Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is a family of client software, server software, and services

developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las
Vegas. Initially a marketing term for an office suite (bundled set of productivity applications), the first
version of Office contained Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint. Over the
years, Office applications have grown substantially closer with shared features such as a common
spell checker, OLE data integration and Visual Basic for Applications scripting language. Microsoft
also positions Office as a development platform for line-of-business software under the Office
Business Applications brand. On July 10, 2012, Softpedia reported that Office was being used by
over a billion people worldwide. [12]
Office is produced in several versions targeted towards different end-users and computing
environments. The original, and most widely used version, is the desktop version, available
for PCs running the Windows and macOS operating systems. Microsoft also maintains mobile apps
for Android and iOS. Office on the web is a version of the software that runs within a web browser.
Since Office 2013, Microsoft has promoted Office 365 as the primary means of obtaining Microsoft
Office: it allows the use of the software and other services on a subscription business model, and
users receive feature updates to the software for the lifetime of the subscription, including new
features and cloud computing integration that are not necessarily included in the "on-premises"
releases of Office sold under conventional license terms. In 2017, revenue from Office 365 overtook
conventional license sales.
The current on-premises, desktop version of Office is Office 2019, released on September 24, 2018.
[13]

Contents

 1Components
o 1.1Core apps and services
o 1.2Windows-only apps
o 1.3Mobile-only apps
o 1.4Server applications
o 1.5Web services
 2Office on the web
 3Common features
 4File formats and metadata
 5Extensibility
 6Password protection
 7Support policies
o 7.1Approach
o 7.2Timelines of support
 8Platforms
 9Pricing model and editions
o 9.1Retail editions
o 9.2Education pricing
 10Discontinued applications and features
o 10.1Discontinued server applications
o 10.2Discontinued web services
 11Criticism
o 11.1Data formats
 o 11.2Unicode and bi-directional texts
o 11.3Privacy
 12History of releases
 13Version history
o 13.1Windows versions
o 13.2Mac versions
o 13.3Mobile versions
o 13.4Online versions
 14References
 15External links

Components
See also: List of Microsoft Office programs

Core apps and services

 Microsoft Word: a word processor included in Microsoft Office and some editions of the
now-discontinued Microsoft Works. The first version of Word, released in the autumn of 1983,
was for the MS-DOS operating system and introduced the computer mouse to more users. Word
1.0 could be purchased with a bundled mouse, though none was required. Following the
precedents of LisaWrite and MacWrite, Word for Macintosh attempted to add
closer WYSIWYG features into its package. Word for Mac was released in 1985. Word for Mac
was the first graphical version of Microsoft Word. Initially, it implemented the
proprietary .doc format as its primary format. Word 2007, however, deprecated this format in
favor of Office Open XML, which was later standardized by Ecma International as an open
format. Support for Portable Document Format (PDF) and OpenDocument (ODF) was first
introduced in Word for Windows with Service Pack 2 for Word 2007.[14]
 Microsoft Excel: a spreadsheet editor that originally competed with the dominant Lotus 1-2-
3 and eventually outsold it. Microsoft released the first version of Excel for the Mac OS in 1985
and the first Windows version (numbered 2.05 to line up with the Mac) in November 1987.
 Microsoft PowerPoint: a presentation program used to create slideshows composed of
text, graphics, and other objects, which can be displayed on-screen and shown by the presenter
or printed out on transparencies or slides.
 Microsoft OneNote: a notetaking program that gathers handwritten or typed notes,
drawings, screen clippings and audio commentaries. Notes can be shared with other OneNote
users over the Internet or a network. OneNote was initially introduced as a standalone app that
was not included in any Microsoft Office 2003 edition. However, OneNote eventually became a
core component of Microsoft Office; with the release of Microsoft Office 2013, OneNote was
included in all Microsoft Office offerings. OneNote is also available as a web app on Office on
the web, a freemium (and later freeware) Windows desktop app, a mobile app for Windows
Phone, iOS, Android, and Symbian, and a Metro-style app for Windows 8 or later.
 Microsoft Outlook (not to be confused with Outlook Express, Outlook.com or Outlook on
the web): a personal information manager that replaces Windows Messaging, Microsoft Mail,
and Schedule+ starting in Office 97; it includes an e-mail client, calendar, task manager and
address book. On the Mac OS, Microsoft offered several versions of Outlook in the late 1990s,
but only for use with Microsoft Exchange Server. In Office 2001, it introduced an alternative
application with a slightly different feature set called Microsoft Entourage. It reintroduced Outlook
in Office 2011, replacing Entourage. [15]
 Microsoft OneDrive: A file hosting service that allows users to sync files and later access
them from a web browser or mobile device.
 Skype for Business: an integrated communications client for conferences and meetings in
real-time, it is the only Microsoft Office desktop app that is neither useful without a proper
network infrastructure nor has the "Microsoft" prefix in its name.
 Microsoft Teams: a platform that combines workplace chat, meetings, notes, and
attachments. Microsoft announced that Teams would eventually replace Skype for Business.
Windows-only apps
 Microsoft Publisher: a desktop publishing app for Windows mostly used for designing
brochures, labels, calendars, greeting cards, business cards, newsletters, web site, and
postcards.
 Microsoft Access: a database management system for Windows that combines
the relational Microsoft Jet Database Engine with a graphical user interface and software
development tools. Microsoft Access stores data in its own format based on the Access Jet
Database Engine. It can also import or link directly to data stored in other applications and
databases.[16]
 Microsoft Project: a project management app for Windows to keep track of events and to
create network charts and Gantt charts, not bundled in any Office suite.
 Microsoft Visio: a diagram and flowcharting app for Windows not bundled in any Office
suite.
Mobile-only apps
 Office: A unified Office mobile app for Android and iOS, which combines Word, Excel, and
PowerPoint into a single app and introduces new capabilities as making quick notes, signing
PDFs, scanning QR codes, and transferring files.[17]
 Office Lens: An image scanner optimized for mobile devices. It captures the document (e.g.
business card, paper, whiteboard) via the camera and then straightens the document portion of
the image. The result can be exported to Word, OneNote, PowerPoint or Outlook, or saved in
OneDrive, sent via Mail or placed in Photo Library.
 Office Remote: Turns the mobile device into a remote control for desktop versions of Word,
Excel and PowerPoint.
Server applications
 Microsoft SharePoint: collaboration server.
o Excel Services
o InfoPath Forms Services
o Microsoft Project Server: project management server
o Microsoft Search Server
 Skype for Business Server: a real-time communications server for instant messaging
and video-conferencing.
 Microsoft Exchange Server: a mail server and calendaring server.
Web services
 Microsoft Sway: A presentation web app released in October 2014. It also has a native app
for iOS and Windows 10.
 Delve: Allows Office 365 users to search and manage their emails, meetings, contacts,
social networks and documents stored on OneDrive or Sites in Office 365.
 Microsoft Forms: An online survey creator, available for Office 365 Education subscribers.
 Microsoft To Do: A task management service.
 Outlook.com: Free webmail with a user interface similar to Microsoft Outlook.
 Outlook on the web: Similar to Outlook.com but more comprehensive and available only
through Office 365 and Microsoft Exchange Server offerings.
 Microsoft Planner: A planning application available on the Microsoft Office 365 platform.
 Microsoft Stream: A corporate video sharing service for enterprise users with an Office 365
Academic or Enterprise license.
 Microsoft Bookings: An appointment booking application on the Microsoft Office 365
platform.

Office on the web

Office on the web

Clockwise from top

left: Word, Excel, OneNote and PowerPoint in Office on the web

as of September 2018

Type of site Spreadsheet

Presentation

Notetaking

Word processor

Web mail

File hosting service

Owner Microsoft
 Created by Microsoft

URL products.office.com/en/office-online/documents-

spreadsheets-presentations-office-online

Commercial Freemium

Registration Mandatory for webmail and file sharing; optional

for others

Launched June 7, 2010; 10 years ago[18]

Office on the web is a free lightweight web version of Microsoft Office and primarily includes four
web applications: Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote. The offering also
includes Outlook.com and OneDrive which are accessible through a unified app switcher. Users can
install the on-premises version of this service, called Office Online Server, in private clouds in
conjunction with SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Lync Server.[19]
Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on the web can all natively open, edit, and save Office Open XML files
(docx, xlsx, pptx) as well as OpenDocument files (odt, ods, odp). They can also open the older
Office file formats (doc, xls, ppt), but will be converted to the newer Open XML formats if the user
wishes to edit them online. Other formats cannot be opened in the browser apps, such as CSV in
Excel or HTML in Word, nor can Office files that are encrypted with a password be opened. Files
with macros can be opened in the browser apps, but the macros cannot be accessed or executed. [20]
[21][22]
 Starting on July 2013, Word can render PDF documents or convert them to Microsoft Word
documents, although the formatting of the document may deviate from the original. [23] Since
November 2013, the apps have supported real-time co-authoring and autosaving files.[24][25]
Office on the web lacks a number of the advanced features present in the full desktop versions of
Office, including lacking the programs Access and Publisher entirely. However, users are able to
select the command "Open in Desktop App" that brings up the document in the desktop version of
Office on their computer or device to utilize the advanced features there. [26][27]
Supported web browsers include Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer 11, the latest versions
of Firefox or Google Chrome, as well as Safari for OS X 10.8 or later.[28]
The Personal edition of Office on the web is available to the general public free of charge with
a Microsoft account through the Office.com website, which superseded SkyDrive (now OneDrive)
and Office Live Workspace. Enterprise-managed versions are available through Office 365.[29] In
February 2013, the ability to view and edit files on SkyDrive without signing in was added. [30] The
service can also be installed privately in enterprise environments as a SharePoint app, or through
Office Web Apps Server.[19] Microsoft also offers other web apps in the Office suite, such as
the Outlook Web App (formerly Outlook Web Access),[31] Lync Web App (formerly Office
Communicator Web Access),[32] Project Web App (formerly Project Web Access).[33] Additionally,
Microsoft offers a service under the name of Online Doc Viewer to view Office documents on a
website via Office on the web.[34]
There are free extensions available to use Office on the web directly in Google Chrome and
Microsoft Edge.[35][36]

Common features
Most versions of Microsoft Office (including Office 97 and later) use their own widget set and do not
exactly match the native operating system. This is most apparent in Microsoft Office XP and 2003,
where the standard menus were replaced with a colored, flat-looking, shadowed menu style. The
user interface of a particular version of Microsoft Office often heavily influences a subsequent
version of Microsoft Windows. For example, the toolbar, colored buttons and the gray-colored 3D
look of Office 4.3 were added to Windows 95, and the ribbon, introduced in Office 2007, has been
incorporated into several programs bundled with Windows 7 and later. In 2012, Office 2013
replicated the flat, box-like design of Windows 8.
Users of Microsoft Office may access external data via connection-specifications saved in Office
Data Connection (.odc) files.[37]
Both Windows and Office use service packs to update software. Office had non-cumulative service
releases, which were discontinued after Office 2000 Service Release 1.
Past versions of Office often contained Easter eggs. For example, Excel 97 contained a reasonably
functional flight-simulator.

File formats and metadata

Microsoft Office prior to Office 2007 used proprietary file formats based on the OLE Compound File
Binary Format.[38] This forced users who share data to adopt the same software platform. [39] In 2008,
Microsoft made the entire documentation for the binary Office formats freely available for download
and granted any possible patents rights for use or implementations of those binary format for free
under the Open Specification Promise.[40][41] Previously, Microsoft had supplied such documentation
freely but only on request.[42]
Starting with Office 2007, the default file format has been a version of Office Open XML, though
different than the one standardized and published by Ecma International and by ISO/IEC. Microsoft
has granted patent rights to the formats technology under the Open Specification Promise [43] and has
made available free downloadable converters for previous versions of Microsoft Office including
Office 2003, Office XP, Office 2000 [44] and Office 2004 for Mac OS X. Third-party implementations of
Office Open XML exist on the Windows platform (LibreOffice, all platforms), macOS platform
(iWork '08, NeoOffice, LibreOffice) and Linux (LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org 3.0). In addition,
Office 2010, Service Pack 2 for Office 2007, and Office 2016 for Mac supports the OpenDocument
Format (ODF) for opening and saving documents – only the old ODF 1.0 (2006 ISO/IEC standard) is
supported, not the 1.2 version (2015 ISO/IEC standard).
Microsoft provides the ability to remove metadata from Office documents. This was in response to
highly publicized incidents where sensitive data about a document was leaked via its metadata.
[45]
 Metadata removal was first available in 2004, when Microsoft released a tool called Remove
Hidden Data Add-in for Office 2003/XP for this purpose.[46] It was directly integrated into Office 2007
in a feature called the Document Inspector.

Extensibility
A major feature of the Office suite is the ability for users and third party companies to write add-ins
(plug-ins) that extend the capabilities of an application by adding custom commands and specialized
features. One of the new features is the Office Store. [47] Plugins and other tools can be downloaded
by users.[48] Developers can make money by selling their applications in the Office Store. The
revenue is divided between the developer and Microsoft where the developer gets 80% of the
money.[49] Developers are able to share applications with all Office users. [49]
The app travels with the document, and it is for the developer to decide what the recipient will see
when they open it. The recipient will either have the option to download the app from the Office Store
for free, start a free trial or be directed to payment. [49] With Office's cloud abilities, IT department can
create a set of apps for their business employees in order to increase their productivity. [50] When
employees go to the Office Store, they'll see their company's apps under My Organization. The apps
that employees have personally downloaded will appear under My Apps.[49] Developers can use web
technologies like HTML5, XML, CSS3, JavaScript, and APIs for building the apps.[51] An application
for Office is a webpage that is hosted inside an Office client application. User can use apps to
amplify the functionality of a document, email message, meeting request, or appointment. Apps can
run in multiple environments and by multiple clients, including rich Office desktop clients, Office Web
Apps, mobile browsers, and also on-premises and in the cloud. [51] The type of add-ins supported
differ by Office versions:

 Office 97 onwards (standard Windows DLLs i.e. Word WLLs and Excel XLLs)

 Office 2000 onwards (COM add-ins)[52]
 Office XP onwards (COM/OLE Automation add-ins)[53]
 Office 2003 onwards (Managed code add-ins – VSTO solutions)[54]

Password protection
Main article: Microsoft Office password protection
Microsoft Office has a security feature that allows users to encrypt Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint,
Access, Skype Business) documents with a user-provided password. The password can contain up
to 255 characters and uses AES 128-bit advanced encryption by default. [55] Passwords can also be
used to restrict modification of the entire document, worksheet or presentation. Due to lack of
document encryption, though, these passwords can be removed using a third-party cracking
software.[56]

Support policies
Approach
All versions of Microsoft Office products before Microsoft Office 2019 are eligible for ten years of
support following their release, during which Microsoft releases security updates for the product
version and provides paid technical support. The ten-year period is divided into two five-year
phases: The mainstream phase and the extended phase. During the mainstream phase, Microsoft
may provide limited complimentary technical support and release non-security updates or change
the design of the product. During the extended phase, said services stop. [57] Office 2019 only
receives 5 years of mainstream and 2 years of extended support. [58]

Timelines of support
Timeline of Microsoft Office for Windows
Office 2019
Office 2016
Office 2013
Office 2010
Office 2007
Office 2003
Office XP
Office 2000
Office 97
Office 95
Updated 2020-09-07
│
1995
│
1996
│
1997
│
1998
│
1999
│
2000
│
2001
│
2002
│
2003
│
2004
│
2005
│
2006
│
2007
│
2008
│
2009
│
2010
│
2011
│
2012
│
2013
│
2014
│
2015
│
2016
│
2017
│
2018
│
2019
│
2020
│
2021
│
2022
│
2023
│
2024
│
2025
│
2026
│
2027
│
2028
      (Spent) standard support
      (Remaining) standard support
      (Spent) extended support
      (Remaining) extended support

Timeline of Microsoft Office for Mac

Office 2019
Office 2016
Microsoft Office for Mac 2011
Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac
Office 2004 for Mac
Office X for Mac
Microsoft Office 2001
Microsoft Office 98 Macintosh Edition
Updated 2020-09-07
│
1998
│
1999
│
2000
│
2001
│
2002
│
2003
│
2004
│
2005
│
2006
│
2007
│
2008
│
2009
│
2010
│
2011
│
2012
│
2013
│
2014
│
2015
│
2016
│
2017
│
2018
│
2019
│
2020
│
2021
│
2022
      (Spent) standard support
      (Remaining) standard support
      (Spent) extended support
      (Remaining) extended support

Platforms
Microsoft supports Office for the Windows and macOS platforms, as well as mobile versions for
Windows Phone, Android and iOS platforms. Beginning with Mac Office 4.2, the macOS and
Windows versions of Office share the same file format, and are interoperable. Visual Basic for
Applications support was dropped in Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac,[59] then reintroduced in Office for
Mac 2011.[60]
Microsoft tried in the mid-1990s to port Office to RISC processors such
as NEC/MIPS and IBM/PowerPC, but they met problems such as memory access being hampered
by data structure alignment requirements. Microsoft Word 97 and Excel 97, however, did ship for
the DEC Alpha platform. Difficulties in porting Office may have been a factor in
discontinuing Windows NT on non-Intel platforms.[61]

Pricing model and editions

The Microsoft Office applications and suites are sold via retail channels, and volume licensing for
larger organizations (also including the "Home Use Program". allowing users at participating
organizations to buy low-cost licenses for use on their personal devices as part of their employer's
volume license agreement).[62]
In 2010, Microsoft introduced a software as a service platform known as Office 365, to
provide cloud-hosted versions of Office's server software, including Exchange e-mail and
SharePoint, on a subscription basis (competing in particular with Google Apps).[63][64] Following the
release of Office 2013, Microsoft began to offer Office 365 plans for the consumer market, with
access to Microsoft Office software on multiple devices with free feature updates over the life of the
subscription, as well as other services such as OneDrive storage.[65][66]
Microsoft has since promoted Office 365 as the primary means of purchasing Microsoft Office.
Although there are still "on-premises" releases roughly every three years, Microsoft marketing
emphasizes that they do not receive new features or access to new cloud-based services as they
are released unlike Office 365, as well as other benefits for consumer and business markets. [67][68]
[69]
 Office 365 revenue overtook traditional license sales for Office in 2017. [70]

Retail editions
Microsoft Office is available in several editions, which regroup a given number of applications for a
specific price. Current retail editions are grouped by category:

 Home: Home, Personal, Home & Student.

 Business: Business, Business Premium, Business Essentials.
 Enterprise: ProPlus, E1, E3, E5
 Education
Education pricing
Post-secondary students may obtain the University edition of Microsoft Office 365 subscription. It is
limited to one user and two devices, plus the subscription price is valid for four years instead of just
one. Apart from this, the University edition is identical in features to the Home Premium version. This
marks the first time Microsoft does not offer physical or permanent software at academic pricing, in
contrast to the University versions of Office 2010 and Office 2011. In addition, students eligible
for DreamSpark program may receive select standalone Microsoft Office apps free of charge.

Discontinued applications and features

 Microsoft Binder: Incorporates several documents into one file and was originally designed
as a container system for storing related documents in a single file. The complexity of use and
learning curve led to little usage, and it was discontinued after Office XP.
 Microsoft FrontPage: a WYSIWYG HTML editor and website administration tool for
Windows. It was branded as part of the Microsoft Office suite from 1997 to 2003. FrontPage was
discontinued in December 2006 and replaced by Microsoft SharePoint Designer and Microsoft
Expression Web.
 Microsoft InfoPath: Windows application for designing and distributing rich XML-based forms.
The last version was included in Office 2013.[71]
 Microsoft Mail: Mail client (in old versions of Office, later replaced by Microsoft Schedule
Plus and subsequently Microsoft Outlook).
 Microsoft Office Accounting
 Microsoft Office Document Image Writer: a virtual printer that takes documents from
Microsoft Office or any other application and prints them, or stores them in an image file as TIFF
or Microsoft Document Imaging Format format. It was discontinued with Office 2010. [72]
 Microsoft Office Document Imaging: an application that supports editing scanned documents.
Discontinued Office 2010.[72]
 Microsoft Office Document Scanning: a scanning and OCR application. Discontinued Office
2010.[72]
 Microsoft PhotoDraw 2000: A graphics program that was first released as part of the Office
2000 Premium Edition. A later version for Windows XP compatibility was released, known as
PhotoDraw 2000 Version 2. Microsoft discontinued the program in 2001.
 Microsoft Photo Editor: Photo-editing/raster-graphics software in older Office versions up to
Office XP. It was supplemented by Microsoft PhotoDraw in Office 2000 Premium edition.
 Microsoft Schedule Plus: Released with Office 95. It featured a planner, to-do list, and
contact information. Its functions were incorporated into Microsoft Outlook.
 Microsoft Virtual PC: Included with Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2004 for Mac.
Microsoft discontinued support for Virtual PC on the Mac in 2006 owing to new Macs possessing
the same Intel architecture as Windows PCs.[73] It emulated a standard PC and its hardware.
 Microsoft Vizact 2000: A program that "activated" documents using HTML, adding effects
such as animation. It allows users to create dynamic documents for the Web. The development
has ended due to unpopularity.
 Microsoft Data Analyzer 2002: A business intelligence program for graphical visualization of
data and its analysis.
 Office Assistant, included since Office 97 (Windows) and Office 98 (Mac) as a part
of Microsoft Agent technology, is a system that uses animated characters to offer context-
sensitive suggestions to users and access to the help system. The Assistant is often dubbed
"Clippy" or "Clippit", due to its default to a paper clip character, coded as  CLIPPIT.ACS . The
 latest versions that include the Office Assistant were Office 2003 (Windows) and Office 2004
(Mac).
 Microsoft SharePoint Workspace (formerly known as Microsoft Office Groove): a
proprietary peer-to-peer document collaboration software designed for teams with members who
are regularly offline or who do not share the same network security clearance.
 Microsoft SharePoint Designer : Initially a WYSIWYG HTML editor and website administration
tool, Microsoft attempted to turn it into a specialized HTML editor for SharePoint sites, failed and
discontinued it.
 Microsoft Office InterConnect: business-relationship database available only in Japan
 Microsoft Office Picture Manager: basic photo management software (similar
to Google's Picasa or Adobe's Photoshop Elements), replaced Microsoft Photo Editor
 Microsoft Entourage: An Outlook counterpart on macOS, Microsoft discontinued it in favor of
extending the Outlook brand name.
Discontinued server applications
 Microsoft Office Forms Server: Lets users use any browser to access and fill InfoPath forms.
Office Forms Server is a standalone server installation of InfoPath Forms Services.
 Microsoft Office Groove Server: Centrally managing all deployments of Microsoft Office
Groove in the enterprise
 Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server: Allows creation of a project portfolio, including
workflows, hosted centrally
 Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server: Allows customers to monitor, analyze, and plan
their business
Discontinued web services
 Office Live
o Office Live Small Business: Web hosting services and online collaboration tools for
small businesses
o Office Live Workspace: Online storage and collaboration service for documents,
superseded by Office on the web
 Office Live Meeting: Web conferencing service

Criticism
Data formats
Microsoft Office has been criticized in the past for using proprietary file formats rather than open
standards, which forces users who share data into adopting the same software platform. [74] However,
on February 15, 2008, Microsoft made the entire documentation for the binary Office formats freely
available under the Open Specification Promise.[75] Also, Office Open XML, the document format for
the latest versions of Office for Windows and Mac, has been standardized under both Ecma
International and ISO. Ecma International has published the Office Open XML specification free of
copyrights and Microsoft has granted patent rights to the formats technology under the Open
Specification Promise[76] and has made available free downloadable converters for previous versions
of Microsoft Office including Office 2003, Office XP, Office 2000 and Office 2004 for the Mac. Third-
party implementations of Office Open XML exist on the Mac platform (iWork 08)
and Linux (OpenOffice.org 2.3 – Novell Edition only).

Unicode and bi-directional texts

Another point of criticism Microsoft Office has faced was the lack of support in its Mac versions
for Unicode and Bi-directional text languages, notably Arabic and Hebrew. This issue, which had
existed since the first release in 1989, was addressed in the 2016 version. [77][78]

Privacy
On 13 November 2018, a report initiated by the Government of the Netherlands concluded that
Microsoft Office 2016 and Office 365 do not comply with GDPR, the European law which regulates
data protection and privacy for all citizens in and outside the EU and EFTA region. [79] The
investigation was initiated by the observation that Microsoft does not reveal or share publicly any
data collected about users of its software. In addition, the company does not provide users of its
(Office) software an option to turn off diagnostic and telemetry data sent back to the company.
Researchers found that most of the data that the Microsoft software collects and "sends home" is
diagnostics. Researchers also observed that Microsoft "seemingly tried to make the system GDPR
compliant by storing Office documents on servers based in the EU". However, they discovered the
software packages collected additional data that contained private user information, some of which
was stored on servers located in the US.[80] The Netherlands Ministry of Justice hired Privacy
Company to probe and evaluate the use of Microsoft Office products in the public sector.
[81]
 "Microsoft systematically collects data on a large scale about the individual use of Word, Excel,
PowerPoint, and Outlook. Covertly, without informing people," researchers of the Privacy Company
stated in their blog post. "Microsoft does not offer any choice with regard to the amount of data, or
possibility to switch off the collection, or ability to see what data are collected, because the data
stream is encoded."[82]
The researchers commented that there is no need for Microsoft to store information such as IPs and
email addresses, which are collected automatically by the software. "Microsoft should not store
these transient, functional data, unless the retention is strictly necessary, for example, for security
purposes," the researchers conclude in the final report by the Netherlands Ministry of Justice. [83]
As a result of this in-depth study and its conclusions, the Netherlands regulatory body concluded that
Microsoft has violated GDPR "on many counts" including "lack of transparency and purpose
limitation, and the lack of a legal ground for the processing." [84] Microsoft has provided the Dutch
authorities with an "improvement plan" that should satisfy Dutch regulators that it "would end all
violations." The Dutch regulatory body is monitoring the situation and states that "If progress is
deemed insufficient or if the improvements offered are unsatisfactory, SLM Microsoft Rijk will
reconsider its position and may ask the Data Protection Authority to carry out a prior consultation
and to impose enforcement measures." [85] When asked for a response by an IT professional
publication, a Microsoft spokesperson stated: We are committed to our customers’ privacy, putting
them in control of their data and ensuring that Office ProPlus and other Microsoft products and
services comply with GDPR and other applicable laws. We appreciate the opportunity to discuss our
diagnostic data handling practices in Office ProPlus with the Dutch Ministry of Justice and look
forward to a successful resolution of any concerns." [81] The user privacy data issue affects ProPlus
subscriptions of Microsoft Office 2016 and Microsoft Office 365, including the online version of
Microsoft Office 365.[86]