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Overview of optional connected experiences in Office

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Note

For a list of Office products covered by this privacy information, see Privacy controls available for Office products.

If you have a work or school account, your organization's admin may have provided you with the ability to use one or more cloud-backed services (also referred to as "optional connected experiences") while using the Office apps, like Word or Excel, that are included with Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise. These cloud-backed services are optional. Whether you use them is up to you. They're provided to you under the terms of the Microsoft Services Agreement and privacy statement. In some cases, other terms may also apply. This article lists the cloud-backed services, further explains their terms of use, and describes how you can turn them off or on at any time.

Note

If you use these services, what terms of use do you need to agree to?

It's important to know that these optional cloud-backed services aren't covered by your organization's license with Microsoft. Instead, they're licensed directly to you. By using these optional cloud-backed services, you also agree to the terms of the Microsoft Services Agreement and privacy statement. Depending on which service you use, additional terms may also apply. In most cases, there's no fee to use these services. If a fee does apply (as may be the case with some add-ins available to you for download through Office Store), you'll be clearly informed prior to use.

Experiences that rely on Bing

Some cloud-backed services are powered by Microsoft Bing. Microsoft Bing is a separate business to Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise and is managed independently of Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise by Microsoft. The experiences it powers in Office apps included with Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise are: 3D Maps, Map Charts, Insert Online Pictures, Insert Online 3D Models, PowerPoint QuickStarter, Researcher, Smart Lookup, and similarity checker (a feature of Editor).

Bing powers the following experiences in Outlook for iOS and Android:

  • Location suggestions: When you add a public place with a street address to a calendar item, the full street address is included in the Location field.
  • Interesting Calendars: You can subscribe to calendars about your favorite sports teams or TV shows.
  • Travel time in Up Next: Your next upcoming event is summarized at the top of your email inbox in a card called Up Next. In Outlook for Android, this experience requires Bing Maps to provide estimated travel time.
  • Weather on calendar: The weather forecast for your current location appears at the top of your calendar screen.

Also, the search experience on the support.microsoft.com website uses Bing Search APIs. When you do a search on the support.microsoft.com website, your search query is sent to Bing and Bing returns the results.

These experiences that rely on Bing are licensed to you under the terms of the Microsoft Services Agreement and covered by the privacy statement. Any search queries you provide to the Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise organization while using these services are sent to Microsoft Bing. They aren't linked to you by the Bing organization.

Experiences that rely on other Microsoft-owned online services and/or services owned by third-parties

Feedback (web portal)

Feedback is a web portal that allows users to create and participate in community feedback about Microsoft products. Links to the Feedback web portal might be available when providing feedback from within a product. For more information, see Learn about how to provide feedback to Microsoft. The Feedback web portal is powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the terms of the Microsoft Services Agreement and Microsoft privacy statement apply.

Help > Contact Support

On Outlook for iOS and Android, you can report issues and connect with our support team through Settings > Help & Feedback > Contact Support. This experience requires a Microsoft owned service called PowerLift, and the terms of the Microsoft Services Agreement and Microsoft privacy statement apply.

Insert online video

Insert Online Video allows you to insert video files into your document. The insert online video experience is subject to the Microsoft Services Agreement and privacy statement. Additional terms of use may apply if you access content from third-party sources. For example, when you connect to YouTube, the terms of service and privacy policy for YouTube apply. Microsoft may add other providers of video material in the future.

Insert photos from mobile device

Insert photos from mobile device allows you to insert photos from your Android device directly into web and desktop versions of some Microsoft 365 apps, such as PowerPoint and Word. This experience requires the use of the Link to Windows mobile app on your Android device. The terms of the Microsoft Services Agreement and Microsoft privacy statement apply.

Link unfurling for Loop automatically expands a hyperlink into an interactive experience. For example, when you paste a link to a Word document into a Loop workspace, you're shown a preview card. The terms of the Microsoft Services Agreement and Microsoft privacy statement apply. Or, for example, if the link is to a YouTube video, a card with an embedded player is shown. In that case, the terms of service and privacy policy for YouTube also apply.

Microsoft Error Reporting Program (MERP)

MERP connects to the Watson.microsoft.com service to send diagnostic data when Office client applications that run on Mac devices crash. The service is owned by Microsoft and the terms of the Microsoft Services Agreement and Microsoft privacy statement apply. MERP doesn't apply to Office client applications that run on Windows.

Office Store

When you use the Office Store, your use of the store site itself is licensed by the Microsoft Services Agreement and privacy statement. However, any add-ins that you download through the Office Store are covered by the add-in provider's terms of use. These providers can be various different organizations or businesses, and some may charge a usage fee. You need to check the permissions, privacy statement, and license terms of each add-in to know which terms apply and decide if you want to agree to the terms of use that organization offers.

Note

Open files in the Microsoft 365 mobile app that use a legacy or non-Office file format

To open a file in the Microsoft 365 mobile app that uses a legacy or non-Office file format, that file first needs to be converted into a file format that the Microsoft 365 mobile app can open. For example, when you open an Excel workbook that’s in the xls or ods format, the file first needs to be converted to the xlsx format. This experience uses a conversion service owned by Microsoft, and the terms of the Microsoft Services Agreement and Microsoft privacy statement apply. This experience is also available in the individual Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps for iOS and Android.

To print a file in the Microsoft 365 mobile app, the app needs to create a PDF of the file. This experience uses a conversion service owned by Microsoft, and the terms of the Microsoft Services Agreement and Microsoft privacy statement apply. This experience is also available in the individual Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps for iOS and Android.

Research

Research connects to cloud-backed services to obtain dictionary, thesaurus, translation, and word lookup results. When you use this experience, it connects to Microsoft-owned services by default and the Microsoft Services Agreement and privacy statement apply. Research allows you to add other service providers. If you decide to use another service provider, additional terms may apply.

Note

Research is different than Researcher. In newer versions of Office another experience called Researcher is available in addition to Research. Researcher is a newer service, powered by Bing, and is discussed in the Experiences that rely on Bing section.

Send to Kindle

Send to Kindle lets you send Microsoft Word documents directly to your Kindle library. The terms of the Microsoft Services Agreement and Microsoft privacy statement apply. Also, since Send to Kindle requires you to be signed in with your Amazon account, the conditions of use and privacy notice for Amazon apply.

Travel time in Up Next in Outlook for iOS

On Outlook for iOS, your next upcoming event is summarized at the top of your email inbox in a card called Up Next. This experience requires an Apple owned service called Apple Maps to provide estimated travel time. The Apple Maps terms of use and Apple privacy policy apply.

Weather Bar in Outlook

The Weather Bar in Outlook displays weather forecasts for geographic locations you choose. During use, the Weather Bar in Outlook connects to MSN Weather by default. MSN is owned by Microsoft and the terms of the Microsoft Services Agreement and Microsoft privacy statement apply. When you use the Weather Bar with MSN Weather, Microsoft doesn't detect your location, and the cities that you choose to display aren't linkable to you. You may change this default setting to connect to other weather service providers. If you decide to use another weather service provider, you'll need to check the privacy statement and license terms of that provider to know which terms apply.

How to determine if your admin has given you the ability to use optional connected experiences

To determine whether your admin has given you the ability to use any optional connected experiences in your Office apps included with Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise on a Windows device, go to File > Account > Account Privacy and select Manage Settings. If your admin has not given you control, you see a message that states, "Your organization's admin manages your privacy settings and has decided to disable optional connected experiences."

If you're using Office for Mac, open any Office application and select the app menu (such as Word, or Excel) > Preferences > Privacy. This action opens the Account Privacy settings dialog box where you can see your privacy options.

For more information, see Account Privacy Settings.

Note

If the admin for your organization has provided you with a volume licensed version of Office 2019, Project 2019, or Visio 2019, go to File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Privacy Options. There you should see a check box for Turn on optional connected experiences. If you don't see that check box in Project 2019 or Visio 2019, choose Privacy Settings... in that Trust Center dialog box. Then you should see a Privacy Settings dialog box appear with a check box for Enable optional connected experiences.

Your privacy settings

If your admin has given you the ability to use optional connected experiences in your Office apps included with Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise on a Windows device, you can go to File > Account > Account Privacy and select Manage Settings to manage your settings at any time. When enabled, you have the option to use the services described in this article when you want to use them. When disabled, they won't be accessible.

If you're using Office for Mac, open any Office application and select the app menu (such as Word, or Excel) > Preferences > Privacy. This action opens the Account Privacy settings dialog box where you can see your privacy options.

For more information, see Account Privacy Settings.

Note

  • If the admin for your organization has provided you with a volume licensed version of Office 2019, Project 2019, or Visio 2019, go to File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Privacy Options. There you should see a check box for Turn on optional connected experiences. If you don't see that check box in Project 2019 or Visio 2019, choose Privacy Settings... in that Trust Center dialog box. Then you should see a Privacy Settings dialog box appear with a check box for Enable optional connected experiences.
  • Your privacy settings don't control experiences that require you to connect your LinkedIn account to your Microsoft work or school account. To control these types of experiences (such as the LinkedIn information on a profile card in Outlook), see LinkedIn in Microsoft apps and services.
  • Your privacy settings don’t control whether Microsoft 365 Copilot can reference web content when responding to your prompts. Instead there is a separate web content toggle that allows you to make that choice. Referencing web content relies on the Bing search service. The use of Bing is covered by the Microsoft Services Agreement and the Microsoft Privacy Statement.

Required service data

When you use any of the optional cloud-backed services described in this article, Microsoft may collect required service data (such as usage data, error and performance data) about the performance of the experience when you used it. This required service data may contain "personal data" as defined by Article 4 of the European GDPR. All required service data Microsoft collects during the use of any Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise applications and services is pseudonymized as defined in ISO/IEC 19944-1:2020, (section 8.3.3) standard.

Admin controls for optional connected experiences

If you're an admin, see the following articles to learn how to give or restrict your users' ability to use optional connected experiences:

Most optional connected experiences also can be managed by the privacy controls for connected experiences. For example, Insert Online Pictures can also be managed by the Allow the use of connected experiences in Office that download online content policy setting.

For more information, see Overview of privacy controls for Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise.