8 Microsoft Tools Your Team Still Uses — That Microsoft Has Officially Retired

InfoPath was Microsoft's form designer from the early 2000s. Used primarily to customise SharePoint list forms, build multi-step data entry forms, and create XML-based data submission workflows. Microsoft announced it would be discontinued back in 2014, removed InfoPath Forms Services from SharePoint Online in 2019, and finally ended extended support in April 2026. Any organisation still running InfoPath Filler on managed devices or using InfoPath-customised SharePoint list forms is now on unsupported software. See our full InfoPath migration guide for the complete remediation steps.

SharePoint Designer was the primary tool for building no-code SharePoint workflows before Power Automate existed. It could also modify SharePoint site structure, master pages, and page layouts in ways that aren't possible through the browser. Microsoft ended extended support on January 13, 2026 — two months before InfoPath. The tool still works for on-premises SharePoint customers, but receives no security updates. Workflows built in SharePoint Designer that target SharePoint Online were already broken in many cases after Microsoft removed the 2013 Workflow Platform from SharePoint Online in November 2024.

This is the one most organisations got caught out on. SharePoint 2013 workflows relied on the Workflow Manager service, which Microsoft shut down in SharePoint Online on November 1, 2024. If you had active 2013 Platform workflows on your SharePoint Online lists and libraries that hadn't been migrated, they stopped running on that date — silently. Many organisations discovered this when a business process that had been running automatically for years simply stopped and nobody noticed until a downstream problem surfaced. SharePoint 2010 workflows were removed from SharePoint Online even earlier (in 2020). Workflows still run on SharePoint Server on-premises, but without Microsoft support beyond the server's own lifecycle.

SharePoint Add-ins (previously called SharePoint Apps) were the extensibility model introduced with SharePoint 2013, designed to replace the earlier Farm Solutions model with a more isolated, cloud-friendly approach. Microsoft deprecated the SharePoint Add-in model in 2021 when SPFx reached maturity, then began the hard removal process, completing it in SharePoint Online on April 2, 2026. Provider-hosted add-ins (which host their own infrastructure outside SharePoint) are still technically callable but are not supported and will lose access to SharePoint contexts as the ACS (Access Control Service) authentication method is also being deprecated. SharePoint-hosted add-ins simply stopped loading after April 2026. We covered this in detail in our SharePoint Add-ins retirement post.

The original Microsoft Stream was a standalone video hosting service inside Microsoft 365. Microsoft rebuilt Stream entirely on top of SharePoint and OneDrive (now called "Stream on SharePoint"), and shut down the classic version on April 15, 2024. Content was automatically migrated for most users, but embedded Stream Classic video links in SharePoint pages, Teams tabs, and Viva Connections cards were broken by the migration — those links pointed to the old URL structure which no longer exists. If you have SharePoint pages with embedded Stream videos that stopped playing in mid-2024, this is why. The fix is to re-embed the video using the new Stream on SharePoint URL.

Skype for Business Online (the cloud service) was fully decommissioned on July 31, 2021. All tenants were migrated to Microsoft Teams. The on-premises version — Skype for Business Server 2019 — remains supported until October 14, 2025 (mainstream) and October 14, 2028 (extended). Organisations running Skype for Business Server 2019 on-premises still have time, but Teams is the clear strategic direction and hybrid migrations are straightforward. Skype for Business Server 2015 mainstream support ended October 13, 2020 — if you're still on 2015, you're on extended support only.

Kaizala was acquired by Microsoft from an Indian startup in 2018 and was marketed as a WhatsApp-like messaging tool for frontline workers, particularly in markets like India and Africa where PSTN connectivity was more common than broadband. Microsoft integrated core Kaizala features into Teams and shut down the Kaizala app on August 31, 2023. If your organisation was using Kaizala for field team communication, surveys, or job card management, that data is no longer accessible through Kaizala. The replacement is Microsoft Teams — particularly Teams for Frontline Workers which targets the same use case with walkie-talkie, shift management, and task publishing features.

Access Web Apps were a feature that let users publish Microsoft Access databases to SharePoint Online, with SharePoint rendering the forms and reports in a browser. Microsoft removed this feature from SharePoint Online in April 2018 and deleted associated databases in June 2018. This is the oldest entry on this list but it's still worth mentioning because we regularly encounter organisations that "lost data in 2018 when SharePoint changed something" — this was usually Access Web Apps. The data is irrecoverable if it wasn't exported at the time. Newer Microsoft Access desktop databases (.accdb) still work locally, but no cloud-hosted Access Web App feature exists today.