2007 doesn’t seem so long ago. But looking back at the last decade does reveal some startling events. The financial crisis in 2008 setback more than a few 401k’s. The BP Oil spill in 2010 was a disaster. Facebook when public in 2012 (a boon or bust depending on your perspective). The 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris were unnerving. And the political landscape has become too course for many of us.
But hey it’s not the end of the world, is it?
Well it might be if you are still using Office 2007. And that may be more than a few of you out there. If you’re like many small businesses the Microsoft office suite is your standard productivity office suite. Such customers don’t rush out to buy the latest version of office every 3 years or so. They buy it when they get a new computer for a new employee or have to replace one that has bitten the dust. They don’t see the value of being on the latest version. All is right with the world If they can write that letter to their customer using Word and can get to their email with Outlook.
If you’re like many of these businesses you might be get your email from the cloud. Perhaps you have an exchange online subscription or you have Office 365 Business Essentials. Well the world will end on October 31st if you use Outlook 2017 to get to that subscription. That’s when RPC/HTTP protocol will be deprecated and you will no longer be able to connect to Exchange Online using Outlook 2007. You can check out this support article “RPC over HTTP deprecated in Office 365 on October 31, 2017” if you want to read some of the techie details. Additionally, customers may need to ensure their Outlook clients are not using a registry key to block MAPI/HTTP. Details about this registry key can be found in this KB article.
The bottom line is Exchange Online (the email component of the Office 365 subscription) will only be supporting the new MAPI over HTTP protocol. It’s more secure and more reliable. Outlook 2007 is at end of life for support and Microsoft is not going to fix it.
Now is the time to consider switching to the subscription model of updating your Microsoft Office software by moving to Office 365 Business Premium. This service gives you the latest online version of Outlook and the other suite of Office applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Skype for business and the desktop version for Windows or Mac for up to 5 devices for each user. Each employee can install Office on their office PC, their home PC and their iPad and still have two installations to spare! The subscription also includes free updates. So, you don’t have to worry about out dated software again. All for $12.50 per month per user.
Contact us here at Pi3 Consulting Group to learn more and get started.