Microsoft Office 365

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Microsoft Office 365

Basic Information
Release Year	2010
Product Type	Software
In Production	Yes
Official Website	https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-365

Microsoft 365 (sold as Office 365 from 2010 to 2020) is a suite of productivity software applications that includes Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint. The addition of "365" to the product's name was introduced in 2010 to distinguish the company's new subscription-based software as a service offering (and other related hosted services such as Office on the Web) that was promoted to customers as the replacement for the stand-alone, perpetually-licensed products of the flagship Microsoft Office suite it had sold since 1990.

In March 2020, a rebranding effort that began in 2017 seeking to unify Microsoft's personal and small-to-medium business product lines with their enterprise offerings was completed, and it was announced that all existing Office 365 products and subscriptions would be renamed to Microsoft 365.

Consumer impact summary

Overview of concerns that arise from the conduct towards users of the product (if applicable):

• User Freedom
• User Privacy
• Business Model
• Market Control

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Incidents

This is a list of all consumer-protection incidents related to this product. Any incidents not mentioned here can be found in the Microsoft Office 365 category.

General

Forced telemetry (diagnostic data) transmission

The only editions of the Microsoft 365 desktop apps which expose controls over the amount of telemetry data they regularly transmit back to Microsoft are the highly-priced "E" (Enterprise) or the Microsoft 365 for Education plans that require a minimum purchase of 300 or more individual user licenses, users of all other tiers are not furnished with an opt-out control as was possible in years part. Even for those volume-licensed editions with the controls, no option is provided that allows for fully deactivating the sharing of telemetry data; moreover, the controls they are given access to are configured at the lowest user privacy level by default.

Office transmits data about an estimated 23,000–25,000 different types of events (other reports related to the German BSI audit identified over 30,000 types of events) to Microsoft. Microsoft can adjust the level of detail transmitted remotely, extending even to the level of every single keystroke and mouse event being compiled as a log to be uploaded to Microsoft servers in the background with no notice provided to the user.

Experts in computing security now generally advise all users that it cannot reasonably be assumed that any data entered into nor any interaction had with a Microsoft 365 application will remain private unless the system is "air gapped," or completely without an active internet connection. This has led to loud concerns being raised about evolving norms regarding user consent, especially in light of the fact that even highly-trusted institutions such as hospitals in countries outside the industrial first-world frequently opt to run consumer versions of Microsoft software as a cost-saving measure.^{[citation needed]}

Copilot

Microsoft Copilot on by default

After a round of opt-in pre-release testing, Microsoft's new AI agent — named Copilot — was announced as an "opt-out" (on by default) feature enhancement for Microsoft 365 subscribers on 22 January 2025.

Copilot up-sell (2024—)

Microsoft's e-mail informing customers their Microsoft 365 plan was increasing in price and getting AI "features".

Microsoft has been accused of misleading customers from around October 2024 by suggesting they had to move to higher-priced Microsoft 365 personal and family plans that included Copilot. The up-sell was phrased in a way that gave consumers the impression that they were staying on the same plan, but the price was increasing with no way to opt out of the new AI features.

In January 2025, YouTuber Atomic Shrimp reported that Microsoft had enacted a "forced up-sell" of 365's new AI Copilot feature. Users with basic accounts (now called "Classic"), such as Shrimp himself, had been informed their subscription fee was going up, but that they would enjoy new features as a result, including Copilot. In his efforts to disable Copilot, Shrimp subsequently discovered that Microsoft now offered "Classic" plans, identical to the old basic plans both in features and in subscription fee. The option to downgrade to Classic, however, was only clearly visible to enterprise users, not to personal users. In essence Microsoft upgraded users' plans without their consent and hid the option to downgrade. While Atomic Shrimp's video suggested contacting support to revert to the "Classic" plan, it is possible to downgrade a personal account through the website via the cancellation process.

In October 2025, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) sued Microsoft over the change, accusing it of misleading about 2.7 million customers:

The ACCC alleges that since 31 October 2024, Microsoft has told subscribers of Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans with auto-renewal enabled that to maintain their subscription they must accept the integration of Copilot and pay higher prices for their plan, or, alternatively, cancel their subscription. The ACCC alleges this information provided to subscribers was false or misleading because there was an undisclosed third option, the Microsoft 365 Personal or Family Classic plans, which allowed subscribers to retain the features of their existing plan, without Copilot, at the previous lower price.

OneDrive

OneDrive sharing

Guest access, a common collaboration feature in other cloud storage providers' free plans that allows users to invite others to anonymously upload files to a designated folder in their account (e.g. group vacation photos) is now restricted for subscribers to the Personal tier to other logged-in Microsoft account holders, completely eliminating the anonymity aspect. Users that wish to continue being able to invite others to contribute files to their OneDrive storage without logging in from a Microsoft account must now upgrade to the more expensive OneDrive for Business product. The ubiquity of the anonymous form of guest access among other major cloud storage services, particularly established providers such as Dropbox, Google and Proton, has proved an unwelcome surprise to both new and existing subscribers and made OneDrive a less-attractive option in that sector by comparison.^{[citation needed (10 Apr 2026)]}

Obfuscation of local storage in favor of OneDrive

Since the introduction of Office 365, saving files locally has been made more difficult due to Microsoft's favoring of OneDrive, its cloud-based storage service. When saving a file previously, the user would encounter the save dialog with a pop-up to browse their computer and choose a file-storage location. This is now multiple clicks away, making it harder to avoid saving the file on OneDrive.^{[citation needed (10 Apr 2026)]}

Files on one's computer are also automatically uploaded to OneDrive by default, causing numerous issues (such as synchronization errors and duplicate files). Turning off this automatic backup is not user-friendly, as the user must navigate multiple settings to disable this option.

The user can go into Options → Save → Set the check mark on "save locally as default". This still requires multiple clicks to save a file, but the cloud options are marginally less intrusive.

Automatically saving Word documents to the cloud (2025)

In its company blog, Microsoft announced that Word would from now on create documents and save their auto-save information to Microsoft servers by default. This setting can be manually reconfigured to use the local computer.

This leads to all information in the document being uploaded to Microsoft servers even before a user has the chance to select local storage when first saving the document.

Microsoft Publisher

Removal from Microsoft 365 computers (2026)

In October 2026, Microsoft will be removing Publisher from computers with Microsoft 365 as part of their "end of support" of the application. Those with a perpetual license of Publisher, such as the Long-Term Service Channel (LTSC) edition, will still be able to install and use the application despite it being no longer supported.

Avoiding price increases on Microsoft 365 Personal subscriptions

Screenshot of the cancellation page for Microsoft 365 Personal plan subscribers, showing the reduced price offer.

On 14 February 2025, Microsoft increased the cost of their entry-level subscription plan, Microsoft 365 Personal, from US$69.99/year to $99.99/year as part of an announcement that they were adding access to their Copilot AI tool to the tier, which had previously been an optional add-on. In the same announcement was information about a new Classic plan which would be the spiritual successor to the former Personal plan, offering the same features at the old price, but it lacked details on how existing subscribers could switch to it and avoid the forced upgrade. Since March 2025, a mechanism has been in place on the Microsoft website to intercept subscribers on that tier who attempt to cancel their subscription, presenting them instead with an option to switch to a hardly-publicized "Personal Classic" plan instead which is priced at the former rate of US$69.99/year (see image at right). The Classic plan provides an identical feature set, save for the monthly allotment of Copilot AI access tokens, making it a drop-in replacement for those who aren't interested in the new features and simply wish for an option to continue at the original price. Microsoft has stated that the Personal Classic plan is not an official tier on their product roadmap but rather a user retention tool. Some users who switched to the Classic plan shortly after the price increase have already reported an inability to renew it for a second year at the reduced price.^{[citation needed (10 Apr 2026)]}

See also

• Dark pattern
• Microsoft
• Software as a service