Microsoft Office 2016

This pause applies to the rollout of the KB5002907 Microsoft 365 update.

Some users have reported that the update deactivated, or in some case completely removed, the perpetual Office 2016 and Office 2019 installations.

The optional update was released to help users update Microsoft 365 apps installations that are more than 90 days out of date.

But according to one expert, although the update is listed as optional, it had installed automatically on some of his customers' devices.

Also, as part of the settlement, TikTok will pay Alabama a minimum of 100 million US dollars, which could balloon up to 300 million if, according to Reuters, 40 other attorney generals sign on to similar agreements with the company within a specified timeframe.

[page flips] Microsoft paused the rollout of the KB5002907 optional update after reports it unexpectedly deactivated or completely uninstalled perpetual versions of Office 2016 and Office 2019.

Microsoft confirms affected Office installations can suffer from two different problems.

One, Office may appear unlicensed after the update, and Microsoft recommends that customers reactivate their purchase, and two, as a rare case, Office may be entirely removed.

Those users are instructed to download and reinstall their purchased copy of Office 2016 or Office 2019 to get themselves sorted.

[page flips] And in what could someday possibly be the biggest addition to Microsoft Excel since pivot tables, an opt-in feature currently rolling out to Microsoft Excel beta channel users enables a single spreadsheet cell to hold multiple values at the same time.

With it, if someone wanted, for example, to type in a bunch of items separated by commas, Excel would no longer treat that all as a solid block, but see them individually inside that single block.