Microsoft to discontinue Office Online Server end of 2026
Microsoft will end support for Office Online Server on December 31, 2026. In addition to on-premises installations, Skype Business users will also be affected.
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Microsoft is discontinuing Office Online Server on December 31, 2026. After that, there will be no more security updates, bug fixes, or technical support. The move is part of Microsoft's strategy to focus primarily on cloud offerings.
Office Online Server (OOS) provides browser applications for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for companies that want or need to operate their data and applications in their own data centers. The service was introduced in 2016 as the successor to Office Web Apps Server 2013. At the time, Microsoft still emphasized that many organizations want to continue operating server products on-premises for various reasons.
As an alternative, Microsoft now recommends the switch to M365, where the company will bundle its development of browser-based Office applications in the future. For users who want to continue working on-premises, Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise and Office LTSC 2024 are available as alternatives – however, these are desktop applications, not browser applications. Free alternatives like Collabora Online exist for this purpose.
The discontinuation of OOS also affects customers using SharePoint Server SE or Exchange Server SE. While these will continue to receive support, their integration with Office Online Server will be dropped. Documents on these servers can then only be edited with the desktop versions of Office.
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Skype for Business loses PowerPoint features
Users of Skype for Business Server are also affected. As Microsoft explains in a separate blog post, several PowerPoint features will be lost: presenter notes and high-resolution rendering of presentations will no longer be available. In-meeting annotations, with which participants can write directly on slides without changing the original file, as well as high-quality playback of embedded videos will also be dropped. Features such as whiteboards, polls, and application sharing, on the other hand, are expected to continue to function.
As an alternative, Microsoft points to Teams, which offers "modern meeting experiences." However, for many companies that consciously focus on on-premises solutions, this may not be a viable option. Microsoft explicitly plans no successor to Office Online Server. Affected customers will therefore definitely have to find an alternative to OOS.
(fo)
