Windows 7 users will get notifications from Microsoft about end of support

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With Microsoft pulling support for Windows 7 on January 14, 2020, the company plans to remind send out push notifications to its users warning them about this development. End of support means Windows 7 and Office 2010 users will no longer get security updates for their machines. The company wants its users to upgrade to Windows 10 PCs and Office 365. While the push notification won't mention upgrading to Windows 10, it'll remind users that support ends in January and they will be linked to microsoft.com/windows7. The link will encourage users to upgrade or buy a newer PC.

According to Matt Barlow, CVP of Windows, “Beginning next month, if you are a Windows 7 customer, you can expect to see a notification appear on your Windows 7 PC. This is a courtesy reminder that you can expect to see a handful of times in 2019.” When they say handful, we don't exactly know how many times. But it'll only stop once Windows 7 support ends in January. We don't know what the notification will look like yet but it'll be similar to the Windows 10 upgrade notifications.

Source: The Verge

Microsoft Office 365 is now available on Apple's macOS App Store

macOS users can now access Microsoft Office 365 apps and services right from their App Store. 

“We are excited to welcome Microsoft Office 365 to the all new Mac App Store in macOS Mojave,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Apple and Microsoft have worked together to bring great Office productivity to Mac users from the very beginning. Now, with Office 365 on the Mac App Store, it's easier than ever to get the latest and best version of Office 365 for Mac, iPad and iPhone.” 

“We are excited to announce that today Office 365 is arriving in the Mac App Store,” said Jared Spataro, corporate vice president at Microsoft. “We have worked closely with Apple to provide Mac users with the very best productivity experience — one that offers everything they know and love about Office through an experience uniquely designed for the Mac.”

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Microsoft Office 365, Azure users couldn’t sign into accounts after multi-factor authentication issue

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Microsoft’s troubles continue with some Microsoft Office 365 and Azure users being locked out of their accounts for most of the day on November 19. A multi-factor authentication (MFA) issue hit users worldwide, even affecting their ability to do self-service password resets. An Office 365 status page on the issue described the problem of users weren’t receiving prompts on their mobile devices (SMS, call, or push) and Microsoft is investigating the issue. The company hasn’t released yet what caused the problem.

Meanwhile, those on Azure may have problems accessing resources like Azure Active Directory when MFA is required. Azure engineers have deployed a hotfix but this took some time to take effect, particularly for Europe and Asia Pacific users. It did help reduce the number of authentication errors and it tipped off the engineers that some of its customers were not getting the SMS, call, or push notifications for MFA. Microsoft claims some users are now “authenticating successfully” but they are still addressing the delays experienced by other users.

Source: ZDNet + TechCrunch

Microsoft Word aims for productivity boost by automatically making to-do lists for users

A new beta feature being tested out by some Mac for Office Insiders brings added productivity features to Microsoft Word. The word processor can now automatically detect notes and messages you leave for yourself and others and turn these into actionable to-do lists. All you need to do is type in things like “todo” or “<insert something here>” in a document and Word’s AI-powered writing assistant Editor will create a list based on these items. It can even suggest things based on recent documents and files. For example, if you type in "<insert graph here>," it’ll show you recent charts you’ve worked on. If you’re collaborating with someone in a Word document, you can @-mention these colleagues to let them know what tasks need to be done. The tagged person will get an email and can even take action on the document by replying directly to said email.

As mentioned, it’s first available to Mac for Office Insiders who are on the Fast level, which is a group of users that get features first to provide feedback. Slow level Insiders will get a more stable version at a later date. The Windows version is expected to land in the coming weeks. It’ll eventually be rolled out to all existing Office 365 users. The other Office apps will get the feature later on.

 Source: Engadget