The Demise of the OWA Light Client

OWA Light client.

On July 8, Microsoft said that they will retire the OWA Light client for Exchange Server in August 2026. But what happened to the OWA Light client for Exchange Online? It seems like Microsoft announced the retirement of OWA Light for Exchange Online in June 2024, but didn’t really make the fact clear in a blog post about consumer accounts. In any case, you can’t run OWA Light for Exchange Online, even if you wanted to.

Microsoft Urges Consumer and Enterprise Users to Move to Newer Outlook Versions

Microsoft wants users to upgrade from legacy Outlook clients. The biggest impact for Microsoft 365 tenants might be the loss of OWA light, but consumer users are in for the same kind of change that enterprise users experienced when Microsoft blocked basic authentication for Exchange Online. The announcement wasn’t very clear about what’s happening, so we’re happy to clarify matters.