Office 365 ProPlus support on Windows 7 after January 14, 2020

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Microsoft has decided to give Office 365 ProPlus users running Windows 7 some grace time after Windows 7 goes out of support on January 14, 2020. Offi
[See the full post at: Office 365 ProPlus support on Windows 7 after January 14, 2020]

--Joe

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abbodi86, woody

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The way they’re gradually chipping away at the January 2020 EOL support, Microsoft may as well just bite the bullet and extend it for Windows 7 until 2023. Hopefully by then they will have got Windows 10 into the solid state it should have been in long ago and can realistically expect both Windows 7 and 8.1 users to upgrade to it at that time.

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Microsoft is not changing anything about Windows 7 support. Microsoft is only going to supply security fixes for Office 365 ProPlus – no new features. Only for Office 365 ProPlus. Other Office SKUs have their own support lifecycle.

--Joe

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woody

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Actually, Microsoft have already made two changes to Windows 7 support.

First, they have extended the expiry date for Windows 7 support to small and medium businesses until January 2023, as reported and discussed here just over a week ago.

Second, as per this article, they have extended Office 365 ProPlus support for Windows 7 users to January 2023.

My point is that if they are going to make these sorts of changes to the end of life support expiry date for Windows 7 users (coincidental on the EOL expiry date for support on Windows 8.1) then they might as well extend it more generally until January 2023, and in the process they will both enhance their present tarnished reputation and buy time to improve the scheduling and reliability of Windows 10 updates.

As you say, this would only relate to security fixes which is fine because nobody wants new features, they just want these products and the underlying OS to work functionally and securely.

 

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The extension of Windows 7 to small and medium businesses is the offer of Extended Security Updates for a fee. It is not free as the Office 365 security patch offer is.

The Windows 7 ESU offer is for businesses only. From A new way for small and midsize businesses to stay secure and current: “Starting on December 1, 2019, businesses of any size can purchase ESU through the cloud solution provider (CSP) program.”

--Joe

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abbodi86

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Absolutely. That’s not relevant to the point I’m making, however.

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That 2023 is already an option for Enterprise/Volume Licensees of Windows 7, for a price, and some businesses have more time to get their mission critical software certified for Windows 10. But that option is not available to consumer Windows 7 licensees and maybe that Office 365 ProPlus is for similar reasons.

Any Windows 7 folks that can not get their hardware to work properly with Windows 10 may want to try Windows 8.1 and some third party UI software to make the 8.1 UI look and act more like Windows 7.

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as long as the device is still running Windows 7, Office 365 ProPlus won’t receive any new features updates.

Maybe this isn’t such a bad deal – some people don’t want any new feature updates, they just want security patches. For those people, this is a great thing.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 8.1 running in a VM

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David F, abbodi86, woody

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… as long as important other applications and even component add-ons lag somewhat behind, it’s a lot safer for a business to not have feature updates they cannot control… which is most of them in case of Click-to-Run.

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Office 365 ProPlus support is changing very quickly

first, they cut it off for Win 7 and 8.1 after 2020, then they retuned it for Win 8.1 until 2023, now it’s permitted for Win 7 too

not to mentions Servers and LTSC releases
Server 2019 was not getting it, then it did

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woody

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Interesting tweet from @Thomas56570804

I actually opened a support ticket with Office 365 support last week, and they replied that “….because of new generation and technology we need to doing these things..”. As in dropping support for older OS incl Server 2012. Looks like a nail in the coffin for me unfortunately.

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abbodi86

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I was the one posting that tweet about Server 2012 and no Office ProPlus support.

To put a bit more color on this. https://products.office.com/en-sg/office-system-requirements

In this article, it is stated that “Please note Office 365 ProPlus will not be supported on Windows 10 LTSC 2019 at release. Office 365 ProPlus will not be supported on any Windows 10 LTSC/LTSB version or on Windows Server 2012 R2 or older after January 2020”

I have Office 365 E3 subscriptions, so I use ProPlus and I run Citrix and my XenApp servers are running Server 2012 R2, so this is clearly becoming a huge issue in Jan 2020.

I opened a ticket with Office 365 Technical Support, and their response is as follows

“Thanks for being patient while we sort this out. After an in-depth discussion with my team ,As per my last email I was regular communicating regarding your question with the ProPlus Project Manager and others higher team members as well just for clarification for you, and I got the news form the backend team ,à we are sorry about this because It’s confirmed for Office 365 ProPlus will not be supported on any Windows 10 LTSC/LTSB version or on Windows Server 2012 R2 but Office 365 ProPlus will be supported on Windows Server 2016 through October 2025, because of new generation and technology we need to doing these things but at the same time you could you 2016 with advance features and functions.

I completely  understand you have environment with office ProPlus on Server 2012 and this is very important for clear this concern,

Again, I am very sorry for the inconvenience. Please contact to me support for any further concerns you might have , I am always very happy to help, waiting for your valuable reply on the same.”

So this whole thing is rather frustrating, considering the fact that Server 2012 R2 is a fully supported OS until 10-Oct-2023. I need to ditch a fully supported OS and I am now forced to pay MS more $$ to buy licenses for Server 2016/2019 4 years before I was planning on upgrading.

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Windows 8.1 (LTSC essentially) get Office 365 until 2023
Server 2012 R2 don’t get it

Windows 10 LTSC don’t get Office 365 after 2020
Server 2016/2019 get it

it’s looks a marketing decision to me

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… and all this with ProPlus, which at least has things documented. And then Microsoft keeps telling us that Office 365 Business / Business Premium (you know, the “small business” package with local applications) isn’t quite ProPlus. Has a different feature set and all (no spreadsheet compare or video integration… well also no hybrid deployment?).

I mean, if you take https://products.office.com/en-us/office-system-requirements literally, then the Business version doesn’t have the January cutoff on Server 2012 R2 … or 2008 R2, or Windows 7.

(No, I don’t actually expect that to be the case, but…)

And Business Premium + Azure Information Protection P1 is usually cheaper than E3, too.

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abbodi86

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… right, another thing that’s missing from Office 365 Business – Group Policy support. Only ProPlus listens to those. (Too late to edit my previous post.)

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