Microsoft cuts Office 2016 some slack, lets users connect to services until 2023
Microsoft is giving Office 2016 a reprieve of sorts, saying that the one-time-purchase suite will be allowed to connect to Microsoft's online services for three more years than ruled earlier.
In April 2017, Microsoft proclaimed that applications provided by Office 2016 would be unable to connect to cloud-based Office 365 services after Oct. 13, 2020. The ban on accessing services like Microsoft-hosted Exchange inboxes, OneDrive storage space and Skype for Business' conferencing was part of sweeping changes to Office's support statutes - all part of a push to get more customers to adopt Office 365 subscriptions.
The October no-more-access date was derived from the end of Office 2016's mainstream support, the first five years of the usual decade. All future suites in perpetual license form - those for which customers paid a one-time, upfront fee and then were allowed to run the software as long as desired - would have the same limitation: If Office 2019 launched in early October of this year, say, it too would be blocked from connecting to services after its mainstream support expired in October 2023.