4GB or 8GB of RAM, but the business model comes with the option of 16GB and either 128GB or 256GB. These different storage options will mean different prices and that is the same for the operating system, with the consumer model available with Windows 11 Home and the business version available with Windows 11 Pro or Windows 10 Pro.

All models will come with preloaded apps for Microsoft 365 - under a free trial period - though business models will also ship with Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Microsoft 365 Business Premium. This is in addition to the usual features, such as Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.1 and a 720p HD webcam. For ports, the Laptop Go 2 will feature 1 USB-C, 1 USB-A, a 3.5mm headphone jack and 1 external Surface Connect port will be included in the box.

When it comes to battery life, Microsoft estimates the Laptop Go can offer up to 13.5hrs based on 'typical' usage. The previous model lasted 8hrs 29mins under our intensive looped video test, so we expect a similar score for the newer model assuming Microsoft's in-house tests are less strenuous. However, its 39W charger can take the Laptop Go to 80% in just over an hour, the tech giant said.

Users can get either the consumer or business model of Surface Laptop Go in Sage, Ice Blue, Sandstorm or Platinum.

The Microsoft Office zero-day vulnerability reported widely this week is already being used in active attacks by Chinese state-sponsored hackers, a cyber security company has said.

The advanced persistent threat (APT) group tracked as TA413 has been spotted impersonating the Women’s Empowerment Desk of the Central Tibetan Administration - a genuine division dedicated to issues such as gender equality and combating violence against women.

Proofpoint researchers said the malicious documents are delivered via zip archives through URLs that aim to imitate the genuine Tibetan government, but didn’t comment on the type of payload that’s delivered.

The vulnerability that exploits the ms-msdt Microsoft Office Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) scheme is now tracked with CVE-2022-30190 and has been shown to work on all versions of Microsoft Office and Windows Server, including Office 365 which was previously thought to not be vulnerable.

Successful exploitation of the diagnostic and troubleshooting tool can lead to the execution of malicious code on Windows systems.

If the malicious document is saved using the Rich Text Format (RTF), code can also be executed by looking up the document in the Windows Explorer preview tab, without even opening it up.

Under the radar

Since CVE-2022-30190 became widely reported this week, it has since emerged that Microsoft was made aware of the vulnerability as far back as 12 April 2022.

A researcher by the alias of crazyman, who is part of a bug-hunting collective called Shadow Chaser Group, was credited with the discovery once Microsoft assigned the vulnerability a CVE code.

Crazyman posted proof of their submission to Microsoft online and found an example of in-the-wild exploitation seemingly from a Russian-speaking threat actor more than a month ago.

A member of Microsoft Security Response Centre (MSRC) responded to the submission after looking at it “critically” and decided that it was “not a security-related issue”.

The team acknowledged that the MSDT scheme was executed as part of the malicious document but since it required a passcode when it started - a passcode that did not work for the MSRC analyst during testing - the case was ultimately closed.

Independent security researcher and former Microsoft-employed security professional Kevin Beaumont, whose report of the zero-day vulnerability sparked wider interest in it this week, said MSRC’s response sounded like they wanted to re-triage the report, rather than dismiss it entirely.

On the same day, a threat intelligence researcher at MalwareBytes also discovered the Russian-language maldoc sample but the cyber security company said the remote template was already down at the time which meant that identification was not possible.

Microsoft’s guidance

Along with assigning the zero-day CVE tracking identifier, Microsoft has released a support document for Windows and Microsoft Office users, advising of the temporary workarounds they can deploy to mitigate the threat.

The recommended workaround is to disable the MSDT URI to prevent troubleshooters from being launched as links, including links throughout the operating system.

Troubleshooters can still be accessed by using the Get Help application, Microsoft said, and through system settings.

To disable MDST, Microsoft instructed users to do the following:

• Run Command Prompt as Administrator.
• To back up the registry key, execute the command “reg export HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ms-msdt filename”
• Execute the command “reg delete HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ms-msdt /f”.

To undo the workaround - potentially useful information when a full patch is released, users should do the following:

• Run Command Prompt as Administrator.
• To restore the registry key, execute the command “reg import filename”

It was previously reported that Microsoft Defender for Endpoint did not detect exploitation of CVE-2022-30190 but Microsoft said it now provides alerts in Microsoft 365 Defender portal under the following titles:

• Suspicious behaviour by an Office application
• Suspicious behaviour by Msdt.exe

Microsoft Defender Antivirus also now provides detections for possible exploitation using the following signatures using detection build 1.367.719.0 or newer:

• Trojan:Win32/Mesdetty.A (blocks msdt command line)
• Trojan:Win32/Mesdetty.B (blocks msdt command line)
• Behavior:Win32/MesdettyLaunch.A!blk (terminates the process that launched msdt command line)

Microsoft has updated its Office app and web site with user interface features that it hopes will make users more productive.

The updates focus on personalizing Office content for users, while also making it easier to access often-used content and actions, and to quickly create new documents.

Updates to the product include a change to the home page, which now features recommended actions based on communication that the user has had with others in Microsoft Office.

A Quick Access section also helps users to find documents related to current work. They can customize this with filters for people or file types, enabling them to quickly documents from coworkers on specific projects, Microsoft says.

The Office app and web site now also feature a My Content section that gathers all content related to the user. This is a more in-depth content search tool with filters that list documents by activity or time period. It also retrieves all the interactions that a user has had with specific people across different channels, including meetings.

A new Create page offers one-click buttons for creating different document types, featuring file types and templates for different documents such as event planning schedules.

New Actions also provide fast access to frequently used commands without having to open a file first. These include sharing documents or tagging files for follow-up with tasks using Office's To Do feature.

Microsoft, which delayed a price hike for its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 service this month, originally announced the updates to the product in November last year and began testing the updates in February. It plans to roll out the updates to all commercial and education customers by the end of the week.

The updates won't be available to users with Personal accounts, although Microsoft says that it is working on "similar enhancements".

Microsoft has announced that it will be delaying the planned price increase on Office 365 and Microsoft 365 products by a few weeks due to high demand for the services in the run up to the changes.

First announced in August 2021, the “substantive” price increases across a number of Modern Work products was due to come into effect on 1 March 2022.

Microsoft said the “transitional grace period” was implemented to “provide partners with additional lead time for adapting business processes”. It added that it does not believe partners will use the additional time to pull forward demand for the products.

All new commerce transactions will need to be submitted to Microsoft by no later than 14 March 2022 at 5 PM Pacific Daylight Time, or midnight at Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), in order to be eligible for the February 2022 pricing.

The price increases range between $1-$3 per user, depending on the product, but in large companies this can amount to a sizeable increase to IT departments’ overhead costs.

The six Modern Work products affected by the price changes include:

• Microsoft 365 Business Basic: $6 per user per month, up from $5
• Microsoft 365 Business Premium: $22 per user per month, up from $20
• Office 365 E1: $10 per user per month, up from $8
• Office 365 E3: $23 per user per month, up from $20
• Office 365 E5: $38 per user per month, up from $35
• Microsoft 365 E3: $36 per user per month, up from $32

In the initial announcement, Microsoft said it represented the first major pricing adjustment for Office 365 and Microsoft 365 since it was launched in 2011, a decade previously.

Higher demand for cloud services brought on by the ongoing trend of home and hybrid working prompted the tech giant to make the change, said Jared Spataro, corporate vice president at Microsoft 365.

In December 2021, four months after the announced price increases, Microsoft also said it would be raising the prices of pay-monthly Microsoft 365 products by 20% unless partners chose to be billed on an annual basis.

Managed Service Providers (MSPs) complained at the time that they could stand to lose money if a customer went bankrupt or chose to decrease the number of licenses they needed if they opted for an annual subscription.

The move prompted heated online discussions and a Change.org petition lobbying Microsoft to reconsider the decision, which garnered more than 2,000 signatures.

The US domestic cyber security agency has added another 15 vulnerabilities to a list of must-patch bugs for federal agencies.

The Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added the bugs to its Catalog of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities. This list includes bugs that have been exploited in the wild and for which a patch is available.

This week's additions to the list include vulnerabilities dating back seven years, spanning products from Microsoft Office through to D-Link routers and Oracle WebLogic. It includes four bugs rated as critical under version 3 of the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS), which scores vulnerabilities based on their severity.

The four critical bugs include CVE 2020-0768, a remote code execution vulnerability in Microsoft SMBv3, which scored a maximum 10. Another bug in the Jenkins DevOps automation server, CVE-2018-100861, earned a 9.8.

The two other critical vulnerabilities lay in the Apache project's ActiveMQ message broker and Struts framework for developing Java EE applications.

The rest of the security flaws had a high severity classification, either under CVSS 3 or in some cases, for older bugs, under version 2.

All of the vulnerabilities had a patch deadline of August this year, aside from CVE-2021-36934, a privilege escalation vulnerability in Microsoft Windows Security Accounts Manager (SAM). CISA deemed this more urgent, with a patch deadline of Feb 24. This bug, disclosed publicly in July 2021, is rated as 7.8 (high severity) in CVSS 3. It allows attackers to use overly permissive access control lists (ACLs) on system files including the SAM database.

They can use this to run their own code with system-level privileges.

CISA created the Catalog of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities as part of November 2021's Binding Operational Directive 22-01: Reducing the Significant Risk of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities. All civil federal agencies must patch these bugs, but the agency also recommends that other government agencies use the list to shore up their defences.

The agency has been busy adding bugs to the list. These 15 additions bring those added since Jan 10 to 56. There are 367 vulnerabilities in the catalog as of this week.

Microsoft has fixed a total of 98 security vulnerabilities as part of its January 2022 Patch Tuesday update released this week, including 29 remote code execution (RCE) flaws and six zero-days.

Of the 98 total vulnerabilities, nine were rated 'critical' - having a CVE score of nine or greater. Among the most severe security issues patched by Microsoft were a pair of RCEs both with scores of 9.8/10 affecting Windows Servers and systems with internet key exchange (IKE).

The flaw affecting Windows servers that are configured as a webserver, tracked as CVE-2022-21907, allows unauthenticated cyber attackers to send specially crafted packets to targeted servers utilising the HTTP Protocol Stack. Microsoft also said the issue is wormable and recommends patching all affected servers as a priority task.

Another of the more serious flaws Microsoft patched this week was one found affecting internet key exchange (IKE), though Microsoft has been tight-lipped on the full details of the problem.

"CVE-2022-21907 is a particularly dangerous CVE because of its ability to allow for an attacker to affect an entire intranet once the attack succeeds," said Danny Kim, principal architect at Virsec, to IT Pro.

"Although Microsoft has provided an official patch, this CVE is another reminder that software features allow opportunities for attackers to misuse functionalities for malicious acts," he added. "Instead of trying to continuously patch and identify these vulnerabilities, enterprises should look for a real-time monitoring solution to safeguard applications and their functionalities from these types of attacks."

The RCE vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2022-21849, can be exploited with 'low complexity', according to Microsoft's patch notes, and allows unauthenticated attackers to trigger multiple vulnerabilities when the IPSec service is running on Windows.

Microsoft Exchange Server also received five separate fixes for one critical-rated RCE vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2022-21846, rated 9.0/10, with an 'adjacent' attack vector which means the attack is limited at the protocol level. This particular flaw was first flagged to Microsoft by the National Security Agency (NSA), which has raised attention to other Microsoft Exchange security issues throughout 2021.

In order to achieve exploitation, cyber attackers would have to first gain a foothold onto a victim's environment, such as being on the same shared physical network, like Bluetooth or IEEE 802.11. This type of flaw is common with man-in-the-middle setups, Microsoft said.

Numerous flaws affecting the Microsoft Office suite were also patched by Microsoft but perhaps the most serious one, tracked as CVE-2022-21840, addressed 26 individual critical-rated flaws in one vulnerability. It has a CVE score of 8.8/10 and attackers could achieve remote code execution on a victim's machine if they opened a specially crafted file.

The flaw is thought to be slightly less likely to exploit given that some user interaction is required (opening the file), but Microsoft still categorised it as a 'low complexity' exploit, meaning cyber attackers can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.

Microsoft has issued updates for Windows machines, all of which are advised to be installed, but certain Mac users will have to wait for patches as they are not immediately available.

A full list of the now-patched security issues has been published by Microsoft with RCE flaws affecting products including Windows Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, the Microsoft Office suite, DirectX, Windows Remote Desktop Protocol, Windows Resilient File System, and other areas.

"This massive Patch Tuesday comes during a time of chaos in the security industry whereby professionals are working overtime to remediate Log4Shell – reportedly the worst vulnerability seen in decades," said Bharat Jogi, director, vulnerability and threat research at Qualys to IT Pro. "Unpredictable events such as Log4Shell add significant stress to the security professionals dealing with such outbreaks – and bring to the forefront the importance of having an automated inventory of everything that is used by an organisation in their environment.

"It is the need of the hour to automate deployment of patches for events with defined schedules, such as Microsfot's Patch Tuesday, so security professionals can focus energy to respond efficiently to unpredictable events that pose dastardly risk to an organisation’s crown jewels."

Six zero-day vulnerabilities

In addition to the array of security vulnerabilities affecting Microsoft products, six zero-days are also now patched, though no evidence suggests any of them were actively exploited.

• CVE-2022-21919 - Windows User Profile Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
• CVE-2022-21836 - Windows Certificate Spoofing Vulnerability
• CVE-2022-21839 - Windows Event Tracing Discretionary Access Control List Denial of Service Vulnerability
• CVE-2022-21874 - Windows Security Center API Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
• CVE-2021-22947 - Open Source Curl Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
• CVE-2021-36976 - Libarchive Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

None of the above zero-days were actively exploited, but publicly available proof of concept (PoC) code is available so businesses should still patch these as a matter of priority before exploitation attempts do start occurring.

Microsoft has told managed service providers (MSPs) that it will charge a 20% premium on Microsoft 365 products unless customers choose to be billed annually.

The news has angered many in the MSP community, saying they stand to lose out if a customer goes bankrupt or chooses to decrease the number of licenses they need, for example. In this case, the MSP will still have to pay Microsoft, regardless of the alterations or complexities on the customer side.

Month-to-month billing affords customers the flexibility they often need and in some cases allows MSPs to budget more efficiently with other month-to-month billing products in their stacks.

The news comes as prices for individual products are also set to be increased too by a margin of up to 15% each.

Recently delayed until 1 March 2022, Microsoft's New Commerce Experience (NCE) will soon increase the prices of Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Office 365 E1, Office 365 E3, Office 365 E5, and Microsoft 365 E3.

"To provide our customers with more options, we expanded our Microsoft 365 subscription terms to include a new month-to-month offering in addition to our annual subscription," said Microsoft to IT Pro. "As is typical with subscription models, the annual term offers a lower rate, whereas the month-to-month subscription provides greater flexibility at a higher monthly cost."

First reported by CNBC, the move to force customers into either paying a higher price for flexibility or a lower price for a longer-term has not been greeted warmly and a Change.org petition protesting Microsoft's decision has reached more than 1,000 signatures.

Discussions between MSPs have taken place on a Reddit thread where the feedback has been largely negative, though some recognised the move could provide some benefits to larger value-added resellers (VARs) but may hurt smaller businesses.

The Pax8 reseller said the NCE can help businesses prepare for future growth "thanks to improved revenue predictability, reduced licensing complexity, multiple term options, and features that enable new sales capabilities and operational efficiencies."

One of the key pushbacks MSPs are lobbying Microsoft to implement is for it to allow pooling of licenses.

In doing so, it will allow the partner to re-distribute a license should a tenant leave the company without having to pay Microsoft for an unused service after they leave during a one-year commitment period, for example.

Microsoft has launched a standalone tier of Microsoft Teams specifically aimed at small businesses.

Teams Essentials, which is available now, offers video meetings and chat features for the "lowest price in the market today", according to Microsoft.

The Essentials tier offers unlimited group meetings for up to 30 hours and can support up to 300 participants at a cost of $4 (£3) per user, per month. Each user will also have 10GB of cloud storage. On the free tier of Teams, users are only able to host 100 participants for 60 minutes at a time.

The service also includes "existing and new capabilities", some of which are already available in the free version of Teams, to meet the needs of small businesses, according to Microsoft. This includes a new Google Calendar integration, which Microsoft said will be available "soon", and in-meeting tools like meeting lobby, virtual backgrounds, Together mode, and live reactions.

Essentials will also have a "Small business group chat template", which is a collaboration hub where users can manage projects, assign tasks and create polls.

"We know how difficult the past 20 months have been for small businesses. They've had to demonstrate extreme flexibility to adapt, often with limited access to tools and technology," said Jared Spataro, corporate vice president of Modern Work at Microsoft. "Teams Essentials is built specifically to meet the unique needs of small businesses, enabling them to thrive in this new era of work."

There are small business-focused tiers on other platforms but Microsoft appears to have found a way to undercut rivals by offering better value-for-money than competitor options. The "Pro" version of Zoom, for instance, comes at a monthly cost of £11.99 per user and only accommodates 100 participants per meeting. The video-conferencing giant has also launched an advertising pilot for it's free package as a way to find more revenue streams, rather than reducing the price on its middle-tier. Workplace from Meta (formally Facebook) offers a "Core" tier for the same price as Teams Essentials, but users need to opt for a number of "add-ons" to match the offerings available on the Microsoft service.

There is a free tier for Google Meets, but all participants need an account to join and the next tier is only available as part of a £7.99 monthly Workspace subscription.

Essentials is also being offered as a standalone service, with no need for users to subscribe to an Office 365 bundle. Invites can also be sent to anyone with an email address, so there is no need to sign in or install Teams to participate in meetings.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) had invested in almost 40,000 laptops, tablets and phones for its employees since October 2020 in a bid to facilitate hybrid and remote working.

That's according to data retrieved by a Freedom of Information (FOI), analysed by the Parliament Street think tank, which revealed HMRC has invested in 37,624 laptops, tablets and phones in the last 12 months.

This hardware investment was a 366% increase year-on-year, with HMRC providing employees with a total of 8,080 devices between October 2019 and September 2020.

For the same period between 2018 and 2019, months prior to the start of the pandemic, HMRC employees received only 600 new devices. The findings highlight how drastically the working environment has changed since March 2020, and how staff have become increasingly reliant on hardware provided by their employers in order to be able to continue working remotely.

The results of the FOI also showcase shifting attitudes towards the work/life balance. Over the last year, there has been a 297% increase in mobile phones being handed out to HMRC staff, as employees choose to be contacted for work on a separate device. The data reveals that HMRC rolled out 27,000 over the past 12 months, compared to just 700 laptops.

However, tablets recorded the most significant rise since the start of the pandemic, skyrocketing from just 580 in October 2019-September 2020, to 9,924 in October 2020-September 2021 – a 1,611% increase.

HMRC staffers also received 374 more Microsoft Office 365 licenses than the year prior, with the department having invested in a total of 7,647 new Microsoft Office 365 licenses since June 2019.

The hardware and software investments helped to shift HMRC operations to a remote basis during lockdowns, with the department’s employees currently allowed to continue working from home for at least two days a week.

This is despite the government’s recommendation that workers return to working in physical offices. Earlier this year, Chancellor Rishi Sunak warned young workers against falling into the trap of permanent remote working, suggesting that it could be detrimental to building strong working relationships.

A spokesperson for HMRC told IT Pro that its employees "already had devices that supported remote and mobile working prior to the pandemic".

"However, many of those devices were four years old and at the end of their working life so we’ve replaced them over the last twelve months. The new devices are up-to-date and more capable, helping ensure our colleagues can deliver the best service to our customers," they added.

Microsoft has refined its operating systems over the years, but Windows 11 is not without its share of bugs and performance issues. Since its release in October 2021, the operating system has seen numerous updates, yet users continue to report a range of problems, from difficulties with installation to slow performance and software glitches.

Fortunately, many of these common issues have clear and effective solutions. This guide provides an updated look at the most frequent Windows 11 problems and how to resolve them, helping you maintain a stable and efficient system.

1. Can’t upgrade to Windows 11

The first Windows 11 problem many users will come across is the realization that one’s system doesn’t meet the Windows 11 minimum requirements for one or more reasons.

In the link above, we’ve set out how to establish if your system can be upgraded and how to apply it if so. Otherwise, it might be time to upgrade to one of the best business laptops to make the most of Microsoft’s newest operating system.

It’s worth noting that you can easily check for an update within Windows by opening the settings menu and clicking ‘Windows update’ then ‘Check for updates’.

If all else fails, Microsoft has a dedicated Windows 11 installation assistant for manual updates. Just be sure to back up all your critical data first, to avoid losing anything in the process.

2. Windows 11 is slow or frequently freezes

While Windows 11 is a fresh look with exciting new features for the decades-old operating system, users who have installed it on a machine that previously hosted an older operating system may inadvertently have brought problems along with it.

These can result in software crashing unexpectedly or devices becoming slower than they should. More often than not, outdated drivers or software conflicts are to blame – here are some simple steps to keep Windows 11 running at peak efficiency:

1. Keep on top of driver updates: Drivers such as graphics drivers for GPUs as well as crucial firmware updates are major cause for Windows 11 slowdown issues. Make sure they’re regularly updated to stave off unwanted drops in performance.
2. Optimize system settings: Poor performance in Windows 11 can be partially addressed by altering some key system settings. For example, programs that automatically open on startup can hog system memory without users knowing. To change what opens on startup:
   1. Launch the Settings app by searching for it in the Start Menu
   2. Within settings, choose ‘Apps’ and then ‘Startup navigation’
   3. Toggle the switches next to apps to choose whether they automatically open when you startup your PC
3. Reset your pc: If problems persist after upgrading to Windows 11, a factory reset can solve problems. As above, make sure to back up data before moving ahead with this step.

3. Windows 11 can’t find a printer

If you’re troubleshooting Windows 11 problems, you’re probably no stranger to troubleshooting printer problems either.

One of the most straightforward ways to fix printer problems within Windows 11 is to troubleshoot the problem in the ‘Get Help’ app.

To do this, simply search ‘printer troubleshooter’ in the Start Menu. This will then run diagnostics to try to fix the problem.

It may also be necessary to install the latest printer drivers. Microsoft recommends doing this via Windows Update, which should automatically search for the latest hardware drivers to ensure printers connect to your Windows 11 device with no issues.

However, it’s also possible to reset printer drivers within device manager. To do this:

1. Right click on the Start Menu and select ‘Device Manager’
2. Click on the > arrow next to the printer you’re trying to connect to
3. Right click on the printer and select ‘Uninstall device’, then confirm you would like to move ahead with uninstalling when prompted
4. Restart Windows
5. Once your device reinitializes, it will attempt to reinstall the driver
6. If this doesn’t happen automatically, follow the above steps to navigate back to your printer in the device manager, right click on it, and select ‘Update driver’
7. Then select ‘Search automatically for updated driver’

4. Snipping Tool is crashing or not opening 

Windows 11 brings with it a new snipping tool, with new features that are better suited for business users. But it’s also known to crash under certain circumstances, or fail to launch altogether.

There are a number of possible steps to address these issues. First, make sure to install the latest Windows updates when prompted as these often contain bug fixes for embedded programs within Windows 11 such as Snipping Tool.

Second, it’s possible to repair the Snipping Tool if you have administrator privileges. To do so:

1. Open Settings by searching for it in the Start Menu.
2. Select ‘Apps’
3. Navigate to the snipping tool and select ‘Advanced options’
4. Click ‘Reset’ and then confirm you would like to reset the app

If all else fails, you can use a third-party screenshot software such as ShareX, Greenshot, or Flameshot.

5. Windows 11 PC is short on disk space

If you've upgraded to Windows 11 from a previous version, you may notice a significant reduction in free disk space. This is because Windows saves a copy of your old operating system in a folder named " Windows.old." This folder can take up more than 20GB and is kept for 10 days to allow you to revert to your previous Windows version if needed.

After ten days, Windows is designed to automatically delete these files. However, if you need to free up the space sooner and are confident you won't be returning to your old os, you can manually remove these files.

The recommended method to remove previous installation files is through the storage settings:

1. Go to ‘Settings’ then ‘System’ and ‘Storage’
2. Click on cleanup recommendations.
3. Look for and select previous Windows installation(s), along with other temporary files you wish to remove
4. Click the ‘Clean up’ button to remove the selected files

Leveraging storage sense for automatic cleanup

To maintain disk space day to day, Windows 11 comes with a built-in tool called Storage Sense. After it’s been enabled, Storage Sense regularly frees up space by deleting redundant data including temporary files and anything in the recycling bin.

Users can set Storage Sense to operate on a custom schedule including at daily, weekly, or monthly intervals. Alternatively, it can be set to only activate when disk space is running low. It can also be set to consider files in specific folders such as Downloads.

If disk space continues to be a problem, consider moving files to external storage such as an HDD or SSD.

For ongoing disk space management, Windows 11 includes a feature called Storage Sense. When enabled, it automatically frees up space by deleting unnecessary items like temporary files and the contents of your recycle bin.

You can configure Storage Sense to run on a schedule, such as daily, weekly, monthly, or when your disk space is low. It can also be set to clear out your downloads folder periodically.

6. Windows 11 search isn’t finding my files

Microsoft updated the search menu in Windows 11, which can be found in the taskbar or by pressing the Windows key + S. Sometimes, the search menu will be slow to load results or fail to find files altogether.

This is a common issue if you’ve recently updated your PC, or added a lot of new files to your disk. If you’ve only just done so, give your device time to update its search index – up to a full 24 hours in some cases.

If it’s still not working after this time, there are more active fixes you can apply.

First, you can rebuild the search index. Open the control panel by searching for it in the search menu, or by pressing Windows + R to open the run dialog and search “control” then press enter.

Next, set the view option to ‘large icons’ or ‘small icons’ and select ‘indexing options’ and ‘advanced’. In the ‘troubleshooting’ section, press ‘rebuild’, and press ‘ok’ on the prompt that will be shown. Your device will now rebuild the search index, which could take some time to complete. If you need to pause this at any time, you can do so by pressing the ‘pause’ button at the bottom of indexing options within the control panel.

While indexing is in progress, CPU and disk usage will be high and search results may not appear as desired.

For a more manual approach, that should only be attempted by those with express permission of the IT department, you can also rebuild the search index using a batch file (.BAT). To do so, open notepad by searching for it or pressing Windows + R to open the run dialog and searching “notepad” and copying in the following text:

@echo offnet stop wsearchdel "%ProgramData%\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows\Windows.edb":wsearchnet start wsearchIF NOT %ERRORLEVEL%==0 (goto :wsearch) ELSE goto :END:END

Then save this file to the desktop with your chosen name and ‘.bat’ at the end. After it’s saved, right click the batch file and choose ‘run as administrator’ from the context menu that shows up and press ‘yes’ when prompted.

This deletes the entire search index and rebuilds it from scratch.

7. Distracting notifications

Distractions can be more than annoying, they can also seriously detract from productivity.

Fortunately, Microsoft has improved its notification system in Windows 11 to make them less distracting than before. This is achieved through a new mode called Focus Assist. To activate it, click on the icons in the bottom-right corner of the screen where the battery, Wi-Fi, and volume indicators are located. A pop-up panel will appear, allowing you to switch on Focus Assist.

There are two modes to choose from within Focus Assist:

• Priority Only: This mode allows messages from specific apps or people to come through. It requires setting up your priority list, which can be customized to include applications such as Microsoft Teams or contacts like your boss.
• Alarms Only: As the name suggests, this mode only allows pre-set alarms to interrupt your work, providing a more distraction-free environment.

To set up Focus Assist:

1. Open Settings by finding it in the Start Menu or searching “settings” in the search menu.
2. Click ‘System’ in the list on the left.
3. Under ‘Focus’, select how long the session should last and edit the appearance of the session using the check boxes.

This feature helps you maintain concentration, ensuring that only crucial notifications interrupt your workflow. By customizing your Focus Assist settings, you can minimize distractions and enhance productivity, even if the boss often calls from Microsoft Teams.

8. Windows 11 Wi-Fi issues

Wi-Fi connectivity problems can be a major source of frustration for Windows 11 users, manifesting as dropped connections, slow internet speeds, or an inability to connect to networks altogether. These issues can originate from outdated drivers, conflicting settings, or hardware malfunctions. Below are detailed steps to troubleshoot and resolve common Wi-Fi problems in Windows 11.

Update network drivers

Outdated or incompatible network drivers are a frequent cause of Wi-Fi issues. Ensuring your drivers are up to date can often resolve connectivity problems. To update your network drivers:

1. Open Settings by searching for it in the Start Menu or searching "settings in the search menu.
2. Select 'Windows Update', then 'Advanced options' and 'Optional updates'.
3. Look for network adapter updates and install them.
4. Alternatively, visit your network adapter manufacturer’s website (e.g., Intel, Realtek, or Broadcom) to download the latest driver.

Reset your network settings

If updating drivers does not resolve the issue, resetting your network settings to their default configuration may help:

1. Go to Settings then 'Network & Internet', and 'Advanced network settings'.
2. Select 'Network reset' and follow the prompts.
3. Restart your PC and reconnect to your Wi-Fi network.

Disable power-saving settings

Windows 11’s power-saving features can sometimes interfere with Wi-Fi connections, particularly on laptops. To disable these settings:

1. Open Device Manager by pressing Windows key + X and selecting it from the menu.
2. Expand Network adapters, right-click your Wi-Fi adapter, and select Properties.
3. Navigate to the Power Management tab and uncheck Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.

Forget and reconnect to your network

Corrupted network profiles can also cause connectivity issues. To resolve this:

1. Open Settings then 'Network & Internet', 'Wi-Fi', and 'Manage known networks'.
2. Select your network and click 'Forget'.
3. Reconnect to the network by entering the password again.

Check your router and connection

Sometimes, the problem lies with your router or internet connection:

• Restart your router by powering it off for 30 seconds and then turning it back on.
• Ensure your router’s firmware is up to date by checking your manufacturer’s support page.
• Test your connection on another device to rule out ISP-related issues.

Use the troubleshooter

Windows 11 includes a built-in troubleshooter for diagnosing Wi-Fi issues:

1. Go to 'Settings' then 'System', 'Troubleshoot', and 'Other troubleshooters'.
2. Run the 'Internet Connections' troubleshooter and follow the recommendations.

These steps should help resolve most Wi-Fi connectivity problems. If issues persist, it may be worthwhile contacting your internet service provider or check for hardware faults in your network adapter or router.

9. Windows 11 updates fail to install 

Keeping Windows 11 current is vital for security and stability, but updates can sometimes fail to install, get stuck, or produce errors. If you are encountering these issues, here are several effective troubleshooting methods.

Run the Windows Update Troubleshooter

Microsoft provides a built-in tool designed to automatically find and fix common update problems. 

Clear the Windows Update cache
Corrupted files in the update cache are a frequent cause of installation failures. Clearing this cache can resolve the problem.

Install updates manually

If a particular update constantly fails, you can download it directly from the Microsoft update catalog. Search for the update using its knowledge base (kb) number and download the version that matches your system's architecture (x64 or arm64). 

Check for system file corruption

Corrupted system files can interfere with the update process. You can use built-in command-line tools to scan for and repair these files. 

Ensure sufficient disk space and a stable connection

Updates require adequate disk space to download and install correctly. A lack of space or an unstable internet connection can lead to update failures. Ensure your primary drive has several gigabytes of free space and your network connection is reliable before attempting to update.

Temporarily disable third-party security software

Antivirus or firewall applications can sometimes mistakenly block Windows updates. Temporarily disabling this software may allow the update to proceed.

Check for known issues

Microsoft maintains a list of known issues for Windows 11 releases, including version 26H1. Checking this official documentation can provide information on existing bugs and potential workarounds. In some cases, Microsoft may place a "safeguard hold" on updates for devices with known compatibility problems until a fix is available.

10. The taskbar is unresponsive or not working 

A non-functional taskbar can severely disrupt your workflow, preventing access to the start menu, pinned applications, and system notifications. This issue can manifest as a frozen taskbar, missing icons, or a complete failure to respond to clicks.

Here’s how to troubleshoot and fix a problematic taskbar in Windows 11:

1. Restart Windows Explorer: The taskbar is part of the Windows Explorer process. Restarting it can often resolve temporary glitches.
2. Run the system file checker (sfc) and dism: Corrupted system files can cause the taskbar to malfunction. The built-in SFC and DISM (deployment image servicing and management) tools can find and repair these files.
3. Re-register the taskbar using PowerShell: If the above methods don't work, you can try re-registering the taskbar and other built-in Windows apps using a PowerShell command.
4. Check for conflicting applications or services: Sometimes, third-party applications or system services can interfere with the taskbar's operation.

By following these steps, you should be able to restore the functionality of your Windows 11 taskbar.

Microsoft has unveiled a new Office app called Loop which is designed to offer hybrid workers a more fluid way to collaborate and share documents.

The new service is based on the Fluid Framework tools the company launched in 2020.

Loop consists of three elements - Loop components, Loop pages, and Loop workspaces - and is described as an app that "combines a powerful and flexible canvas with portable components that move freely and stay in sync across apps".

Essentially, Microsoft is looking to offer more value for 365 subscribers and improve the ways they can work together in hybrid environments.

Loop components is an evolution of Fluid components, which are single units of productivity that help users collaborate and complete tasks, whether that's over chat, email, meetings or documents. It can be as simple as a list, or as sophisticated as a customer sales opportunity, according to Microsoft, with the service remaining in sync, no matter where a user works.

This includes a voting table, which Microsoft says makes it easy for teams to brainstorm and finalise decisions together. There is also a 'status tracker' that teams can use to gather information, track progress of a project and monitor the status of the team's involvement.

Loop components will also have some business-specific features, such as Dynamics 365 records, which is aimed at business workflows.

Loop pages are also part of Loop components. These are flexible canvases where teams can organise their components, pulling together files, links or other forms of data to help their collaborative workflows. Pages are "optimised for thinking together and getting work done", according to Microsoft, where they can start small and continue to grow to match the size of the team's ideas.

The final element is Loop workspaces, which are shared spaces that allow teams to see and group their projects. It allows all members of the team to catch up on what everyone is working on, react to ideas and track the progress of team goals.

There isn't an official release date for Loop but Components have begun to be released for some Microsoft services. At present, there isn't any dedicated support in Microsoft Teams, but an app is thought to be in the works.

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In association with Daisy and Microsoft, this IT Pro special report explores the transformation of productivity from Benjamin Franklin’s primitive to-do list in 1791 to the digital business enablers of today.

Download the resources now to see how all offerings in the Microsoft 365 portfolio can help your business thrive in its new hybrid work model, with tips for a successful roll out.

Microsoft has announced the general availability of the non-subscription versions of Office 2021 for Windows and macOS, which are aimed at non-cloud-based users.

The Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) version of Microsoft Office is designed for government and commercial customers that operate in highly regulated industries that are typically unable to update their devices with traditional feature updates. This also includes process control devices on manufacturing floors, and speciality systems that cannot connect to the internet.

The company said that some of its customers still weren’t ready to move to the cloud and it would remain committed to supporting such customers with these types of updates.

"While it offers performance improvements and expanded accessibility, it will not offer the cloud-based capabilities of Microsoft 365 Apps like real-time collaboration and AI-driven automation in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well as security and compliance capabilities that give added confidence in a hybrid world," said Jared Spataro, corporate vice president for Microsoft 365, in a blog post.

Office LTSC 2021 is only available to organizations through a volume licensing agreement and is separate from the version of Office that's available through Microsoft 365 (or Office 365) plans. The Windows version of LTSC Office will also only run on Windows 10 and Windows 11.

For macOS devices, volume-licensed customers can install Office LTSC Standard for Mac 2021 using the steps described in the deployment guide for Office for Mac.

In an overview, Microsoft said that various packages of Office LTSC 2021 are available for enterprise admins to download and deploy to the users in their organization. The products available to download and install include: Office LTSC Professional Plus 2021, Office LTSC Standard 2021, Project Professional 2021, Project Standard 2021, Visio LTSC Professional 2021, and Visio LTSC Standard 2021.

The core apps of Office haven’t changed, and still include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, among others.

This version of Office also replaces the Skype for Business client with Microsoft Teams, although the former can still be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center.

In February, Microsoft reduced the lifecycles of its LTSC products from ten to five years, which includes Office LTSC 2021. After Mainstream Support ends, Microsoft will not be offering extended support to its products.

Microsoft has announced the acquisition of Clipchamp, an Australian in-browser video-editing platform used by 17 million people worldwide.

Clipchamp will become a part of Office 365, allowing users to create and edit videos using easily manageable tools – demand for which increased significantly during the pandemic.

Commenting on the acquisition, Office Media Group Corporate VP Chris Pratley described Clipchamp as “a natural fit to extend the cloud-powered productivity experiences in Microsoft 365 for individuals, families, schools, and businesses”.

Addressing existing Clipchamp users, Pratley said that “it’s all going to get better with more options, more power, and the easy creation experience you love”.

Microsoft didn’t reveal the financial details of the transaction and didn’t specify when Clipchamp will become available on Office 365. However, a spokesperson for the tech giant told CNBC that it “will have a process to eventually convert existing Clipchamp users/customers to Microsoft subscribers”.

Founded in 2014, Clipchamp is headquartered in Brisbane, Australia, with around 90 employees. In April 2020, the company announced plans to open its first US office in Seattle, 25km away from Microsoft’s main headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Prior to the acquisition, the tech giant had featured Clipchamp in its Insider Preview Build, helping it to significantly grow its customer base.

In July 2021, Clipchamp announced that it had surpassed 17 million registered users across 390,000+ companies, with a year over year increase of 54%. The achievement was largely credited to the shift to remote working, with office workers turning to video-editing tools to create presentations, training videos, and other corporate communications.

“While social media videos have always been at the forefront of business needs, during the past year we’ve also witnessed the rapid adoption of internal communication use cases where there is a lot of screen and webcam recording taking place in our platform,” Clipchamp CEO Alexander Dreiling said at the time.

“The need for video templates has also accelerated, with templates usage up more than 180% YOY, because they allow users with limited video editing skills and time to create a professional-grade video within minutes.”

The heightened demand for video-editing services has led to tech giants choosing to invest, sometimes heavily, in companies offering such tools. Last month, Adobe splashed out $1.276 billion (roughly £937m) on video collaboration start-up Frame.io, while in September 2020, Oracle took a 12.5% stake in TikTok Global – which Microsoft was also interested in buying.

News of Microsoft's Clipchamp acquisition comes just weeks after the tech giant announced price increases for its Office 365 subscriptions in a bid to add new "innovations" to the service, including the addition of “unlimited dial-in capabilities for Microsoft Teams meetings” for its enterprise, business, frontline, and government customers.

Microsoft has revealed a new design for Microsoft 365, which it says will be available for both Windows 11 and Windows 10 users and will come with support for 64-bit Arm processors.

The announcement coincided with the release of the first preview build of Windows 11, the tech giant's next iteration of its flagship operating system.

The refresh to Microsoft 365 comes on the tenth anniversary of Office 365's initial release and was based on customer feedback, according to Microsoft. Users called for a "more natural and consistent experience" between applications - specifically on Windows - which is why the new design has similarities to the recently announced Windows 11 layout.

The update has a "familiar" user interface, but with the Fluent Design principles seen on Windows 11 across all applications including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access, Project, Publisher, and Visio.

What's more, the update will be automatically available to any Office Insiders running beta channel builds and can easily be turned off using the "Coming Soon" feature, which is located in the top right corner of the menu. In Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote, users need to click the megaphone icon to open the "Coming Soon" pane, and use the toggle to move between the new and current interface, and apply the setting to all the Office apps.

In addition to the design refresh is a new 64-bit version of Office for Windows on Arm-powered machines, where it's been recompiled for Arm architecture. The idea is that it will offer a faster experience, boost memory availability, abd provide better support for large documents, all while maintaining compatibility with existing 64-bit add-ins using the new x64 emulation capability provided by Windows.

The Windows 11 preview build (22000.51) is available now to Windows Insiders, and includes access to the new Start menu, multitasking features, and overhauled Microsoft Store. Unlike the leaked version of the build, this official preview also features an updated File Explorer that replaces the ribbon with a command bar.

Windows 11, the latest iteration of Microsoft's flagship operating system, started rolling out on 5 October.

It's being deployed in phases, so you'll need to check whether it's available your Windows laptop or desktop PC has the required specifications before you can install it. If not, Windows 11 could be worth waiting for, with its revamped design, central start menu, the choice between Windows 11 Home vs Pro, dedicated Microsoft Teams button and much more.

Central Start Menu

The first change most users will see is the new central Start menu, which has been repositioned to add a "sense of calm and ease", according to Microsoft.

On first impression, it does appear less complex than the Start men of old, especially with the 'Start button' sitting in a more accessible place on the toolbar. The operation seems very similar to the macOS toolbar and this is likely to be the first new feature to come under user scrutiny.

Snap Layouts

Like with most changes these days, Windows 11 looks like it has the hybrid workforce in mind. This is most apparent with the Snap Layouts, Snap Groups and Desktop features.

The idea is to turn (or snap) into other apps that Windows 11 supports without clogging up your screen space or plugging in an external monitor. All this will be organised via Snap Groups where you can view which apps you still have running and which ones you can exit.

Microsoft Teams integration

Microsoft Teams has gone from strength to strength during the pandemic and Microsoft hopes to solidify those gains by natively integrating the collaboration tool into Windows 11.

What's unclear is how much Microsoft will push Teams on users of rival services like Slack or Facebook Workplace, although recent efforts to promote its Edge browser to Windows users suggest pop-up style adverts may be on the way.

"This innovation is well-timed for the COVID world, which has (re)established the centrality of the PC to the future of work and to digital life," said J.P. Gownder, VP and principal analyst at Forrester. "Whether these features pop for employees remains to be seen, but they're directionally aligned to the new world of hybrid work."

Faster updates

Another great innovation for Windows 11 is the promise that updates will be 40% smaller than those pushed to Windows 10, which, in turn, should significantly speed up the update process and make it less of a burden for users. Updates will also happen in the background, which potentially means a PC will update without the need for constant user interaction or interruptions to work.

Same code base as Windows 10

Speaking of updates, Microsoft has clearly learned its lesson when it comes to OS upgrades, and is keen to avoid the debacle that was Vista and its many incompatible drivers. It's why many people still clung to Windows 7, long after Windows Vista and Windows 8 had come and gone.

Windows 11 has been built on the same code base as Windows 10, meaning that when the time comes to upgrade, the process should be relatively painless for users.

"That's good news," said Gownder. "It means that the application and driver 'breakage' that famously plagued OS releases like Windows Vista is unlikely to occur. And Win32 apps will still be able to run natively on Windows 11."

Android apps

Android apps will run natively on Windows 11 for the first time and you can access them through the Microsoft Store, although the apps won’t be available at the launch of the OS.

This is because of a partnership with Intel and Amazon which allows Microsoft to use the former’s Bridge technology. This tech is a runtime post-compiler that enables applications that were originally designed for different hardware platforms to run natively on x86 devices.

Microsoft also said that this was part of an ongoing XPU strategy, so it is probable that in the future the tech giant might introduce more than just Android apps to Windows 11.

Developer policy change

Windows 11 will also introduce a brand new store to users and, maybe more importantly, the store will also bring in a fairly significant policy change for app developers.

From 28 July, developers will be able to utilise their own third party payment systems within their apps, and Microsoft will allow them to keep 100% of the revenue, with the only exception to this rule being gaming apps.

The intention of this policy is to attract more developers to the Microsoft Store, although there is a suggestion the tech giant is firing a shot at companies like Google and Apple for the way they aggressively implement app payment policies.

Cortana ousted from the boot-up

During the initial setup of a new Windows machine, you'd have to search far and wide to find someone that found Cortana, Microsoft’s voice assistant, helpful during this process. In Windows 10, the assistant is programmed to automatically begin speaking when you open a laptop for the first time, and it can be troublesome to switch off. Thankfully, Windows 11 has scrapped this feature entirely.

A Derbyshire-based Microsoft reseller is suing the company for £270 million in damages for allegedly trying to destroy its business model by incentivising customers to migrate towards its cloud-based services.

ValueLicensing operates by purchasing second-hand perpetual Microsoft licenses, such as Office 2019 or Visio 2016, from companies that are either upgrading their IT estates or have declared insolvency. It then sells these on to other organisations at a discounted price, saving them money against purchasing first-hand licenses from Microsoft.

However, since 2016, Microsoft has been persuading companies to give up their licenses in exchange for discounts on its cloud-based services, rather than sell these on to companies like ValueLicensing, Softcorner, and Preo.

The effect is a reduction in the size of the used licenses market and a reduction in supply for Microsoft resellers, according to ValueLicensing founder Jonathan Horley, speaking to the Financial Times. This amounts to Microsoft “abusing its power” as it deprives businesses of the option of buying used IT services.

The firm is now seeking damages in the order of £270 million for loss of sales in the UK and the EU from 2016 to date, as well as interest, declaratory relief, other relief, and associated costs, according to a ValueLicensing spokesperson.

“Microsoft has sought, over the last several years, to shift its business model from selling perpetual licenses to selling periodic subscriptions,” the spokesperson told IT Pro. “Rather than paying once for perpetual licenses, with occasional paid upgrades or software assurance contracts, customers pay for subscriptions on a recurring basis.

“Since Microsoft 365 subscribers take Microsoft services (such as email and file hosting) as well as using Office applications, they provide Microsoft with greater opportunities further to increase its average revenue per user by up-selling those users to higher subscription tiers, additional functionality, additional services, and more storage. Offering cloud-based services to subscription customers also allows Microsoft to gather valuable data through its customers’ use of those services.”

Speaking to the FT, Horley added that Microsoft has a highly lucrative incentive to remove the older perpetual licenses from the market, with customers having little choice but to move to its subscription model as a result.

The developer has long been keen on transitioning more and more of its customers to its cloud-based services, such as the newly rebranded Microsoft 365. This suite encompasses the breadth of the firm’s workplace services, including Outlook and Teams.

Horley’s accusation that Microsoft is reducing the size of the used perpetual licenses market fits into the wider trends generally.

For instance, despite recently launching a standalone Office 2021 suite, Microsoft only plans to offer support for five years, excluding extended support, instead of the standard ten years it’s offered with previous releases. Office 2019, similarly, was launched with just five years of support. Pricing for Office Professional Plus, Office Standard, and individual apps will also increase by 10% for commercial customers against Office 2019.

IT Pro has asked Microsoft for comment.

Microsoft has launched a bug bounty reward programme for its Teams desktop client with potential rewards of up to $30,000.

The reward scheme falls under the new Microsoft Applications Bounty Programme, which so far only covers Microsoft Teams but will be expanded to include others in the near future.

Lynn Miyashita, programme manager at Microsoft Security Response Centre (MSRC), said: “Partnering with the security research community is an important part of Microsoft’s holistic approach to defending against security threats. As much of the world has shifted to working from home in the last year, Microsoft Teams has enabled people to stay connected, organized, and collaborate remotely.

“Microsoft and security researchers across the planet continue to partner to help secure customers and the technologies we use for remote collaboration.”

The programme includes scenario-based bounty awards for vulnerabilities that have the highest potential impact on customer privacy and security. The rewards for this range between $6,000 to $30,000.

There are also general bounty rewards for other valid vulnerability reports for the Teams desktop client, with the rewards ranging from $500 to $15,000. Microsoft will also accept submissions for Teams online services, but those will be rewarded under the Online Services Bounty Program, where rewards are between $500 to $20,000.

Valid reports for Microsoft Teams research are also eligible for a 2x bonus multiplier under the Research Recognition Programme, the company has confirmed. These points contribute to a researcher’s eligibility for the annual MSRC Most Valuable Security Researcher list.

In August 2020, it emerged that Microsoft paid out $13.7m (£10.5m) across 15 bounty programmes during the last 12 months, over three times the amount paid to researchers in the same period during 2018/2019. The biggest single reward was $200,000, with 1,226 eligible vulnerability reports being filed during the period.

Microsoft has announced it’s increased the file size upload limit for Microsoft 365 from 100 GB to 250 GB, making it easier for users to store, sync, and share large files to SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive.

“So now, you will be able to easily share large files like a 3D model of a new building, a client commercial shot in 8K video, a large dataset for a vaccine trial or research projects or large videos for educational projects,” explained Microsoft.

According to Microsoft, the upgrade will help address remote working and learning challenges imposed by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. It’s also good for personal use, as users can transfer zip files from their PC to OneDrive and share them conveniently with friends or family.

Microsoft said it achieved the 250 GB data limit by splitting each file into chunks and encrypting each piece with a unique key, optimizing storage for upload performance. All users’ files are backed up in massively scalable Azure Storage to ensure greater availability. Lastly, the differential sync feature accelerates uploads and only syncs recent changes made to files, reducing network utilization.

Whether editing files in OneDrive, sharing projects for review in SharePoint, or collaborating in Teams, users can easily upload and download large files when and where they need them.

“As remote work and learning increases so does the need to reliably and securely share large files-4K or 8K video files, 3D models, CAD files, or large scientific data sets-with co-workers, clients and peers. At Microsoft we're perpetually working to enable and support workers all over the world. We are always striving to innovate and empower our users to be more productive. At the same time, we are extremely grateful to our customers and partners for all the helpful and insightful feedback – particularly in industries such as heavy manufacturing, transportation, healthcare, and media for our latest enhancement,” said Microsoft.

Support for the new 250 GB file size limit will roll out by the end of January, and all users will get the upgrade by the end of Q1 2021.

Microsoft has announced that it is updating its Office productivity suite to run natively on Macs powered by Apple’s new Arm-based M1 processor.

In a statement, the firm said its core flagship Office apps - Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote –- will run “faster and take full advantage of the performance improvements on new Macs”.

Notable by its absence from this line up is Microsoft Teams, although the communications app will it work in Rosetta emulation mode on Apple Silicon-powered Macs.

The updates will be universal, which means that Office will be able to run both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs. The apps have also had a bit of a facelift to match the look of macOS Big Sur.

“We are working on universal app support for M1 Macs and will share more news as our work progresses,” said Microsoft.

Mac users who have automatic updates turned on will start to receive these updates now. Everyone else can go to the Mac App Store and click the Updates tab.

Outlook users not only get support for M1-based Macs, but now have added support for iCloud accounts, so they can bring together work and personal emails, contacts, and calendars together in one app. The new Outlook for Mac will also support shared calendars for customers subscribed to the Office Insider Mac Beta Channel in the first months of next year.

Microsoft also announced it will finally be bringing Microsoft Editor in Word for Mac. It plans to make these updates available to customers with access to Microsoft 365 for Insiders in early 2021.

Microsoft will change the way its new Productivity Score feature works so that companies can no longer see data about individual employees.

The move comes after privacy experts voiced concerns that the feature would be a "snooper’s charter" for bosses to spy on workers.

The “Productivity Score” feature was launched in October this year as part of Microsoft 365 and enabled companies to see how employees use Microsoft applications to get work done. However, the same feature allows employers to see individual data by default.

This led to some privacy experts lambasting the feature as a “full-fledged workplace surveillance tool”. Wolfie Christl of the independent Cracked Labs digital research institute in Vienna, Austria, said in a series of tweets that “employers/managers can analyze employee activities at the individual level (!), for example, the number of days an employee has been sending emails, using the chat, using ‘mentions’ in emails etc.”.

Jared Spataro, Microsoft 365 corporate vice president, in a blog post, said that “going forward, the communications, meetings, content collaboration, teamwork, and mobility measures in Productivity Score will only aggregate data at the organization level—providing a clear measure of organization-level adoption of key features.

"No one in the organization will be able to use Productivity Score to access data about how an individual user is using apps and services in Microsoft 365”.

He said that the company now realised that there was some confusion about the capabilities of the product.

“Productivity Score produces a score for the organisation and was never designed to score individual users. We’ll make that clearer in the user interface and improve our privacy disclosures in the product to ensure that IT admins know exactly what we do and don’t track,” he said.

Sparato added that the feedback received about the feature has meant that it would move “quickly to respond by removing user names entirely from the product. This change will ensure that Productivity Score can’t be used to monitor individual employees.”

Millions of Internet Explorer users will be locked out of Microsoft Teams unless they upgrade to Microsoft’s Edge browser instead.

Starting today, the web conferencing service will no longer be available on the legacy browser. The move was announced earlier in the year as part of a push by Microsoft to get people to upgrade to its Chromium-based Edge browser before IE reaches end of life in 2021.

Microsoft warns that if users try and access Teams on the unsupported browser, it will display a message explaining the issue and the session limitations. The message also encourages the user to download and use the Teams desktop client or to upgrade to Microsoft Edge, which has been designed to offer “faster and more responsive web access to greater sets of features in everyday toolsets like Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, and more”.

In addition to losing Teams, Internet Explorer is also set to lose access to Microsoft 365. Support for the service on IE11 draws to a close on 17 August 2021, while the legacy version of Microsoft Edge will also reach end of support on 9 March next year.

These changes were announced in a blog post earlier this year. "We’re announcing that Microsoft 365 apps and services will no longer support Internet Explorer 11 (IE 11) by this time next year," the company said. "Beginning November 30 2020, the Microsoft Teams web app will no longer support IE 11. Beginning August 17 2021, the remaining Microsoft 365 apps and services will no longer support IE 11,” the firm said.

"This means that after the above dates, customers will have a degraded experience or will be unable to connect to Microsoft 365 apps and services on IE 11. For degraded experiences, new Microsoft 365 features will not be available or certain features may cease to work when accessing the app or service via IE 11.

"While we know this change will be difficult for some customers, we believe that customers will get the most out of Microsoft 365 when using the new Microsoft Edge. We are committed to helping make this transition as smooth as possible,” the company added.

The move comes as Microsoft attempts to standardise its online offering around Chromium-based browsers such as Edge and Google Chrome.

Microsoft Teams will provide support for multiple users and organizations on its desktop versions, according to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap website. Users will be able to add other accounts, including one personal and one school or work account. These accounts will be able to have separate profile pictures, and users can switch between them through their settings.

The feature is in development and will arrive to Microsoft Teams commercial and education users worldwide in December. This update applies to the desktop app. The mobile version already supports switching between personal and business accounts.

Microsoft Teams, initially launched in November 2016, is a chat-based collaboration tool within the Microsoft Office 365 suite of services. It gives in-office and remote teams a shared space to collaborate on projects and share information. Teams’ features include one-on-one chat, team chat, document collaboration, and more. Microsoft Teams is also integrated with Skype, SharePoint, Exchange, and Yammer.

Teams app has made several updates recently, including

• The ability to appear offline to contacts
• Support for up to 1,000 participants
• Zapier, an automation app, will allow users to connect their apps and create automated workflows, reduce busywork and improve productivity.

Future features include Together mode (pulling users together into a virtual space), custom layouts, breakout rooms, meeting recaps and improved search results.

The coronavirus pandemic has spurred an increase of corporate and personal Microsoft Teams use, growing from 44 million to 115 million users in just six months.

Microsoft has announced updates to its Office suite that brings mouse and trackpad support to its Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps on the iPad.

The updates will arrive in a phased rollout over the next few weeks, but some users may have already received the added functionality.

“We know the Office experience on iPad is an important tool for the many people who use it to work, learn and create," said Bill Doll, a senior product marketing manager at Microsoft.

"The latest iPad Pro, iPad Air and iPad models have introduced powerful new features and capabilities to enable people to be productive in more ways. Accordingly, we have made several updates to the Office apps to take advantage of these enhancements and make it even easier to work on iPad."

This past spring, Apple took steps to give its 2020 iPad the mouse and trackpad capabilities, making it a more viable option to replace business laptops. Unfortunately, Microsoft's Office app users had to wait for this user-friendly update before they could take advantage of the new capabilities.

Microsoft says the new updates will also include new start screens and a new ribbon of feature menus and build on the MS fluent design language across the apps.

Doll adds: “These enhancements provide a cleaner and more modern user experience which has proven to help people more easily find what they need and focus on the task at hand.”

Microsoft claims that it’s not done there. The company will also release more updates over the next few months to improve the iPad app user experience, including document support in Excel, offline file support for cloud files and powerful contextual menus.

Microsoft began automatically installing Office progressive web apps (PWAs) on some Windows 10 PCs, and reports indicate Microsoft is doing this without user permission.

PWAs are web-based apps that are accessible through browsers, such as Chrome and Microsoft Edge. Microsoft currently offers five Office apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook. Normally, you need a Microsoft account to access these web apps and must install them manually using Edge or Chrome.

Microsoft now appears to be experimenting with a new feature that will add PWAs to your Windows 10 device without approval. This comes after the recent stable update of Microsoft’s Chromium-based Edge browser. As of now, Microsoft is A/B testing on select Windows 10 Insider customers’ devices. However, it could also extend to non-Insider machines.

If launched, the PWAs will open in Microsoft Edge with a minimal browser interface, similar to a native app. Users can also expect shortcuts in the Start menu. Netizens have expressed mixed views on Microsoft’s forced Edge experiment.

“Microsoft is performing a test where they are installing a suite of Office progressive web apps in Windows 10 without asking permission from the user. Isn't that the definition of Malware? Or at least a PUP?," commented one user.

“If Companies don't push new features to users, most of the users don't find out what's new,” said another user.

If you don’t want to use Office web apps, uninstalling is relatively easy. Head to the Control Panel, click “Programs & Features” and uninstall the apps. You can also uninstall the apps directly in Microsoft Edge by typing “edge://apps” into the URL box.

Microsoft has suffered a second global outage within a week, with users being unable to access their Outlook accounts, the tech giant has confirmed.

The reports come just days after the company said it had fixed a global outage that affected its Microsoft 365 platform. Microsoft services including Azure, Outlook, Office, Power Platform, Dynamics365, and Microsoft Teams were down for around five hours on Monday.

This latest outage began at around 2am ET, with Microsoft initially suggesting the issue was only affecting users based in India, according to a status update on Twitter. However, customers from around the world soon replied that they were also experiencing problems.

"We've collected additional data from the affected infrastructures to determine impact to our Exchange online protocols," the tech giant tweeted. "Additionally, we've identified this issue to be affecting users worldwide. Further details can be found in your admin center under EX223208."

Microsoft has said that a recent configuration update to components that route user requests was the cause of the outage. It has now "reverted" this update and will continue to monitor the service for signs of recovery.

The company's outage on Monday was also blamed on unexpected errors relating to a recent update, although reverting this update did not immediately solve the problem.

"Rolling back the previously described change did not resolve the incident as expected," Microsoft said on its Office status page. "We're evaluating additional options to remediate the problem."

For Wednesday's outage, the rollback has "mitigated impact" for affected features in SharePoint and Teams, Microsoft tweeted. It also said that the majority of users were "seeing recovery".

Microsoft 365 is back online after suffering a major global service outage on Monday.

The outage, which lasted for more than five hours, affected Microsoft services including Azure, Outlook.com, Office.com, Power Platform, Dynamics365, and Microsoft Teams.

The downtime affected "millions" of users of Microsoft's cloud-based services, according to reports, but Microsoft said people who were logged into an existing 365 session were still able to keep using the service.

“Affected users are encouraged to keep existing sessions going and to avoid re-authenticating to Microsoft 365 services," the company said. "Any Microsoft 365 service that leverages Azure Active Directory (AAD) authentication may be impacted by this issue."

Microsoft initially said the problem was linked to a recent update and restored the software to an earlier version. However, that fix failed to restore services.

“Rolling back the previously described change did not resolve the incident as expected,” Microsoft said on its Office.com status page. “We’re evaluating additional options to remediate the problem.”

About two hours later the company said it was seeing improvements after putting in place alternative mitigation steps.

"After extended monitoring of our service, we have confirmed that the issue has been fully mitigated and is running within optimal service levels," it said.

The Microsoft 365 outage, which comes just months after Microsoft Teams went down across Europe, is particularly problematic given how many users are currently reliant on its services to perform work remotely. In April, Microsoft reported 75 million daily active users of Teams as a result of more people working from home.

Several Twitter users also complained that the outage meant they could miss their job interviews and deadlines for school assignments.

Microsoft said it will be reviewing its code to understand what prevented users from being able to access multiple Microsoft 365 services.

Microsoft has suggested it will launch its Office productivity suite of apps and services in the form of a refreshed ‘perpetual licence’ edition, two years after the launch of Office 2019.

Expected to be sold at a standalone cost to customers on Windows and Mac, this variety of Microsoft Office will bring the apps and services that compromise the Microsoft 365 suite to enterprises that don’t wish to buy a subscription.

The perpetual licence, touted to launch in the second half of 2021, may come as welcome news to businesses not yet fully enticed by the nature of cloud services.

Office 2019, launched for Windows 10 devices two years ago, was released with a reduced extended support period against that offered in previous offline editions, namely Office 2016.

Although Microsoft offered five years of mainstream support, lasting through to 2023, the firm would only offer an additional two years of extended support, with updates ending on 14 October 2025. This was in order for the Office 2019 end-of-life cycle to align with Office 2016.

The announcement of another standalone Office suite, likely to be named Office 2022 based on historical naming conventions, suggests Microsoft has backed away from intentions to phase out this form of software launch. The firm had previously hinted it would abandon standalone releases and instead encourage its customers to opt for subscription-based services, honed by the launch of Microsoft 365 earlier this year.

"Software that is more than a decade old, and hasn't benefited from this innovation, is difficult to secure and inherently less productive,” Barnardo Caldas, general manager for Windows and Jared Spataro, general manager for Office said in a joint blog post to mark the launch of Office 2019, for instance. “As the pace of change accelerates, it has become imperative to move our software to a more modern cadence."

The firm announced the expected launch of a new ‘perpetual licnece’ for Microsoft Office alongside updates on Exchange Server as part of its Microsoft Ignite 2020 event.

The apps and services that will be available with this edition of Microsoft Office are also yet to be confirmed, although Office 2019 launched with a host of services, many of which are likely to be bundled into the release again.

These included Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, Visio, Access, and Project at launch, as well as Exchange Server, Skype for Business Server, SharePoint Server, Project Server and Office Online Server released later down the line.

Microsoft has said it would share additional details around the official names, pricing and availability of this edition of Microsoft Office in the near future.

T-Mobile has unveiled new rate plans for small business with Microsoft 365 included, which have been designed to give customers access to Office apps, cloud services, device management and advanced security.

Access to Microsoft 365 Business Basic on T-Mobile’s Magenta for Business Plans now comes at no extra charge on up to two lines per account, while the service provider has also upgraded its 7,000-plus retail stores, as well as more than doubled its team of specially-trained experts to help better support SMBs.

Announcing the new plans, T-Mobile said it has reimagined its offerings to help small businesses save time and money, boost productivity, as well as suitably equip them to "navigate new realities".

"We celebrate small businesses every day at T-Mobile - they are the backbone of our communities. Today, we're going even bigger for small businesses with Microsoft 365 on Us, providing critical Microsoft tools to help them survive and thrive in the face of new realities," commented Mike Katz, EVP of T-Mobile for Business.

"Additionally, small business owners now have a new experience when they step into retail stores with highly trained mobile experts ready to serve them and other small businesses in the area. These businesses have endured such great challenges in 2020, and we want them to know - we're with you."

The new Magenta for Business and Magenta for Business Plus include Microsoft’s 365 productivity suite of tools for no extra charge and, for a limited time, T-Mobile is offering switchers up to 90 days of free wireless service.

On top of the freshly-redesigned small-business plans, T-Mobile said it is doubling down on its support for SMBs, with the service provider more than doubling its number of dedicated staff and increasing business space in-store by 500%.

"T-Mobile and Microsoft have a shared commitment to helping small businesses save time and money by providing the tools and technology they need to succeed both now and into the future," said Mark Kroese, General Manager at Microsoft 365 for SMB.

"With the new offering, T-Mobile is making Microsoft 365 tools available to T-Mobile for Business customers, and in the process helping small business owners stay connected and productive in a new world of remote work."

Microsoft has announced it's ending support for Internet Explorer 11 across its 365 apps and services in 2021.

On 17 August 2021, the browser will no longer be supported on OneDrive, Outlook and more. There is less time for Internet Explorer 11 on the Microsoft Teams web app, which will lose support on 30 November this year.

This means that anyone using IE 11 to connect to Microsoft 365 apps will see a serious drop in performance if still using the browser in the latter months of 2021, and some features may stop working entirely.

This includes enterprise users, which the firm hopes to appease with the new Internet Explorer legacy mode in the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser, which will allow businesses to access old sites that were specifically built for Internet Explorer.

The tech giant has been scaling back its support for the ageing web browser for a number of years. The Edge browser was first unveiled in 2015, under the codename 'Project Spartan', which many believe is the beginning of the end for the Internet Explorer brand. Microsoft now labels the latter as a "compatibility solution" rather than a browser, with the aim of discouraging businesses from using it.

While Microsoft is hoping users will start using its Edge browser, a number of users have been searching for ways to uninstall it. However, that isn't possible, according to a Microsoft FAQ.

"The new version of Microsoft Edge gives users full control over importing personal data from the legacy version of Microsoft Edge," the FAQ reads. "The new version of Microsoft Edge is included in a Windows system update, so the option to uninstall it or use the legacy version of Microsoft Edge will no longer be available."

Microsoft is routinely sharing business customers’ data, including personal and corporate information, with Facebook and other third parties despite publicly claiming it doesn’t, according to a lawsuit.

Although the company claims to keep Office 365 and Microsoft Exchange business customers’ data secure, Microsoft is being sued for allegedly sharing the content of business customers’ emails, documents, contacts, and other information, without their consent.

A lawsuit filed with the US District Court, Northern District of California also claims Microsoft inappropriately uses its business customers’ data to derive insights and develop new products and services which it sells to others.

The class-action lawsuit has accused the company of misrepresenting its privacy and security practices, violating federal and state laws, and illegally sharing customer data with the likes of Facebook, other third-parties, and subcontractors.

“Like a mantra, Microsoft has repeatedly promised business customers that it will use their content and data exclusively to provide them with the purchased services; that, solely for those purposes, it will share their data with its subcontractors and certain others only on a need-to-know basis; and that it will never share the customer’s data with third parties at all,” the lawsuit said.

“In fact, contrary to its representations, Microsoft has regularly shared - and continues to share- its business customers’ data with Facebook and other third parties.

“The details shared even when neither the customers nor their contacts are Facebook users. And, once Facebook obtains the data, harmful consequences can follow, as demonstrated by the data harvesting debacle orchestrated by Cambridge Analytica targeting the 2016 national election, using data obtained by Facebook.”

The information allegedly being shared includes the content of business customers’ emails, documents, contacts, calendars, location data, audio files, and video files, among other forms of data. Those taking legal action are concerned that Microsoft has shared such data with “hundreds of subcontracts” that have since suffered data breaches, in addition to the likes of Facebook app developers.

Also in a violation of public statements, Microsoft has apparently used business data to develop new products and services to sell to others, to glean business intelligence, and to derive general commercial benefit.

Data-sharing with Facebook has garnered particular attention in the lawsuit, particularly given how routinely it finds itself reeling from data breaches and data-sharing complaints. The social media giant, as of last February, was the subject of ten major GDPR investigations, for example.

The lawsuit claims that although Facebook is not necessary to provide Office 365 or Exchange Online services to Microsoft’s business customers, the company routinely and automatically shares its customers’ contacts with the company without consent.

Even if a customer discovers and disables Facebook-sharing, the fact the software shares this data by default from the very start means the damage is done. This is compounded by a Microsoft-written explanation in technical instruction that once contacts are transferred to Facebook, they cannot be deleted from Facebook systems except by Facebook.

Moreover, because Microsoft shares data with Facebook, the lawsuit asserts this customer data is accessible not just by Facebook, but also by whichever entity Facebook shares the data with, and whichever entity those entities share the data with “ad infinitum”.

“We’re aware of the suit and will review it carefully," a Microsoft spokesperson told IT Pro.

"However, while the allegations themselves are not very specific, as we understand them we don’t believe they have merit. We have an established history of both robust privacy protections and transparency, and we’re confident that our use of customer data is consistent with the instructions of our customers and our contractual commitments.”

Microsoft has announced several new efficiency-boosting functions across OneDrive, SharePoint and Microsoft Teams.

The new features, all of which are coming in over the next few weeks, aim to improve internal collaboration and tighten administrative controls.

It starts with a public preview for a file-sharing featured called 'Add to OneDrive' which will roll out towards the end of July. This is a service to streamline the process of adding shared files, which allows content from Microsoft Teams and SharePoint libraries to be added directly into a user's OneDrive.

Additionally, this shared content can be synced, reshared, and worked on without compromising its existing security compliance policies. With the preview, all users within an organisation will have this option enabled as default, but that can be shut off by admins.

"Files are often the starting point for getting work done and staying connected," Microsoft 365's general manager, Seth Patton, wrote in a blog post.

"Memos, presentations, photos, videos – these are the conduit for more fruitful interactions. That's why we're excited to announce new OneDrive features across Microsoft 365 that bring a more connected and flexible files experience to business users, more control to admins, and a more personal touch to everyone at home."

The updates also include a sharing integration with Microsoft Teams. Similar to the file-sharing experience business users already have with OneDrive, Outlook or Office, Teams will have an option to create sharing links that give access to others within their organisation, including those in a private or group chat.

There are also new functions for syncing metadata that allows businesses to edit content in synced libraries. There's an increase in the size of a file that can be uploaded to OneDrive and SharePoint, now at 100GB.

For administrators, OneDrive will offer more controls and oversight for file-sharing, such as synced admin reports. These allow admins to view the status of synced apps across an organisation via a dashboard. What's more, admins will also be able to set time limits on file access.

The new updates also include a dark mode for the web version of OneDrive, which is already available for its iOS and Android versions.

Microsoft has announced it’s created a new list-making app for businesses using its Microsoft 365 services. Not to be confused with Microsoft’s To Do tool, Lists builds on the “the foundational innovation of SharePoint lists” and will integrate with Microsoft Teams, SharePoint and Outlook. Expected to launch this summer, Microsoft also has a Lists mobile app slated to launch later in 2020.

Microsoft describes Lists as a tool designed to “track issues, assets, routines, contacts, inventory and more using customizable views and smart rules and alerts to keep everyone in sync.” Based on what the company has shared thus far, Lists will also feature various premade templates related to team contacts, event itineraries, business travel and onboarding checklists.

With three main views for lists, including grid, gallery and calendar views, Lists appears to be a highly flexible tool. While the primary grid view includes rows and columns the user can configure and reorder, Lists’ gallery view can be used for lists with images. Meanwhile, Lists’ calendar view makes it the ideal choice when configuring lists with dates.

Another major feature touted in Microsoft Lists is the tool’s ability to create if/then-style rules. “Once you decide on the outcome, click through if/then steps to evolve your rules,” Microsoft explained in its announcement. “Choose people, status, and value changes to send notifications or programmatically update values elsewhere in the list. Finally, use rules to set reminders to keep you and your team informed.”

While Microsoft has yet to unleash Lists in full, the company hinted there will be more details available when Lists officially rolls out this summer.

Microsoft’s broader suite of productivity and business apps doesn’t always get as much attention as other areas like Windows or Azure during developer conferences like Build, but this year’s show saw some notable announcements for customers.

The most eye-catching is a brand-new addition to the portfolio in the form of Microsoft Lists, but there were also previews of some of the smart under-the-hood features that Microsoft is planning to bring to its apps in the near future.

Microsoft Build 2020: Newly-announced Microsoft 365 products

Microsoft Lists

Just weeks after Microsoft finally shuttered the popular Wunderlist productivity app that it purchased in 2015, the company has announced its own souped-up productivity tracker in the form of Microsoft Lists. The latest addition to the Microsoft 365 portfolio, Lists integrates with Teams, SharePoint, Excel and other products, and will start rolling out this summer.

The app acts as a super-powered amalgamation of to-do list, calendar and project management tool, allowing you to share lists with team members, categorise them with labels and other data, and even create simple automation rules to automatically update specific fields or notify certain people. Developers can also use Power Apps and Power Automate to make Lists even more flexible.

Microsoft Build 2020: Microsoft 365 products now in preview

Fluid Framework

Previously announced at last year’s Ignite conference, the Fluid Framework is Microsoft’s latest effort to integrate its Office apps by allowing users to create and embed dynamic components that can be ported and accessed between apps, and this year’s Build saw the first demonstration of how it’s going to work in practice. The system is based on compartmentalising elements into ‘Fluid Components’; for example, if you wanted to add a table to an email, you could click a button in Outlook and import it directly from an Excel spreadsheet.

What’s really impressive, though, is that the components are still linked to the files. So you can update the table without leaving the email, and that change will be instantly synced to the spreadsheet, and if one of your colleagues goes into the spreadsheet and amends it, the table in your email will update in real-time.

Microsoft is planning to support a broad range of Fluid Components including tables, lists, charts and more. The functionality will be available in early preview for certain Microsoft 356 Enterprise and education subscribers starting in a few months, although it will be limited to web-based Office and Outlook apps for now. The company is also going to be making Fluid Framework open source, and is inviting developers to help build out its capabilities.

Project Cortex adds intelligence to the Microsoft Graph

Part of Microsoft’s mission to bring AI into as many businesses as possible, Project Cortex was also announced at Ignite last year as a way to apply AI-based analysis to the Microsoft Graph in order to automatically categories and organise knowledge resources throughout an organisation. Project Cortex will go into general availability within the next few months, but there are now new developer APIs accessible to more than 75 organisations who are participating in the private preview programme.

Microsoft Build 2020: Microsoft 365 products now in general availability

Bookings app brings scheduling to Microsoft Teams

Back in March, Microsoft announced a new app integration for Teams, which would allow customers to manage appointments and schedules with the general public from within the app. This is now generally available after being trialled with customers including healthcare organisations such as Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust for both physical and virtual appointments. Administrators can manage appointments on behalf of multiple departments, and the Microsoft Graph API can be used to integrate the system into existing workflows and internal apps.

Shifts is a similar tool for managing employee schedules and rotas within Teams, and Microsoft has now released Graph APIs for developers to integrate it with third-party staff management platforms, and new Power Automate actions for building Shift actions into workflows across different apps. New triggers and templates will also help automate and optimise processes within the app to save time.

Bing WORK lets you search your entire company

Bing has suffered in popularity compared to Google, but Microsoft is attempting to make it more attractive to business users with the general availability of a ‘WORK’ tab for enterprise Office 365 customers. Appearing below Bing’s main search bar, this tab (if enabled by admins) surfaces results specific to that organisation, including internal domains, staff profiles, dashboards and reports.

Microsoft Build 2020: Microsoft 365 products with updated features

New Teams developer tools

Microsoft is pouring resources into developing its Teams collaboration software in a bid to keep up with Slack. That includes new tools to make it easier for developers to build Teams apps, such as the newly-announced extensions for Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code. These extensions are currently in public preview, and give devs an easy way to build, configure and publish apps specifically for Teams from within their IDE.

It’s also streamlining the integration between its Power Platform tools and Teams with simpler UIs, enabling more granular permissions for the Teams Microsoft Graph API, making it easier to submit and manage Teams apps and giving admins the ability to create custom templates for users who want to set up a new team.

Elsewhere, Azure Active Directory Single Sign-On will soon mean that users won’t have to sign in to apps within the Teams client in order to use them, will be able to pop out certain apps and channel tabs into a new window and will be able to trigger context-specific actions from messages on mobile. Teams apps will also soon be able to access mobile device features like location and camera functionality, and new security and permissions features will allow admins to give greater control and flexibility to team owners and end-users without impacting global access permissions.

Developers will also be getting the ability to run code within Teams for the purposes of previewing and collaborating with colleagues, in a feature which is being dubbed ‘Code Conversations’.

Microsoft Bing for Commerce

Microsoft Bing for Commerce - the company’s solution for retailers that want to embed search functionality within their own sites and apps - is being updated with new analytics and AI tools, included simple guided workflows for implementing them. Version 1 of the Bing for Commerce SDK is also available now, allowing devs to implement the technology in a variety of programming languages including Java, C# and Python. Finally, customers will soon be able to integrate the software directly into their DevOps pipelines for faster iteration.

Microsoft Edge

Alongside the back-end developments to Edge, Microsoft has announced some user-facing changes to its browser as well. Users will be able to perform a search in the Edge sidebar via the context menu without having to open a new tab (with results including intranet content for users who are signed in with an Azure Active Directory account), and when users try and open a link requiring enterprise credentials, they’ll be automatically asked if they would like to switch profiles. Commercial customers will also receive support for on-premise syncing of their Edge data.

Windows PowerToys

Microsoft recently resurrected the much-loved PowerToys add-on for Windows, comprising a number of tools and utilities for customising various OS features. Windows power-users will be glad to hear that new capabilities have now been added with the PowerToys 0.18 release, including an application launcher shortcut that’s oddly reminiscent of macOS’ Spotlight feature, and a tool for customising your keyboard inputs by remapping key bindings and shortcuts at a system level.

Yammer

For those organisations still using Yammer, users can now like, view and reply to Yammer posts that they’ve been tagged in directly from Outlook without having to open Yammer. This feature was announced at last year’s Ignite and released for the Outlook web app in March, but is now generally available for all customers.

Every year, thousands of developers descend on Seattle to take part in Microsoft’s annual Build developer conference. It's one of the company’s flagship events, where it shows off the latest products and tools that developers will have access to across its Office, Azure and Windows platforms.

This year, however, is a little unusual. Due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Microsoft has been forced to pivot Build to being an online-only event for the first time in its history. Instead of packing into auditoriums and conference halls, more than 100,000 attendees tuned into live streamed sessions to hear the latest news.

“While this year feels different, coming together as a community is more important than ever,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella acknowledged in his opening keynote address.

“Our industry has been called upon to help address the world’s most acute needs through this crisis, and I’m proud of how all of you have raised the game and been there when the world needed you the most, serving as those digital first responders to the first responders out there for whom we are very thankful - and for me, that’s been a point of light amidst this crisis - seeing developers come together with those on the front lines.”

Nadella highlighted the role that technology has played in facilitating the fight against COVID-19, referencing Microsoft’s work supporting Johns Hopkins University and the NHS, among other organisations.

“The role of developers is more important than ever,” he noted. “Already we’ve seen something like two years worth of digital transformation in just two months, and we’ve seen how critical digital technology is in the three phases of this crisis, from emergency response, to the recovery phase, to the reimagining the world going forward.”

The ongoing global lockdowns have ensured that cloud computing and remote collaboration have remained the two most important talking-points at this year’s conference, and while few products related directly to the pandemic, the vast majority of the company’s 50+ announcements dovetailed neatly with these two key areas.

Microsoft’s Azure portfolio was the recipient of the most updates, with new and improved features supporting things like container workloads, AI development, data analytics and more. The recently-redubbed Microsoft 365 got a few new capabilities, including an all-new list-making app that acts as a day planner-come-project management tool, and Windows devs got the first official release of the all-new Windows Terminal app, as well as brand new PowerToys.

“Companies are now looking to an uncertain future and focusing on rebuilding,” said Nick McQuire, CCS Insight’s senior vice president and head of enterprise research, “which is why this year's Build is particularly critical. It's also why Microsoft is leaning in at this event on areas that are more relevant than ever, such as trust, business impact and technical excellence.”

“The bottom line is that winning the hearts and minds of developers, along with the trust of enterprises, are now the foundations of competition in the wars for cloud supremacy. This is why Build is now an existential event for Microsoft.”

Microsoft has discovered that hackers have been hard at work revamping their phishing campaigns to use the new Azure AD and Microsoft 365 sign-in pages.

According to a tweet from the company: “Office 365 ATP data shows that attackers have started to spoof the new Azure AD sign-in page in multiple phishing campaigns. We have so far seen several dozens of phishing sites used in these campaigns.”

The Azure AD sign-in experience underwent a redesign about three months ago, but the new sign-in pages didn’t roll out until the first week of April.

Microsoft intended the redesign to reduce bandwidth requirements when loading Azure AD sign-in pages. The new design also made it easier for potential victims to determine when an attacker with outdated phishing tools targeted them. Now, it appears hackers have updated their tools to include updated sign-in pages.

With their spoofed paged now up to date, hackers are back to their old tricks. By sending out emails with the subject line “Business Document Received,” hackers have tricked unsuspecting users into opening fake PDFs. For some recipients, opening these malicious PDFs leads them to the new Azure AD or Microsoft 365 sign-in pages.

Microsoft’s Security Intelligence team said of the spoofed pages: “Microsoft Threat Protection provides comprehensive protection against these threats. Office 365 ATP catches ever-changing threats by exposing and detecting malicious behavior using detonation and machine learning. Microsoft Defender ATP blocks malicious documents on endpoints.”

Microsoft has addressed the spoofed pages, but Azure AD and Microsoft 365 aren’t the only Microsoft products malicious actors have targeted. Just a few weeks ago, a series of phishing attacks used images from automated Microsoft Teams notifications to steal Office 365 credentials from unsuspecting users. The company’s Sway service was also recently impacted by a highly targeted spear-phishing campaign that’s since been dubbed PerSwaysion.

Over the past two decades, there can be few tech workers who have put in a harder shift than Microsoft’s branding department. Barely a week seems to pass without them changing the name of a product, sometimes putting it back to the original name a few months later, just to confuse the hell out of everybody.

The latest makeover victim is Office 365 – the subscription suite that encompasses Word, Excel, PowerPoint and so on – which is being rebadged as Microsoft 365. One can only imagine the amount of blue-sky, think-outside-the-box, no-idea-is-a-silly-idea brainstorming that went into that one.

In this case, however, I suspect the name change is more than just cosmetic. In fact, it could be an indication of a massive change to come.

While the contents of a Microsoft 365 subscription look very much like Office 365 right now, I wouldn’t mind betting that switching to the more general Microsoft name tag is paving the way for the company to add Windows to the package. No longer will your operating system be priced into the cost of a new PC or laptop. Instead, those devices will come with a 30-day free trial of Windows (much like Office does now), after which you’ll be expected to take out a subscription to keep the operating system active.

If you’re muttering “not another bloody subscription” as you read this and are about to let out a scream that will be heard two counties away, let me explain why this might not be such a terrible thing.

First, you pay for Windows anyway. You may not notice it, and you might have been told Windows 10 was “free”, but it’s not. The PC makers pay anything up to £50 per licence for Windows 10, and that cost is added to the price of new computers. If Microsoft were to turn that into a free trial, you’d hope the PC makers would pass on the savings.

Second, if Microsoft is charging you directly for Windows, it has a responsibility to support it. That means not simply directing you to a website or “chat assistant”, but proper telephone support, because if they don’t fix your problem, you don’t pay them next month. In other words, Microsoft will have a direct financial incentive to sort out its support.

Finally, and this is the biggie, a Windows subscription makes it much easier to move to the model that will shape computing in this decade: streaming. I’m 99% certain that by the end of this decade, you won’t be running Windows on the PC in front of you, but streaming it over the internet.

Your Windows installation will be hosted in one of Microsoft’s massive data centres, and whether you’re using a laptop, desktop PC, tablet or streaming device plugged into a screen – much like Amazon’s Fire Sticks – you’ll stream Windows over your fibre broadband connection.

Microsoft will look after backup for you; Microsoft will store all your documents, photos and other files; Microsoft will charge you for all this in one convenient monthly sum and will call it Microsoft 365. Well, at least until the branding department has another brainwave.

To keep your business moving remote working needs to be smoothly introduced. And it needs to be done quickly. That’s why - today more than ever - it’s time for Teams. What’s more, Microsoft is making Teams available to all organisations.

This whitepaper features how-to videos, key recommendations and best practices to help you put Teams to work, including how to set up a team, work across boundaries, and work on documents together.

Download it now for a comprehensive guide to putting the power of Microsoft Teams at the heart of your workplace experience transformation.

Many novice Office 365 shops do not know where O365-specific security vulnerabilities lie, or even that they exist. These threats do not cause pain until they rise up and bite – then the agony is fierce.

This whitepaper identifies twenty-six common Office 365 data protection and data breach pain points, and details how to neutralise threats and achieve compliance, relieving the discomfort they cause.

Download it now for a comprehensive guide to how to ensure O365 security and guarantee governance and compliance.

Microsoft has announced it will expand and rebrand its Office 365 subscription service.

Renamed Microsoft 365, the subscription service seeks to expand its utility beyond the office walls and become an all-in-one solution. New Microsoft 365 features include the unveiling of Microsoft Editor, a challenger to the well-known Grammarly app.

While Microsoft has always equipped its Office programs with spelling- and grammar-correction tools, Microsoft Editor aims to double down on such features by providing even the most novice writers with expert editing advice. By providing users with AI-powered writing suggestions, Microsoft Editor users can be confident their content is clear, concise, and grammatically sound.

The new Microsoft Editor expands on your everyday spellchecker in plenty of other ways too, including:

• Improving sentence clarity with AI-powered suggestions
• Expanding your vocabulary with word suggestions
• Supporting over 20 languages, including English, Spanish, French, and German
• A similarity checker to catch plagiarism and help cite sources within texts
• Suggesting alternative punctuation when necessary
• Reduce bias in writing by suggesting gender-neutral and inclusive terms

Much like Grammarly, Microsoft Editor is free through a web browser and for Office online, but it is also available with upgraded features as part of a Microsoft 365 subscription. Microsoft has confirmed it will continue to maintain its $6.99 per month pricing for Microsoft 365 subscribers, making Microsoft Editor a tool worth exploring.

The all-new Microsoft Editor extension is available in some areas immediately and will be available globally by the end of April. Microsoft Editor can function outside Microsoft Office apps and works as an extension for Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge.

Microsoft Teams gained 12 million users in just one week following a surge of remote working to combat the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

The communications platform reported 44 million users as of 18 March, up from 32 million on 11 March.

The figures came as the conferencing service celebrated its third birthday, but also just a few days after it suffered a two-hour outage - likely linked to the sudden influx of users.

Microsoft's corporate VP for 365, Jared Spataro, said that the service had seen an "unprecedented" spike in usage in just seven days. He also suggested that the numbers might not drop when the coronavirus pandemic is under control.

"It's very clear that enabling remote work is more important than ever, and that it will continue to have lasting value beyond the COVID-19 outbreak," Jared Spataro, Microsoft's corporate VP for 365 wrote in a blog post. "We are committed to building the tools that help organisations, teams, and individuals stay productive and connected even when they need to work apart."

For its third birthday, Microsoft added some new features to Teams. The first is a function that uses AI to reduce background noise - which will certainly be welcome following the government's decision to close all schools. There is also a button allows users to read messages while offline and a 'raise hand' feature to help get their questions across during busy video meetings.

Although Teams is now far ahead of the competition, a leaked Microsoft partner video suggested the company is keen to thwart rival video conferencing service Zoom. An alleged internal company video, posted to Twitter on Thursday, suggests Microsoft sees Zoom as an 'emerging threat' to Teams as it is often used by businesses in tandem with Google's G Suite and fierce rival Slack.

This week, Slack also unveiled a host of new functions and reported a spike in users due to the coronavirus. The smaller platform saw over 7,000 new users in just 47 days, according to TechCrunch. For context, it only recorded 5,000 new users in its last quarter report.

Microsoft Word has been a staple in nearly everyone’s life for the past few decades. Throughout these years, it has become more robust and feature-packed, though some of those features where a little iffy – yeah, we’re looking at you Clippy, you crazy, screen-tapping paperclip.

Some of the more beneficial additions to Word included the 1995 arrival of password protection and the subsequent improvements to the password protection systems in 1997, 2007, 2010, 2013 and 2016. This added a new layer of protection for those who used Word to type up sensitive documents.

While this is a great feature and relatively easy to use, like many Word features, you have to dig through various menus when trying to password protect a Word document.

Forget about searching. Learn how to password protect that Word document with our simple instructions below.

Why should I password protect my Word document?

Password protecting Microsoft Word documents will likely never be a daily occurrence for most users, but there are specific times when it’s appropriate.

Your day-to-day documents on Microsoft Word generally won’t need password protection, but if you deal with sensitive data at times, you may need to protect those documents. For example, if you are an HR professional sending an offer letter to a new hire, and the letter has sensitive data like a Social Security number and other identifying factors, you would want to protect that.

Also, anything with sensitive company data would need a password, so if you are hacked, there is an extra layer of protection.

How does password protection work on Word?

Once you set a password, anyone who tries to open the document will prompt the user to enter the password. Without the password, the document will not open.

The password is universal too. So, if a recipient forwards the document to another person, the Word document will prompt the new user to enter a password as well.

What if I lose my password?

If there is one downside to Microsoft Word’s password protection, it’s the inability to recover the password. If you forget it, that document is lost forever.

While most experts generally don’t recommend writing passwords down anywhere, Microsoft advises creating a note of the password or at least a reminder and keeping it in a safe place.

How to password protect a Word document

Password protecting a Word document isn’t overly difficult, but you must know where to start. Here’s a step-by-step guide to password protecting a Word document with a few helpful tips along the way.

1. Click “File” on the top left corner of the Microsoft Word window.

2. Click “Info” on the left of the page.

3. Click “Protect Document.”

4. Click “Encrypt with password.”

5. Type a secure password and click “OK.” Repeat this step to confirm the password.

Changing a Word document password

What if the first password you chose was too hard to remember or too easy for hackers to guess? Don’t worry; you can change the password. Simply repeat the above steps and enter the new password when you get to Step 5.

Microsoft has finally launched its unified on-the-go Office app for Android devices, bundling in productivity apps into a single view and new user interface (UI).

Office, as it’s been dubbed, provides a clean interface that fully integrates the separate Word, Excel and Powerpoint apps into a single platform, bringing users’ documents together in one place on their mobile devices.

The all-in-one app has been released three months after Microsoft pushed its new platform on a public preview basis for Office Insiders, in November last year. The app can now be downloaded from the Google Play store, although it’s not yet compatible with Chromium or tablet devices at all, according to Android Police.

“We all rely on mobile devices more than ever for getting work done whether that’s at a job, at home, or at school,” Microsoft senior product marketing manager Bill Doll said when Office was first announced.

“There are many great mobile productivity apps available such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to help us do that, however we still believe an opportunity exists to create a more mobile-centric experience for these types of apps.

“Doing so brings all of your Office documents together in one place, reduces the need to switch between multiple apps, and significantly reduces the amount of space used on your phone compared to multiple installed apps.”

The app gives users access to all conventional Office apps, as well as access to recent and recommended documents stored on the cloud or on their device locally. There’s also a search function to find documents across a user’s organisation if they’re using a work account, as well as integration with Sticky Notes for note-taking.

Office also features a host of more advanced features, such as using a device’s camera to capture an image of a document and transform it into an editable document. A picture of a table, for example, can be ported directly into Excel, while PowerPoint can import pictures from a user’s phone.

Users can also create PDFs with their camera, using photos stored locally, or from other Office documents, while signatures can be imprinted onto documents using a finger.

For all the convenience, reliability, productivity and economy it delivers to your daily workflows, Office 365’s extremely limited versioning, retention and retrieval capabilities make it nothing less than a ticking time-bomb for your organisation.

When hit by the need to restore backed-up data to safeguard the continuity of operations, with Office 365 you’re up against a number of issues, from insufficient retention (14 days by default), to clumsy and expensive storage extension. The responsibility for putting backup in place is yours.

This whitepaper identifies six separate ways your organisation could seriously suffer as a result of failing to use a true backup solution to protect its Office 365 data.

Remember: Microsoft DO NOT backup your Office 365 data.

Congratulations - you’ve found the perfect cloud-based productivity suite in Office 365. Now you just need to find a way to keep your data safe from loss, because data in the cloud is vulnerable, just like anywhere else.

Although Microsoft, like many other SaaS providers, are able to protect your data in the cloud from problems on their side, they won’t be able to help if ransomware locks up shared folders, if critical data is deleted, or other issues when the problem is on your side.

This whitepaper provides the information you need to make the best choice for Office 365 backup. It covers why you need a solution for Office 365, what you need to understand about cloud-to-cloud backup, and the truth about SaaS data loss.