If you are an Internet Explorer (IE) user, then this is the right time to make the transition to either Microsoft’s Edge or some other web browser, as Microsoft Teams will no longer work on IE 11 starting from today. Other Microsoft services will also stop working on the browser over time.
On August 17th, 2020, the company detailed the upcoming changes that will affect IE 11 and the legacy version of Edge in a blog post titled “Microsoft 365 apps say farewell to Internet Explorer 11 and Windows 10 sunsets Microsoft Edge Legacy.”
As the title suggests, Microsoft 365 apps will stop working on IE 11, including Microsoft’s Teams web app, which is a video conferencing service similar to Zoom. “Today, we’re announcing that Microsoft 365 apps and services will no longer support Internet Explorer 11 (IE 11) by this time next year,” the tech giant wrote in the blog post.
The company has provided a timeline: Microsoft Teams will stop supporting IE 11 starting from November 30, and the 365 apps will end the support from August 17, 2021. Other than the end of support for IE 11, the company is also ending its support for the legacy version of Microsoft Edge browser starting from March 9, 2021.
All these changes appear to be part of the push towards Microsoft’s latest Chromium-based Edge browser, which is a successor to the Internet Explorer.
The company, however, made it clear in the post that Internet Explorer is not completely going away. “We want to be clear that IE 11 isn’t going away and that our customers’ own legacy IE 11 apps and investments will continue to work. Customers have made business-critical investments in IE 11 legacy apps and we respect that those apps are still functioning.”
Anyone familiar with Microsoft Windows, knows about the Internet Explorer. IE was Microsoft’s default browser for decades, but it was not everyone’s favorite. It has gained a reputation for being extremely slow, and this continues to spawn hilarious IE memes on the internet even today.
In an attempt to fix this, Microsoft decided to get rid of IE entirely by introducing a new browser called Edge (now legacy version) and made it the default browser of Windows 10. The EdgeHTML based browser received mixed reviews, and eventually led to the creation of Chromium-based Edge which Microsoft announced on January 15.
The latest browser was well-received by both users and critics, and the move to develop a browser based on Google’s Chromium was a welcome change. By ending the support of various apps on IE, the company is giving a clear indication that it wants its users to transition to the latest version of Edge.
“While we know this change will be difficult for some customers, we believe that customers will get the most out of Microsoft 365 when using the new Microsoft Edge. We are committed to helping make this transition as smooth as possible,” the company wrote in the blog post.
