Summary: Microsoft is retiring Exchange Web Services (EWS) for Exchange Online. This affects how Notate stores data for Microsoft 365 customers.
If your Notate users' mailboxes are on Exchange Server on-premises, nothing here applies to you — Microsoft is not retiring on-premises EWS.
If you are on Exchange Online, there is one thing to do now: add Notate to your tenant's EWS allow-list. It takes about fifteen minutes and provides a migration window until .
Does this affect you?
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Your Exchange |
Affected? |
What to do |
|---|---|---|
|
Exchange Server on-premises, including hybrid setups where your Notate users' mailboxes are on-premises |
No. Microsoft is not retiring EWS for Exchange Server. |
Nothing at all. Update to Notate 2026 whenever it suits you. You can stop reading here. |
|
Exchange Online (Microsoft 365 mailboxes) |
Yes. |
Step 1 and Step 2 below. |
Step 1 — Keep Notate working: add it to your EWS allow-list
Who: an Exchange administrator. How long: about fifteen minutes. When: now. Microsoft begins a rolling cut-off of EWS on .
Microsoft has built an exception mechanism into the retirement. A tenant administrator lists the applications that still need EWS, and those applications keep working while the rest of EWS is switched off. For Notate, that is a single application ID:
215843d3-1ef5-43d0-9b0f-76d16094ae79
The same ID covers Notate on iOS, Android, Mac and Windows.
Doing this provides a migration window until . See Microsoft Message Center notice MC1447678.
While you are in there, add any other applications in your environment that still use EWS. Most organizations have more than they expect.
What happens if you do nothing
|
Date |
What happens |
|---|---|
|
Microsoft begins switching EWS off, tenant by tenant, through October to December. Tenants with the allow-list configured are not affected. A tenant that is switched off can be switched back on by its administrator. |
|
|
October 2026 – March 2027 |
Your migration window. Move your users' Notate Drive to OneDrive at whatever pace suits you. |
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Microsoft removes EWS for Exchange Online permanently. Every Notate user on Exchange Online needs to have moved to OneDrive by this date. |
Step 2 — Move Notate Drive to OneDrive
It takes one setting in your MDM, and user's Notate data will be migrated from EWS to the user’s OneDrive.
You set one app policy value in your MDM: notateDriveMode = migrate_to_onedrive. Each user sees a short confirmation, and the app copies their notes and folders from Exchange into a folder named Notate Drive (app-managed) in their own OneDrive, showing progress and resuming if it is interrupted. Nothing is deleted from Exchange — the mailbox copy is frozen and stays visible in Outlook. If you would like to see it on a few devices first, give a small group of users the setting before everyone else. Once everyone is across, the legacy Exchange permission can be removed from Notate's Entra application altogether.
Step 1 is a prerequisite, because the move reads your users' data from Exchange through EWS.
What is Notate transitioning to?
Notate 2026 is a rebuilt foundation, and the storage change is one part of it.
Mark up, sign and return sensitive documents from a tablet — inside your own security perimeter.
Notate reaches the documents your people already have, in OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, network drives and their email, and runs inside the MDM you already run. Notate application data, including the user’s private note and document storage, is moving from Exchange to the user's own OneDrive.
What is new in Notate 2026 (version 26.0):
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What changed |
Why it matters to you |
|---|---|
|
One workspace. Notate opens into a single file manager spanning the user's own Notate Drive, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, ShareFile, network drives, recent email attachments, favorites and shared folders. Notes live inside it rather than on a separate tab. |
Removes the context switching that made people give up and email themselves a copy — which is the moment a document leaves your control. |
|
Storage remains in your own tenant. Notate Drive lives in each user's OneDrive inside your Microsoft 365, under your Purview retention, DLP, eDiscovery and audit policies, with native version history. |
The policies you already apply to OneDrive cover Notate data, with nothing new to set up or pay for. See the next section for why we chose OneDrive. |
|
Office documents open in Office. Word, Excel and PowerPoint open in Microsoft's own apps from any connected repository and save straight back — or go out as a reply to the email that brought them. |
Ends the download-it, edit-it, lose-track-of-it cycle, and the shadow copies it leaves behind. |
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Document execution, unchanged. Editing, annotation, redaction and certificate-based signing, with a stylus. |
This is what your users touch every day. It is not the headline of this release, but it is why they keep the app. |
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An AI assistant, optional and controlled by app policy, in the PDF and note editors, running only on an Azure OpenAI resource you configure in your own tenant. |
Off unless you turn it on. Nothing leaves your tenant when you do. |
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Notate on the web. The same workspace in a browser at app.notatepdf.com, as a full desktop application. |
Extends your existing license to the desktop without a second product. Requires the new storage. |
|
Retired: Tasks, Calendar and Contacts. Hidden by default, data untouched in the mailbox, and a policy key restores them for as long as your users' data is in Exchange. |
The product is concentrating on documents. Nothing is deleted, and you control the timing. |
Your users can update to Notate 2026 before you do anything about storage. Nothing about where their data lives changes until you switch migration on. We suggest letting people settle into the new interface for a couple of weeks before starting the migration.
Why OneDrive?
It is the question we were asked most: we already have OneDrive — why not just put Notate's files there? We agreed.
Your content stays in your tenant. Notate Drive lives in each user's OneDrive in your Microsoft 365 environment. Shafer Systems does not host or retain a copy of your documents.
Nothing new to approve. No additional Microsoft charges, no new Microsoft Entra ID permissions, no server software and no Azure subscription. The permissions you already granted to Notate cover OneDrive.
Covered by the policies you already run. Purview retention, DLP, eDiscovery and audit already apply to OneDrive, so they apply to Notate Drive from the first day.
Everything Notate needs, in one folder. The folder Notate Drive (app-managed) holds the user's Notate folders, notes and documents. A subfolder named .notate holds the application data that makes Notate work: cached files, favorites, recents and the app policies you set. Users can open and edit their files from OneDrive as well as from Notate; the one thing to avoid is changing or deleting .notate. If it is deleted, Notate rebuilds most of it.
It follows your OneDrive retention. When someone leaves, their Notate Drive is kept or deleted under the same retention settings as the rest of their OneDrive. If your firm already keeps a departing employee's files, that process covers Notate too.
A new foundation for the new Notate. Microsoft Graph, delta sync and version history support improved sync and search, web access, and the AI capabilities in the new Notate experience.
→ Notate Drive and OneDrive — how Notate stores data in OneDrive, and every value of the notateDriveMode policy.
Already using SharePoint Embedded? Nothing changes for you. See Notate and SharePoint Embedded.
Ready to start?
→ Step 1: Keep EWS working until April 2027 — the allow-list, step by step.
→ Step 2: Move Notate Drive to OneDrive — one setting in your MDM.
→ Prerequisites and Microsoft Entra ID permissions is where to start if your security review wants to see the permission model before you commit to anything.
Or let us do it with you
Use Contact us on this page, or write to support@shafersystems.com or your Shafer Systems representative, and we will book thirty minutes with your Exchange and MDM administrators and walk through it together.