Updating Microsoft Office apps just became easier than ever

Updating Microsoft products has become something of a meme among computer users over the last few years. With both Windows and Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) moving to a subscription models, it has obviously proven challe3nging for the company to push out so many updates to so many different people, which has caused a less than optimal user experience to say the least. It now looks, however, like the company is looking to fix that situation with Microsoft 365 at least by rolling out an important change. Here is what you need to know.

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Microsoft has published a blog post that explains a little about an upcoming change that will make updating Microsoft 365 apps a much easier for enterprise users and IT departments. In particular, the feature will help administrators looking to update Microsoft 365 apps across multiple devices.

Microsoft is referring to the new feature as update under lock and it will enable Microsoft 365 apps to update even if they have been left open on a device. Here is how it will work:

“If there are running Office apps, update under lock will try to shut them down only when safe to do so, apply the pending update, and restore any closed apps to their previous state. This process takes about four seconds.”

This simple update will make a big difference as it is common practice among Office users to leave the apps open in between use. When they are left in this state, however, it stops updates from occurring. As Microsoft tends to roll out a lot of feature tweaks and security upgrades throughout the year, this can cause quite the roadblock on Office apps. This new upgrade will fix this roadblock situation and allow upgrades to roll out smoothly without users even knowing that their apps have been closed and reopened.

The new feature is already rolling out to all qualifying customers. In other recent Microsoft news, the company has just patched a Zero-day vulnerability affecting Windows 11 meaning it is time to update Windows too.