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by andylynch 474 days ago
I am really curious about the conversations that will be had if or when they seriously propose to any of their banking and finance customers that they Webify excel for windows.

(Though, going on recollection from past Q&As the excel devs have done, a more fundamental issue is that few people working they fully understand how COM works, and they are getting fewer)
2 comments
p_ing 474 days ago
The only issue Microsoft has to worry about is legacy COM add-ins for Office products. The 'modern' method of creating add-ins has been around for awhile and has the benefit of also working on macOS and the web, plus not having an add-in that can crash the particular Office product, doesn't require an install on Windows, more secure, etc. etc... There are benefits to Microsoft and to end users. Migrating complex COM add-ins to modern add-ins is still a big lift.

The app itself (Outlook) dropping COM support is simply given it no longer needs COM support for add-ins, it can drop COM itself.

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internet101010 474 days ago
ERP add-ins for Excel are the main reason why I still use Windows at the office. Side note: the webified version of Outlook's new roomfinder is awful; it's slow, doesn't work correctly, and doesn't respect dark mode (but this is a larger failure on the Windows side in general).
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