Microsoft will stop support for Internet Explorer 11, Legacy Edge by 2021

FP TrendingAug 18, 2020 16:27:57 IST

Microsoft is inching towards bidding farewell to Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge Legacy services. In exactly a year, the Microsoft 365 Apps will no longer support these.

The firm announced via a blog on Monday that by next year on 17 August, Microsoft will stop support for Internet Explorer 11 for all of Microsoft’s online services such as Office 365, OneDrive, and Outlook. The end will begin with Microsoft Teams no longer supporting IE 11 from 30 November 2020. The company is urging users to focus on Microsoft Edge as the IE dies out.

Internet Explorer logo

The company blog said that after the designated dates, users will be unable to connect to IE 11 or face “degraded experience”. According to Microsoft, the degraded experience will mean that the new Microsoft 365 features remain unavailable or certain features of M365 cease to work when accessing the app or service via IE 11. On the other hand, the Microsoft Edge Legacy will lose support on 9 March 2021. The legacy version will no longer receive security updates. All of the new devices and upcoming Windows feature updates will come with the new Edge browser.

Microsoft's timeline for phasing out Internet Explorer 11 support.

Respecting investors of web apps on the IE 11, these “legacy IE 11 apps and investments will continue to work” after the shut down of M365 support, they have stated. Microsoft says businesses will be allowed to run the IE-specific websites till it drops support for Internet Explorer 11 within Windows 10. Before the step, the firm wants to move all of its users to the new Chromium-based browser.

The open-source Chromium project saw a public and stable roll out at the start of this year. It came with superior privacy controls compared to the previous versions and also provided faster using speeds.