Microsoft to Remove some Excel features in Office 365

New features are always nice to have or at least explore. When things get removed that is not always welcomed. But in the case of Microsoft removing some features of Excel in the 365 subscriptions, I expect not too many users will complain.

Although Excel is heavily used around the world, not all features of the product are used with the same intensity. If costs are associated with offering a feature (either for Microsoft or for the end-user) it makes sense to re-evaluate if all features should stay in place, or whether to remove some Excel features that are not used or cost-efficient.

Money in Excel

Starting June 30, 2023, the Money feature will no longer be active. Money allows (US) customers to connect to their bank using an Excel template. Data is synchronized securely. Data will no longer be synchronized from the mentioned date, and new connections will not be possible. You can keep the old, existing data. Of course, there is an alternative, but a lot of competition will also come from Quicken.

One of the possible reasons for this discontinuation is the lack of use of the feature. Considering that it is very limited, only offered to US customers, and did not work for all banks.

For some people, this might be a déjà vu since Microsoft Money was a product that existed from 1991 until 2009. More detail can be found in that here.

Wolfram Data Types

Support for the intelligent data analysis offered by wolfram will be no longer available from June 11, 2023, onwards. Same here, the data in your spreadsheets will not be affected, but it will no longer be connected to the wolfram service from that date on.

This is simply due to Microsoft not wanting to renew the partnership with Wolfram. It must not be a commercially viable partnership anymore, and/or Microsoft wants to focus on its own solutions.

Partner Offers

Partner offers will also be removed. No specific details are available, other than that any existing offer needs to be redeemed before June 30, 2023.

The offers that are affected can be found here, while details about the end-of-support are mentioned in their FAQ.