Microsoft has announced that the community support forums for Office 2013 and Office 2010 are ending next month, July 2018.
The Community Support Forum are online forums where Microsoft staff and volunteers answer questions from Microsoft customers.
From July 2018 Microsoft won’t be responding to queries in these forums:
- Office 2010, 2013
- Windows 7, 8.1, 8.1 RT
- Microsoft Security Essentials
- Internet Explorer 10
- Surface Pro, Surface Pro 2, Surface RT, Surface 2
- Microsoft Band – this topic will be locked. Users are invited to participate in Microsoft Band 2 topic.
- Mobile devices forum – Microsoft support will continue in “Other Windows mobile devices” topic
- Zune
The quality of the forum answers vary. The public / volunteer answers are sometimes on-topic, good and useful. Too often the responses from Microsoft’s own staff are obtuse, use barely relevant stock phrases and are seemingly intended to deflect blame away from Microsoft itself,
An example of the forum quality from Microsoft is the ending announcement. Instead of being straight with their customers and volunteers, they use weasel wording. The heading only talks about ‘changes’ and the first paragraph a move to ‘shift support scope’ <sigh>.
Still, the community forums can be a good resource when they appear in broader web search results from Google or even Bing <g>.
