Microsoft takes Internet Explorer one step closer

Microsoft 365 apps will end support for Internet Explorer 11 by the end of 2021, Microsoft said in a corporate blog post this week. It’s a big step forward for the company, which is looking to move customers to its more modern Edge browser even as some businesses are stuck on legacy systems running Internet Explorer (IE).

The change will begin with the Microsoft Teams web app, which will end IE support on November 30 of this year. Microsoft 365 apps will follow by August 17, 2021. Here’s how Microsoft explained the 365 changes in their blog post:

Customers will have a degraded experience or will not be able to sign in to Microsoft 365 apps and services on IE 11. For degraded experiences, new Microsoft 365 features will not be available or some features may stop working when accessing application or service via IE 11.

That said, Redmond was careful to make it clear that IE 11 will not go away. Many companies have proprietary web apps that only work on this browser and are unlikely to abandon it altogether in the immediate future.

Sometimes employees in these organizations use two browsers: IE for these apps and something else like Chrome for everything else. The blog post announcing the changes argued that Edge’s “Internet Explorer mode” will allow Edge to work with some of these apps, although Microsoft obviously can’t guarantee that this will always be the case with every app.

In addition to the IE 11 announcements, Microsoft also said that the Microsoft Edge Legacy desktop app (pre-Chromium Edge) “will not receive any new security updates” after March 9, 2021.

Internet Explorer 11 was introduced in 2013 as a main component of Windows operating systems. It continues to receive support according to the end-of-life policies of the operating systems it shipped with – in the case of Windows 10, that means support and security upgrades end in October 2025.

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