Again in March earlier this yr, Neowin reported on a brand new Workplace characteristic that was meant to make Workplace apps like Phrase, Excel, Outlook, and others load quicker. Known as “Startup Enhance”, the characteristic primarily hundreds up the Microsoft Workplace functions within the background as quickly as Home windows 11 or 10 begins, ie, proper at startup.

The thought is that when a consumer clicks on such an app, initially Phrase, it ought to load very quick since they’re primarily ready within the background to spring into motion. Nonetheless, Microsoft additionally stated that the characteristic wouldn’t be supplied to everybody.

The corporate famous: “Startup Enhance is simply obtainable when your PC has sufficient sources to run with out impacting system efficiency. This contains having a minimum of 8 GB of obtainable RAM, and a minimum of 5 GB of obtainable disk house. Moreover, Startup Enhance can be disabled when Power Saver mode is lively.”

Though this may be a characteristic that was going to be enabled by default, Microsoft added that it was optionally available to maintain it on and thus customers would nonetheless have the ability to disable it, with the one potential draw back being that the apps “could take longer to load”. It wrote: “To disable the characteristic, use the in-app setting, e.g., Phrase > Choices > Basic > Startup Enhance (underneath Begin up Choices).”

Nonetheless, there was a giant caveat right here as identified appropriately by one in all our Neowin readers, rseiler. Whereas the Startup Enhance might be disabled, Microsoft on the time had expressed that the “Workplace Installer will robotically recreate all scheduled duties when it applies an replace,” and this might result in large annoyance as Workplace receives updates a number of instances, even inside a single month, and particularly for customers and enterprises who want to completely disable it in order to not use the characteristic.

The characteristic description beforehand said: “You’ll be able to disable this Startup Enhance activity like another scheduled activity. Please notice that Workplace Installer will robotically recreate all scheduled duties when it applies an replace, so customers who disable this activity might want to disable it once more after an Workplace replace.”

The choice was initially supposed to begin releasing in Might, however Microsoft up to date the schedule and pushed it again for a June-September 2025 Basic Availability rollout, whereby the Startup Enhance characteristic has now begun rolling out to customers and will full the method in a few extra months.

Within the meantime, earlier than a wider rollout, the corporate additionally realized the problem with activity scheduler reset on each app replace, and has now made some adjustments to the implementation of the characteristic. The corporate has confirmed that IT and sysadmins will have the ability to apply a Group Coverage to maintain Startup Enhance disabled completely.

Thus, here’s what the up to date M365 message says:

You’ll be able to disable this Startup Enhance activity like another scheduled activity. Please notice that Workplace Installer will robotically recreate all scheduled duties when it applies an replace, so customers who disable this activity might want to disable it once more after an Workplace replace. Admins can disable this characteristic through Group Coverage while not having to take action after every Workplace replace.

Apart from the Group Coverage addition, Microsoft has additionally made one other couple of massive adjustments because the preliminary characteristic announcement. The tech big notes that now “Startup Enhance solely runs when you’ve got launched Phrase not too long ago, and when you’ve got not launched Phrase not too long ago it is going to robotically disable itself”, and secondly when the characteristic is lively “the scheduled activity is not going to run instantly at login to keep away from slowing down your PC — it is going to wait 10 minutes to make sure the system is in a gradual idle state.”

This can be a good enchancment over the preliminary implementation contemplating a consumer could not use Workplace apps on their system and thus one thing like this may be taking away system sources from different functions which may be extra necessary to that consumer.

Curiously, Neowin colleague Steven Parker discovered that the Workplace 365 Startup Enhance characteristic is already “Disabled” by default, as an alternative of being on the “Prepared” state, on their Home windows 11 24H2 PC that has the most recent model of Workplace 365. He confirmed that he had loaded up Phrase the day prior to this and we additionally famous that the Power Saver was disabled.

Thus, this can be an anomaly, or maybe Microsoft determined towards default-enabling the characteristic for all customers in the mean time.

If you wish to disable the Workplace Startup Enhance scheduled activity, you are able to do so by:

1. Proper-clicking the Begin button, or Run “compmgmt.msc”
2. Open the Pc Administration console
3. Go to the Job Scheduler drop-down menu underneath System Instruments
4. Job Scheduler Library > Microsoft > Workplace
5. Proper click on on Workplace Begin Up Enhance activity > hit Disable
6. Proper click on on Workplace Begin Up Enhance Logon > hit Disable

When you’ve got entry to the Microsoft 365 Admin Middle portal, you could find the message underneath ID MC1041470.