Office 365 Drops Some Clients, Adds Others

Office 365 will drop support for Internet Explorer (IE) 7 in 2012, and Windows XP and Vista in 2014, but it has added some support for Office 2003. Office 365 is a set of Microsoft-hosted services that include Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync Online. A timeline outlining Office 365 client support end dates for several OSs, browsers, and Office 2008 for Mac was announced by Microsoft in Mar. 2012. Customers using Office 365 with older client software should plan client migrations, and all current and potential Office 365 customers should note that Office 365 support dates for client software will not necessarily align with the support life cycle of the client software itself.

Dropping Support for Older Versions of Windows, IE

The first client product losing Office 365 support is the released-to-manufacturing (RTM) version of Office 2010; after June 1, 2012, all Office 2010 clients will require SP1 to be supported with Office 365. This follows Microsoft’s traditional guidelines for the level of service pack required for continuing support. (For a summary of all of these dates, see the chart “Office 365 Client Support End Dates“.)