OneDrive app support ending on older Windows

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ISSUE 18.47 • 2021-12-06 MICROSOFT 365 By Peter Deegan Microsoft dropped a minor bombshell with the announcement that the OneDrive app would stop work
[See the full post at: OneDrive app support ending on older Windows]

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lmacri, SueW, 8string, abbodi86, doriel

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Thanks for sharing your interesting observations. If the API is available, I think Microsoft will (unintentionally) make users install third party SW to connect to OneDrive, instead of using the native OneDrive app.

If users wanted to install “supported” version of Windows, they would do it long time ago. Those users have their own reasons, why they remained on Windows 7, 8, 8.1, …

From my angle of view, they put as many obstacles as they could for older system users. From the other angle of view, I understand, that they do not want people to connect to OneDrive with systems, that lack security updates etc., its a logical step.

Dell Latitude 3420, Intel Core i7 @ 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM, W10 22H2 Enterprise

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8string, Peter Deegan

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Yet another example of why depending on Microsoft is foolish.

 

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Just want to confirm –

I have three older PCs running Win 7 Pro 64-bit which I keep updated using the techniques provided here on AskWoody.  (See < THIS EDITED LINK >  )

One of them has one of our five (or six?) MS 365 Family permitted setups (Word, Excel and maybe some day Outlook).  It also has the 1TB OneDrive that came with the MS 365 Family, and so some of the docs are in the OneDrive cloud.  (They all show in the OneDrive\Documents folder and subfolders but I understand from past articles here that they live in the cloud and NOT on my PC.)

So – first question:  Come March, will OneDrive stop syncing in this setup and so the MS 365 apps (Word and Excel) won’t be able to “pull” the docs from OneDrive or “save” them (new or modified) into OneDrive?

Second question:  As I wrote, I am keeping our Win 7s updated by using the techniques that appear in AskWoody’s forums (see link above)  I do NOT have a paid ESU license.  How will this affect me as regards this shutdown of OneDrive syncing?  I note that Peter’s table says “Unknown” for Win 7 ESU, but am I in that category?

If yes to Q1, I certainly don’t like what MS is doing, but maybe it’s time to upgrade to Win 10?

Thanks.

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OneDrive sync will stop in March for ‘normal’ Windows 7 without ESU. The OneDrive synced files that are on your computer, accessed via Explorer, can be opened by Office but won’t be synced to the cloud.

Microsoft 365’s direct access to OneDrive documents will NOT change. That means you can create, open and edit documents via the File pane in Office apps – as shown in the article.

All that said, Microsoft 365 for Windows is NOT supported on Windows 7  so moving to Windows 10/11 is probably a good move – assuming the computer hardware is adequate.

Hope that helps,

Peter Deegan

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Peter – thanks.  As one of my old Win 7 PCs (without MS 365) is really old, and it’s in my wife’s mini-office for her one employee, maybe it’s time to replace it with a Win 11 capable PC that also has a NVMe M.2 SSD hard drive. And then I’ll finally add our existing MS 365 Family to it.  (Or maybe what we have is MS 365 Home with five or six users – I always forget.)

I think it’s time to spend the money.

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Microsoft 365 Family now has SIX users, it was originally five.  That’s six USERS, not computers.

Confusion is understandable — only nerds like me are expected to keep up with every change from the Microsoft marketing department <g>

Peter Deegan

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I have been supporting OneDrive on many machines for a number of years. The product is buggy (often stops working for reasons that not even MSFT tech support, which I call frequently on issues related to OneDrive, do not understand nor can offer technical guidance other than “reboot”).  The product is poorly documented. Given that it’s the only way to connect to SharePoint to sync using File Explorer and that millions of users rely on it for that reason, it’s really a candidate for one of MSFT’s worse products in years. If I had another product to turn to, I would.  I’m also wondering if most people who use it know that when you copy thousands of files in a folder on SharePoint to another location on SP, that the files are first copied to your local machine, then transferred to the new location and then erased off your machine. That coming to me from MSFT tech support directly when I wondered why it was taking days to copy a couple of thousand files. MSFT tech support *instructed* me to do it two different ways, both of which took days to complete.

However, I understand MSFT not wanting to continue to support Windows 7 or 8 for consumers. The last purchase any consumer could have made of those OS’s was likely almost a  decade ago.   Corporate users have many reasons to stay put and pay MSFT for staffing support people on their behalf. I worked for a while helping out a paper factory move to Windows 10. They had 100s of machines that needed to be useable when the internet was down due to weather. We all know that consumers are rarely willing to pay anything extra at all for software no matter how valuable it may be to their daily lives.

 

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Antitrust law reviews the concept of “tie-in” – tying one product to another, thereby making it difficult for potential competitors to compete.  (But I’m a real estate lawyer, not an antitrust lawyer, so I can’t describe any of the elements of this potential violation of US antitrust law.)

Might this be a “tie-in” violation?

And if it’s not a violation under US antitrust law, don’t the Europeans have something to say about this?

If anyone reading this forum has a buddy in the US FTC or Dept. of Justice, please forward him Peter’s article.

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I doubt it. There is no “tie in”. If you don’t like OneDrive, use Dropbox or Google Drive, or iCloud, etc. Consumer’s have lots of choices for a cloud sync product. It doesn’t affect your ability to use Windows 10 or 11.

glnz wrote:

Antitrust law reviews the concept of “tie-in” – tying one product to another, thereby making it difficult for potential competitors to compete.  (But I’m a real estate lawyer, not an antitrust lawyer, so I can’t describe any of the elements of this potential violation of US antitrust law.)

Might this be a “tie-in” violation?

And if it’s not a violation under US antitrust law, don’t the Europeans have something to say about this?

If anyone reading this forum has a buddy in the US FTC or Dept. of Justice, please forward him Peter’s article.

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I am still using my Office 2003, on Win-10 version 21H2.

Will this cut-off affect users like myself?

Peter.

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I doubt it. This thread is talking about Windows 7 and 8. You are using Office 2003 with Windows 10, so that’s simply exposing yourself to security issues on Office since they are  no longer updating it to protect you. remember, that product was designed in about 2000. So 21 years ago. Hopefully you aren’t using it for anything serious for you or your company…

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glnz wrote:

Might this be a “tie-in” violation?

I will have our legal writer look into this.

However, while Microsoft has Windows constantly nagging about using features you aren’t currently using, employing OneDrive is not a requirement.

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What about windows 8.1 RT? My Surface 2 uses a special version of Office 13. RT machines can’t be updated to newer versions of Windows.

Fran Mc

 

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