Microsoft responds to installing Office web apps without user’s permission

Microsoft was caught installing Office progressive web apps (PWA) without the user’s permission. These apps include Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook which started showing up in the Start menu. Microsoft has now responded to the issue calling it a bug, and has decided to stop this practice.

Microsoft told The Verge this was originally supposed to be a process where websites pinned to the Start Menu would launch in the Edge browser. This was to make the shortcuts more visible but what it also ended up doing was change the existing Microsoft Office web shortcuts into PWAs. The Verge points out that this is something that can be manually done in Edge but not something that should happen automatically.

The Verge spotted this first with Microsoft force restarting the Windows 10 PC to install an update. Along with the update, Microsoft also installed the web app versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook on the PC.