Restart Office to apply changes to your privacy settings - endless notices

This is an update to my previous post.  Again, I began experiencing this since my O365 subscription renewed.

On my desktop, in addition to the yellow banner and since I first posted, on a single occasion I got a full-blown browser presentation from MS, explaining the details of what's happening.  Not clearly why, but what.  I'll explain what I believe the "why" is.

Once I went into Files>Office Account>Privacy, and unchecked the boxes that were giving my extended data away, I've continued to get the yellow banner.  However, my privacy settings don't get changed from what I set them to, after I restart Office (which will happen one way or another).

I now just close the yellow banner notice with the X button and go on with my business, because as soon as Office is closed in any manner, the next time it's opened, it will have done whatever it does when it says "Restart Required".

Even though I have all my privacy boxes unchecked, if I had left one checked, such as "Online experiences" (for an example, that's what is required for any extended dictionary look-ups), any new changes MS has made to "Online experiences" functionality, would not take effect until the Office app is restarted.

Why?  Because rather than MS sending a notice of privacy changes to be reviewed and agreed to on some sort of weekly or monthly schedule, they are having us agree to those changes before they are applied by restarting Office (any of Outlook, Excel, Word, etc.)  This is the result of MS applications running as a "service."

If you weren't giving any data away to begin with (according to your Office privacy settings), then you don't really agree to anything when Office restarts.  Regardless, that doesn't keep it from feeling intrusive.

Caveat:  I suspect that under some circumstances, such as subscription renewal, or a slip of the "whatever," MS might change our Office Privacy Settings. As such, it wouldn't hurt to check them every so often.

Update: More Bad News

As of mid-2019? (best I can tell from other forums), if you are using a gmail, icloud or another email server other than MS, your connection (ability to use) to the other-than-MS server will fail, unless you have "Connected experiences" checked in your Office Privacy Settings.

I know I sorta made it sound like I was letting MS of the hook in earlier posts, but then I was willing to continue to use Outlook without any "extras."  Well, this draws a line in the sand!  Funny it took all these years for MS to force Gmail off of the MS platform.  "Hey MS, who was sleeping on the job?"

So, what to do? 

Gmail: I'm only using 2 Gmail addresses, but one is my eBay account, and the other manages non-business-related accounts.  I could just manage eBay from my iPhone Gmail and eBay apps.  I'm surely not going to manage Gmail from a desktop browser.  In reality, almost every email notice coming from eBay is duplicated within eBay, so the Gmail account for eBay is just a notification platform.  Solved.  I don't need Gmail in Outlook.

iCloud: Ditto

MS wins this round! (bunch of jerks...)  But, I'm still not checking that "Connected experiences" box.

Update: More Bad News

As of mid-2019? (best I can tell from other forums), if you are using a gmail, icloud or another email server other than MS, your connection (ability to use) to the other-than-MS server will fail, unless you have "Connected experiences" checked in your Office Privacy Settings....

Hi,

I have two Gmail accounts, currently connected simultaneously, and they connect to the Google servers without any obvious issue. The yellow flag has currently disappeared for the time being , but the connection to the Google servers was not an issue when the restart/privacy warning messages were active. The Connected Experiences setting needs to be switched on in order to synch your privacy settings with other devices - that's completely bonkers and you should not be forced to endure the other intrusive settings to achieve this.

Update: More Bad News

As of mid-2019? (best I can tell from other forums), if you are using a gmail, icloud or another email server other than MS, your connection (ability to use) to the other-than-MS server will fail, unless you have "Connected experiences" checked in your Office Privacy Settings....

Hi,

I have two Gmail accounts, currently connected simultaneously, and they connect to the Google servers without any obvious issue. The yellow flag has currently disappeared for the time being , but the connection to the Google servers was not an issue when the restart/privacy warning messages were active. The Connected Experiences setting needs to be switched on in order to synch your privacy settings with other devices - that's completely bonkers and you should not be forced to endure the other intrusive settings to achieve this. 

My experience was that the initial connection to the Google server was successful, but after a few days I was getting prompted for a Google password on both my Google accounts. Initially, I just spilt them out using Outlook sync groups, and set the Google group to sync manually.  

Then, I took my Windows notebook and brought it all back up-to-date, adding the Google mail accounts, and watched the process (started prompting for Google email password) repeat over the course of 3-4 days. When I saw this was consistently happening I decided to remove the Google accounts. 

Just to be clear, I did use passwords generated by my Google accounts, using the Google Account > Security > App passwords.

If someone knows a way around this please let us know.

Hi,

I have had issues with connecting in the past - don't specifically remember when but I think it was within the last 12 months. Here are a list of things that you could consider trying:

I repaired my O365 installation

I removed the Gmail accounts from Outlook and then added them back

I uninstalled O365 and re-installed it on Windows 10 this process maintained all my settings - I didn't have add all my email accounts back - I currently have more than 10