Microsoft is upgrading parts of Office 2016/2019 to Office 365 …

[German]Quick note/question for readers who use Microsoft Office with a perpetual license. I got reports, that an April 2023 update has changed in the name for the Office update page, saying now, that the app is receiving Office 365  updates. It's a renaming, and not switching to Office 365. But it confuses users.


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Anyone who bought Microsoft Office 2016, 2019 or 2021 receives a "perpetual" license that does not expire. Since Office 2019, the product is also offered exclusively via Click-2-Run installer – with Office 2016, on the other hand, either a C2R or an MSI installer is available. I assume that the following notes only refer to the Click-2-Run installer variants of Microsoft Office.

Update changes parts to Office 365

German blog reader McAlex777 has contacted me here on the blog with the following German comment, in which he describes an experience:

A little note: For me, privately for Office Home & Business 2016, a new "Microsoft 365" update installer started yesterday when I triggered the update in Office under "File > Account".

Fortunately, Microsoft 365 was not automatically installed as a subscription model, as others reported a few weeks ago – Office 2016 is still running. However, I already had a scare moment.

Are there possibly Office policies that disable possible version "upgrades" final?

From the reference to triggering the update via the File menu and the Account command, I gather that this is a Click-2-Run installation that pulls its own updates (while the MSI installer Office variants are updated via Windows Update). The note "Fortunately was not as reported a few weeks ago by others, automatically installed Microsoft 365 as a subscription model " refers to my German blog post nstalliert Microsoft Office 365 sich automatisch über Office 2016/2019?, where we have had an extensive discussion from the readership on the topic – including hints on how to block this and what the cause (Intune) was. I would exclude the latter cause Intune in the above case.

Confirmation by other readers

The above message could still be an isolated case. But blog reader Doc WP confirms the observation for Office 2019 in this German comment and writes:

I had the same scare experience yesterday with Office 2019.
Apparently only the window title of the updater was wrong, also did not take longer than previous updates.

McAlex777 then added the information that the new "Microsoft 365 icon" appeared in the taskbar. And blog reader M.D. notes here that this also applied to Office Professional 2019. There, he says, the label next to the Update button in the Office File menu has also changed and now reads: Microsoft 365 and Office updates. Another German blog reader sent me the following screenshot on Facebook, which shows the changed label.


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Office: Geänderte Update-Bezeichnung
Blog reader M.D. confirms that they are running the 'click and run' installer version of Office 2019. On their systems, apart from the change of the name, everything is fine. No Office 2019 had been switched to Office 365 during the updates (which will lead to problems with the local Exchange server there).

At this point, my question to the readership: Are there others affected who have noticed this change? Was it just the updater name that was changed or was it updated to Office 365? And was a C2R solution or an MSI installation package in use?

On Facebook there was the following feedback to my German blog post Installiert Microsoft Office 365 sich automatisch über Office 2016/2019?.

Yep, definitely the case. In one case even the signatures in Outlook were destroyed, because with the update the roaming signatures function was implemented in the Office.

The existing signatures can then only be found in "Signatures on this device", but can no longer be assigned to the mailbox (on premise Exchange).

Quick solution was copy signature and recreate then at the mailbox. see Outlook roaming signatures for Outlook with Microsoft 365 / Exchange Online.

Also, the navigation bar in Outlook was simply moved to the left side in M365 style.

Actual installation was an Office 2016 C2R.

Possibly an update in the wake of the recent security vulnerability in Outlook with which Microsoft wants to unify even more?

Similar articles:
Microsoft integrates ai.exe in Office 365; an explanation; and some trouble
Installiert Microsoft Office 365 sich automatisch über Office 2016/2019?


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