Microsoft Office 365 update issues

As you probably know I own Microsoft Office 365 subscription. And one of the benefits that you got all new functionality updates that is released by Microsoft for free. And initially I actually got Office 2016, but it slowly transformed itself to Microsoft Office 365. And it is good thing and I saw a lot of changes small and big, useful and not so. But there is one moment that is really annoying during update to new version. Usually when you update any application sequence of update should look like this:

  1. You got notified that update is ready to install
  2. You approved installation when it is convenient to you
  3. If application(s) is running you could get one of the following:
    1. Application(s) is terminating
    2. You may get notification that application(s) should be closed manually if it is unsafe to terminate it
  4. Update is installing
  5. When update is finished you may get one of the following:
    1. You got notification that update is installed
    2. Application(s) started and restored state that was before update   

And for example, update for Visual Studio, Skype and many other Microsoft applications works exactly like that but not Microsoft Office.

Firstly, even it is safe to close say Outlook update process will still ask you to close it manually. Perhaps it is not easy to find if it is safe or not and closing Outlook could disconnect you temporary from say work place communications. I don’t know but it is a bit annoying.

Secondly and it is most annoying you have no idea when update process is finished. There is absolutely no indication of any kind. It just finishes and that’s it. Your application(s) is not restarted, there is no message or notification that update process finished, and you can start your application(s).

The only way I found to open Task Manager, then go to Details tab and monitor processes there. When update process is started you can see 3 processes called OfficeClickToRun.exe and eventually there will be 3 processes called msiexec.exe and one of them will use CPU and disk. When update finished where will be only one process OfficeClickToRun.exe and 1 or no msiexec.exe. This is time when it is safe to start Outlook, Word or any other applications.

I don’t understand why it is so hard to implement dialog box that will notify me that update is installed, provide some link where I can read what is installed, read about new features etc. Or even better to automatically start applications it asked me to close. And I don’t need to remember what I was working on and can continue my work where I left.

And not only there is no notification of completion, there is no progress bar to see progress and how long left. I understand that progress bars are not real progress but in many cases you can roughly guess how much time left and do something in meantime if you think there will be a lot time.

And lastly, I would like to emphasize that Microsoft did it for other products and they did it for Office in the past and it did work great. Why they decided to change it and why nobody see it is mystery to me