Microsoft will kill Office Online Server next year, creating a headache for anyone using on-premises Office web applications and the beleaguered holdouts sticking with Skype for Business Server.

The retirement is scheduled for December 31, 2026. After this, there won’t be any more security fixes, updates, or technical support from Microsoft. “This change is part of our ongoing commitment to modernising productivity experiences and focusing on cloud-first solutions,” the company said.

Office Online Server provides browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for customers who want to keep things on-prem without having to roll out the full desktop applications. Microsoft’s solution is to move to Microsoft 365, its decidedly off-premises version of its applications. The company said it is “focusing its browser-based Office app investments on Office for the Web to deliver secure, collaborative, and feature-rich experiences through Microsoft 365.”

Other than migrating to another platform when the vendor pulls the plug, affected customers have few options.

The announcement will also hit several customers running SharePoint Server SE or Exchange Server SE. While those products remain supported, Office Online Server integration will go away. The company suggested Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise and Office LTSC 2024 as alternatives for viewing and editing documents hosted on those servers.

Skype for Business customers will also lose some key features related to PowerPoint. Presenter notes and high-fidelity PowerPoint rendering will go away. In-meeting annotations, which allow meeting participants to write directly to slides without altering the original file, will no longer be available, and embedded video playback will run at lower fidelity. Features like whiteboards, polls, and app sharing shouldn’t be affected.

Microsoft’s solution is a move to Teams, which the company says “offers modern meeting experiences.”

Office Online Server launched in 2016 and is the successor to Office Web Apps Server 2013. At the time, Microsoft said it “recognises that many organisations still value running server products on-premises for a variety of reasons.”

“With OOS [Office Online Server], you get the same functionality we offer with Office Online in your own datacenter.”

There is currently no successor for Office Online Server. Few users may know it exists, but the fact that it is retiring is going to hurt those who prefer to keep data and processing on-premises without touching Office LTSC 2024.

Windows 10 has officially reached its end-of-life status (EoL), meaning it will no longer receive crucial security updates, important improvements, or upgrades.

Despite the deadline being public knowledge for years, many endpoints worldwide are still running the OS, risking device takeover, data exfiltration, and a myriad of other threats that are bound to appear sooner or later.

Coinciding with the EoL date, two companies analysed the market to understand just how big the potential threat landscape is, and came back with astonishing results. Cloudhouse surveyed 135 finance IT leaders and found 60% still running “a large number” of servers and desktops with unsupported versions of Windows OS.

With Windows 10 support set to expire on October 14, hundreds of repair shops, non-profits, and advocacy groups are urging Microsoft to extend free and automatic security updates instead of stranding hundreds of millions of PCs.

The letter, organised by consumer activist non-profit US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), was signed by 382 repair businesses and nonprofits worldwide, as well as 83 elected representatives, 19 librarians and school officials, and 49 consumer advocacy and environmental organisations. They’re all worried that they, and many other PC owners, stand to lose big if Microsoft follows through with its plans to end support for Windows 10 in less than two weeks.

“About 40 percent of PCs currently in use can’t upgrade to Windows 11, even if users want to,” the letter reads. “That means when Microsoft stops providing security updates for Windows 10, those computers will either be insecure and unsafe to keep using, or else turn into junk and get thrown out.”

Along with the business-led letter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, PIRG said it also passed along a petition to Microsoft signed by more than 16,000 US citizens. French non-profit Stop Planned Obsolescence has also been circulating a petition to extend free Windows 10 security updates, which has been signed by more than 44,000 individuals.

Critics argue Microsoft’s Windows 11 push is worsening the world’s growing e-waste problem. As we’ve noted before, the supported upgrade path requires PCs to have Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 – a hardware-based security component found in many machines shipped over the past five years – along with other modern hardware. Unofficial bypasses exist, but they aren’t supported and may break in future updates.

In practice, that leaves a huge chunk of hardware behind – PIRG estimates around 400 million Windows 10 machines can’t meet Windows 11’s requirements. While Microsoft has patched certain TPM bypasses, many argue that such devices may never be officially upgradeable.

“Cutting off support from hundreds of millions of computers is uniquely harmful to consumers, the environment and public safety,” PIRG right to repair campaign director Nathan Proctor said in a statement. “Simply put, there have never been more computers cut off from support in one fell swoop.”

While support for Windows 10 officially ends in a couple of weeks, it won’t be completely going away – those who really want to keep the security updates flowing can sign with Microsoft to get a year of extended security updates for the price of $30, redemption of 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points, or opting to sync their PC’s settings to the cloud using Windows Backup.

Microsoft recently caved on providing free Windows 10 updates to European residents following complaints from consumer rights groups and threats to lodge a Digital Markets Act complaint.

Windows 11 continues to be a slow-seller – it took the OS four years to finally surpass Windows 10 as the leading version of the PC OS, and even then, it still doesn’t have a true majority. According to Statcounter, which measures market share of various platforms based on traffic to more than 1.5 million monitored web sites, Windows 11 holds 48.94 percent of the Windows market share, down from a high of 53 percent in July.

Curiously enough, Windows 7 has been experiencing a resurgence in popularity in the past few months, climbing from just two percent of the Windows market share in July to nearly 10 percent in September. No matter how you slice it, it seems like people really don’t want to upgrade to Windows 11.