- I'm was on my MacBook Air and a required data notice just popped up from Microsoft office I assume. I could only click ok. Did anyone else get this before?
- Jul 23, 2019 Suppressing Microsoft AutoUpdate's Required Data Notice screen As part of the latest update to Microsoft AutoUpdate app, a new screen has appeared which requires the logged-in user to click on it.
- Diagnostic data that is collected and sent to Microsoft about Office client software being used. Connected experiences that use cloud-based functionality to provide enhanced Office features to you and your users. In addition, there is a new preference setting related to a Required Data Notice dialog for Microsoft AutoUpdate (MAU).
- Required Data Notice From Microsoft On A Mac Pro
- Required Data Notice From Microsoft On M Mac Store
- Required Data Notice From Microsoft On A Mac Drive
- Required Data Notice From Microsoft On A Mac Free
- Required Data Notice From Microsoft On A Mac Laptop
- Required Data Notice From Microsoft On M Machine
2019-7-21 If you have Microsoft Office installed on your Mac, chances are you got this popup window or will get it very soon. It doesn’t explain itself in very simple terms so I have gotten a lot of emails and calls from clients in the past few days asking what it is or if it’s malware.
-->Important
The information in this article applies to Version 1904 or later of the following Office client software installed on a computer running Windows:
- Office 365 ProPlus and Office 365 Business
- Office 365 Personal, Office 365 Home, or other versions of Office that are part of an Office 365 subscription.
- Project and Visio that come with some subscription plans, such as the Project Online Professional plan or Visio Online Plan 2.
The information also applies to Version 16.28 or later of the following Office for Mac applications: Excel, Outlook, OneNote, PowerPoint, and Word.
Office consists of client software applications and connected experiences designed to enable you to create, communicate, and collaborate more effectively. Working with others on a document stored on OneDrive for Business or translating the contents of a Word document into a different language are examples of connected experiences.
Required service data is crucial because it enables us to deliver these cloud-based connected experiences and help make these experiences secure and perform as expected for our customers. Three types of information make up required service data.
- Customer content, which is content you create using Office, such as text typed in a Word document, and is used in conjunction with the connected experience.
- Functional data, which includes information needed by a connected experience to perform its task, such as configuration information about the app.
- Service diagnostic data, which is the data necessary to keep the service secure, up to date, and performing as expected. Because this data is strictly related to the connected experience, it is separate from required or optional diagnostic data levels.
Example of required service data for a connected experience
To help you understand required service data, the following is an example scenario using PowerPoint Designer, which is a connected experience you can use when creating slides for a presentation. PowerPoint Designer helps you improve your slides by automatically generating design ideas to choose from. While you're putting content on a slide, Designer works in the background to match that content to professionally designed layouts.
The required service data that is sent to Microsoft to enable this connected experience for you could include the following:
- Customer content, such as the text or images you added to your slide.
- Functional data, such as which slide you are working on and its layout.
- Service diagnostic data, such as events that tell us if the design idea was correctly applied to your slide and that the service calls were performing correctly.
View and manage required service data
Required Data Notice From Microsoft On A Mac Pro
You can see service diagnostic data by using the Diagnostic Data Viewer. For more information, see Examples of events for service diagnostic data.
We give you the ability to choose which types of connected experiences you want to use in Office, which then determines what required service data is sent to us. PowerPoint Designer, for example, is one of several connected experiences that analyzes your content. If you choose to turn off connected experience that analyze content, no required service data about PowerPoint Designer is sent to us because PowerPoint Designer won’t be available to use.
Required service data is also collected and sent to Microsoft for the essential services of Office, such as the licensing service that confirms that you are properly licensed to use Office. This data for essential services is sent regardless of any other privacy-related settings that you have configured.
For more information, see the following:
If you’re the admin for your organization, you might also be interested in the following:
Examples of events for service diagnostic data
Service diagnostic data appears in the Diagnostic Data Viewer and is organized into the same categories that required and optional diagnostic data use. For example, Product and service usage or Product and service performance.
The events for service diagnostic data provide us necessary information about whether a connected experience is performing as a customer would expect. For example, whether the service used by the connected experience started successfully and was available when needed, whether there were errors or other unexpected issues (crashes) when interacting with the service, and the responsiveness or performance of the service.
The following table provides some examples of events for service diagnostic data.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Office.Excel.Coauth.SaveXrr | An event triggered in Excel when using the collaboration service that reports details on individual revisions that are written to the revision log. This provides latency monitoring and indicates errors in Excel that are related to the collaboration |
| Office.Excel.Coauth.CloseWorkbook | An event triggered in Excel when using the collaboration service that reports when a workbook is closed. This is needed in determining any errors with reload and auto-refresh. It provides success measurement for collaboration service activities. |
| Office.Security.OCX.NonTrustedEncounter | An event triggered in Office applications (including Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Visio) when a user opens an untrusted document with an ActiveX control. It is used to broadly assess use of ActiveX controls embedded in Office documents and to drive security mitigations in response to security incidents. |
| Office.Security.UrlReputation.GetUrlReputation | An event triggered in Office applications (including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, and Publisher) that tracks the success or failure of Safe Links calls. It is used to make sure that the Safe Links service is working properly and to diagnose any problems. |
| Office.Voice.VoiceManager.StreamingAudio | An event triggered in Office applications (including Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint) that provides information about the health of audio streaming to the speech service. It contains information about the size of audio streamed and any errors that may have occurred. This information is used to monitor the service health and to diagnose any issues that may have been reported by customers. |
Starting with Version 16.28 of Office for Mac, there are new preference settings that allow you to control settings related to the following:
Diagnostic data that is collected and sent to Microsoft about Office client software being used.
Connected experiences that use cloud-based functionality to provide enhanced Office features to you and your users.
In addition, there is a new preference setting related to a Required Data Notice dialog for Microsoft AutoUpdate (MAU).
For more information about diagnostic data and connected experiences, see Overview of privacy controls.
Note
- For information about similar settings for Office on computers running Windows, see Use policy settings to manage privacy controls for Office 365 ProPlus.
- For information about similar settings for Office on iOS devices, see Use preferences to manage privacy controls for Office on iOS devices.
Required Data Notice From Microsoft On M Mac Store
Setting preferences
These new preference settings are CFPreferences API compatible and can be set using the defaults command in Terminal, or enforced through a Configuration Profile or Mobile Device Management (MDM) server. When the preferences are enforced, the user cannot change the values, and any in-app controls will appear disabled.
Preference setting for diagnostic data
Diagnostic data is used to keep Office secure and up-to-date, detect, diagnose and remediate problems, and also make product improvements. For more information, see Diagnostic data sent from Office 365 ProPlus to Microsoft.
| Preference Domain | com.microsoft.office |
| Key | DiagnosticDataTypePreference |
| Data Type | String |
| Possible values | BasicDiagnosticData(this sets the level to Required)FullDiagnosticData(this sets the level to Optional)ZeroDiagnosticData(this sets the level to Neither) |
| Availability | 16.28 and later |
Starting with new installations of Version 16.30, if you don't set this preference, only required diagnostic data is sent to Microsoft if users with an Office 365 subscription are signed in with a work or school account or if users have a volume licensed version of Office 2019 for Mac. Also, these users can't change the level of diagnostic data regardless of how you set this preference.
Note
- If you install Version 16.28 or 16.29 and you don't set this preference, both optional and required diagnostic data is sent to Microsoft. If you then upgrade to Version 16.30 or later, both optional and required diagnostic data is still sent to Microsoft, unless you use this preference to set a different value.
- If you set this preference, it also will apply to Version 1.00.217856 and later of Teams for Mac and to Version 16.28 and later of Skype for Business for Mac.
For other users, such as home users with an Office 365 subscription, only required diagnostic data is sent, unless the user chooses to also send optional diagnostic data by going to Preferences > Privacy.
Required Data Notice From Microsoft On A Mac Drive
Preference setting for connected experiences that analyze your content
Connected experiences that analyze your content are experiences that use your Office content to provide you with design recommendations, editing suggestions, data insights, and similar features. For example, PowerPoint Designer or Researcher in Word. For a list of these connected experiences, see Connected experiences in Office.
| Preference Domain | com.microsoft.office |
| Key | OfficeExperiencesAnalyzingContentPreference |
| Data Type | Boolean |
| Possible values | TRUE(enabled)FALSE(disabled) |
| Availability | 16.28 and later |
If you don't set this preference, connected experiences that analyze content are available to users.
If the user has an Office 365 subscription and is signed in with a work or school account or if the user has a volume licensed version of Office 2019 for Mac, then the user can't turn off connected experiences that analyze content.
For other users, such as home users with an Office 365 subscription, the user can choose to turn off connected experiences that analyze content by going to Preferences > Privacy.
Preference setting for connected experiences that download online content
Connected experiences that download online content are experiences that allow you to search and download online content including templates, images, 3D models, videos, and reference materials to enhance your documents. For example, Office templates or PowerPoint QuickStarter. For a list of these connected experiences, see Connected experiences in Office.
| Preference Domain | com.microsoft.office |
| Key | OfficeExperiencesDownloadingContentPreference |
| Data Type | Boolean |
| Possible values | TRUE(enabled)FALSE(disabled) |
| Availability | 16.28 and later |
If you don't set this preference, connected experiences that download online content are available to users.
If the user has an Office 365 subscription and is signed in with a work or school account or if the user has a volume licensed version of Office 2019 for Mac, then the user can't turn off connected experiences that download online content.
For other users, such as home users with an Office 365 subscription, a user can choose to turn off connected experiences that download online content by going to Preferences > Privacy.
Preference setting for optional connected experiences
In addition to the connected experiences mentioned above, there are some optional connected experiences that you may choose to allow your users to access with their organization account, which is sometimes referred to as a work or school account. For example, the LinkedIn features of the Resume Assistant in Word or the Weather Bar in Outlook, which uses MSN Weather. For more examples, see Overview of optional connected experiences in Office.
Required Data Notice From Microsoft On A Mac Free
| Preference Domain | com.microsoft.office |
| Key | OptionalConnectedExperiencesPreference |
| Data Type | Boolean |
| Possible values | TRUE(enabled)FALSE(disabled) |
| Availability | 16.28 and later |
If you don't set this preference, optional connected experiences are available to users with an Office 365 subscription that are signed in with a work or school account or users who have a volume licensed version of Office 2019 for Mac. Unless you have set this preference to FALSE, these users can choose to turn off optional connected experiences by going to Preferences > Privacy.
For other users, such as home users with an Office 365 subscription, there isn't an option to turn off optional connected experiences.
Preference setting for most connected experiences
You can use this preference to control whether most connected experiences are available to your users.
Required Data Notice From Microsoft On A Mac Laptop
| Preference Domain | com.microsoft.office |
| Key | ConnectedOfficeExperiencesPreference |
| Data Type | Boolean |
| Possible values | TRUE(enabled)FALSE(disabled) |
| Availability | 16.28 and later |
If you don't set this preference, all connected experiences are available to your users, unless you have set one of the other preferences for connected experiences previously mentioned, such as OfficeExperiencesAnalyzingContentPreference.
For example, if you set this preference to FALSE, the following types of connected experiences won't be available to your users:
- Experiences that analyze your content
- Experiences that download online content
- Optional connected experiences
In addition, if you set this preference to FALSE, most other connected experiences are also turned off, such as co-authoring and online file storage. For a list of these other connected experiences, see Connected experiences in Office.
But even if you set this preference to FALSE, limited Office functionality will remain available, such as synching a mailbox in Outlook, and Teams and Skype for Business will continue to work. Essential services, such as the licensing service that confirms that you’re properly licensed to use Office, will also remain available.
If the user has an Office 365 subscription and is signed in with a work or school account or if the user has a volume licensed version of Office 2019 for Mac, then the user can't turn off most connected experiences.
For other users, such as home users with an Office 365 subscription, a user can choose to turn off most connected experiences by going to Preferences > Privacy.
Preference setting for the Required Data Notice dialog for Microsoft AutoUpdate
The first time Version 4.12 or later of Microsoft AutoUpdate (MAU) is launched, users will see a Required Data Notice dialog which provides them with information about what data from MAU is sent to Microsoft.
If you don't want your users to see this Required Data Notice dialog for Microsoft AutoUpdate, you can set the following preference. Regardless of which value you set, the dialog won't be shown to your users.
| Preference Domain | com.microsoft.autoupdate2 |
| Key | AcknowledgedDataCollectionPolicy |
| Data Type | String |
| Possible values | RequiredDataOnlyRequiredAndOptionalData |
| Availability | 4.12 and later |
If you let your users see this dialog, then when the user chooses OK, the value RequiredDataOnly is written to AcknowledgedDataCollectionPolicy and the dialog is not shown to the user again.