What happened to the Featured and Shared tabs?

Brass Contributor

I just updated to Office 365 ProPlus v1908.  To my surprise, the startup page on the apps (Word, Access and PowerPoint) no longer has the "Featured" tab.  It is now named "Office".  Additionally, the "Shared" tab is no longer the default tab, but the "Office" tab is. This version seems to be ignoring the "OfficeStartDefaultTab" reg key for each of these applications.  So, how do I change the default back to "Shared", as my users won't be impressed by having to click on "Shared" tab to get to a blank document, or to load a custom template (we redirect our approved business templates to a shared location)? Is there a new reg key controlling this?

 

UPDATE:9/12 - Also, the new Outlook ignored our custom default font settings.  We use Calibri 11 pt as our default Outlook font.  This new version uses Century Gothic 10 pt as default, and ignores the reg key setting the Calibri font.  I had to re-configure Outlook (via Signatures and Stationery) and copy that to our GPO.  I haven't done a bit-by-bit comparison, but doing a quick glace at both reg entries, I can see no difference.  Anyway, once I put the updated reg key in the GPO. All v1908 systems are once again using the Calibri font as default (and doesn't mess up the v1902 versions).  And, I still haven't found a fix to make the "Shared" tab the default start up tab for Word, et al.

 

Thanks.

1 Reply
Hopefully, this is just a temporary bug. MS seems to have introduced a new start page for the Office applications. I noticed that if you remove the OfficeStartDefaultTab reg entry, you get the new start page, which, annoyingly, will have you make more clicks to get to your templates.

(OT: And why, oh why is the current UI design trend to have as much empty space as possible everywhere?)