[ad_1]
Credit: Dreamstime
If you see Microsoft’s Office applications appear on your Start menu as web applications, you are probably wondering why they are there. The answer is that they are not, and Microsoft is grappling with the problem.
Last week, Windows Insiders began reporting that versions of Microsoft’s Office apps started showing up on your Start menu as Progressive Web Apps, or PWA. But other users started complaining over the weekend that PWAs were also on their Start menu, and that they weren’t part of the Insider beta program. So what happened?
As we understand it, the pinned Office PWAs were the result of a bug. The bottom line is that if you right-click on any Office PWAs that ended up in your Start menu, you can safely unpin them.
What went wrong
A source close to the company describes the addition of Office PWA as part of the transition to the new Edge browser, originally released in January. Users had started complaining over the weekend that the new Office PWAs were being installed as part of the Windows 10 October 2020 update, which, given that the latest feature release adds the new Edge browser, seems to be true.
Credit: Mark Hachman / IDG One of the new and legacy Edge browser features is that specific web pages can be pinned to the Start menu and taskbar as shortcuts. The new Edge offers expanded support for marking those sites as progressive web apps, if the site allows it.
Running Word in a browser and running it as PWA is pretty much the same, with a few minor, but key differences. For one thing, a PWA will remove the address bar, tabs, and other components that make the web application look like a web page. Second, and most importantly, a PWA can be saved as an “application” in the Start menu.
On a PC that didn’t have Office installed (or Microsoft 365, as it’s called now), Microsoft would automatically insert shortcuts to the online versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. However, the error translated the automatic installation of shortcuts to these Office web applications as a request to install Office. PWA, instead.
Microsoft still plans to include shortcuts to Office web applications in the Start menu as part of the new PCs. But until Microsoft can make sure they won’t end up as a PWA, Microsoft plans to stop the practice.
Tags MicrosoftappsOffice 365Windows 10security
[ad_2]
