Microsoft will cut OneDrive and Skype access to standalone Office users

From InfoWorld: When Microsoft launched Office 365 in 2010, Microsoft officials said then that customers were asking to move to the cloud. Beginning in 2020, some Office customers will need to buy an Office 365 subscription to do so.

In an update to Microsoft’s Office 365 system requirements released today, Microsoft said that consumers who have already purchased “perpetual”—i.e., standalone—versions of Office, such as Office 2010, Office 2013, and Office 2016, would be cut off from accessing the business versions of OneDrive and Skype after mainstream support expires. Those who have purchased those Office suites will be allowed to connect until Oct. 13, 2020—the day mainstream support ends for Office 2016, and the day the new support policy kicks in.

Independent business users and small business owners who bought into Microsoft’s vision but powered their businesses via a standalone version of Office may feel jilted. If you’ve been saving all of your Excel speadsheets into your OneDrive for Business cloud, you’ll need to download them to your computer or get an Office 365 subscription, as Microsoft really wants you to do.

Fortunately, only a handful of services are affected. Office 365 apps include the usual suite of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and more—if you have the standalone versions of those, they will still work. Office 365 services include Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Skype. Only two, OneDrive and Skype, are currently built in to perpetual Office products. Both Skype and OneDrive are also built into the Windows 10 OS.

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