Microsoft sketches out a Whiteboard extension

Microsoft is giving customers who are still clinging to its doomed legacy Whiteboard technology a lifeline, and has pushed the deletion date to October 16, 2026. The migration tooling for "legacy enterprise whiteboards" will be retired on September 25, 2026, and the standalone Microsoft Whiteboard app will be deprecated on November 30, 2026. To be clear, Microsoft Whiteboard as a concept is not going away - this is more about migration for Azure-based files. The original dates were August 22 for the migration tooling, September 5 for the permanent deletion, and September 14 for the app deprecation. Therefore, customers have been granted a little more time to make the transition to OneDrive-backed whiteboards. Microsoft did not respond to a query about why it had moved the milestones. The lateness of the announcement suggests it either ran into technical problems or that enough customers were still on the legacy platform that Redmond uttered the computing equivalent of FINE! Have another month! New whiteboard files for commercial customers have been in OneDrive rather than Azure since 2022. However, legacy whiteboards could still be stored in Azure and, if not migrated to OneDrive, will be deleted on October 16. Migration happens automatically when a whiteboard is opened in Whiteboard on the web, Teams desktop, Teams web, or using the Whiteboard Windows app (through to September 22, 2026). If migration doesn't happen, then users have until October 16 before somebody at Microsoft hits the delete key. However, only owners of Azure Whiteboards can trigger migration. Users on vacation, or who have left the organization, could also present a headache for administrators, who might need to transfer ownership to active users. In Microsoft's original announcement, it promised a set of PowerShell cmdlets to ease the process. The Microsoft Whiteboard app became generally available in 2018. It was a useful collaborative tool for Microsoft 365 subscribers (or could be used standalone with a Microsoft account, although these days organizations are the target). It is very much a relic of a past era at Redmond, when touch-based experiences were all the rage. Today, the company would likely prefer users to bark instructions at an AI assistant. According to Microsoft, "Moving these files to OneDrive improves security, accessibility, revision history, eDiscovery, and access to current and future Whiteboard features." (R)