Force Edge for Outlook Web Add-ins on older Platforms

Question

Now that Explorer is "sort of" officially deprecated, I am wondering if there is a way to force Outlook to use Edge on older platforms.

According to this document: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/concepts/browsers-used-by-office-web-add-ins, the default browser is still explorer in many cases. Particularly annoying is in the case of

Office 2013 commercial
Office 2016 commercial
Office 2019 commercial

for which, even when Edge is installed, it is not used (unlike the equivalent consumer versions from 2016).

We use a webform provider as part of our Add-in. Unfortunately, the webform provider no longer support Explorer in their newest version. Because Microsoft has so announced end of support, why should they. Unfortunately, this is causing breaking issues with our clients using older Office platforms.

Thus, we are hoping for a way to force Edge on older platforms. Is there any way to do this?

Answer 1

Hi @Brendan May

I'm afraid you can't force Outlook add-in to use Edge because just like the doc says:

Which browser is used depends on:

• The computer's operating system.
• Whether the add-in is running in Office on the web, Microsoft 365, or perpetual (also called "non-subscription" or "one-time purchase") Office 2013 or later.
• Within the perpetual versions of Office, whether the add-in is running in the "consumer" or "commercial" (also called "volume-licensed" or "LTSC") variation.

The recommendation from official is like this: We recommend (but don't require) that you continue to support these combinations, at least in a minimal way, by providing users of your add-in a graceful failure message when your add-in is launched in the Internet Explorer webview.

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Regards,
Yu Zhou