Microsoft Whiteboard is retired: what replaces it

Microsoft retired the standalone Microsoft Whiteboard apps for Windows, iOS and Android on 16 October 2026. With a work or school account, Whiteboard carries on inside Microsoft Teams and on the web, so that is its replacement. With a personal Microsoft account, Microsoft names no replacement at all. If you teach on a personal account, you need a new home for your lessons, and Kallydo is an online whiteboard built for exactly that: lessons kept as pages in folders.

What did Microsoft retire, and when?

On 16 October 2026 Microsoft retired the standalone Whiteboard apps for Windows, iOS and Android, for work, school and personal Microsoft accounts alike. An installed app now shows a retirement screen instead of your whiteboards. Whiteboard in Teams and on the web was not part of the retirement. The details are on Microsoft's retirement page.

What replaced the app depends on how you sign in:

The retirement came in steps. These dates are from Microsoft's message center post on legacy whiteboards and its guide to moving whiteboards to OneDrive:

If your school gives you a Microsoft 365 account, little changes: open your whiteboards in Teams or on the web instead of the app. If you tutor independently on a personal account, the app was your Whiteboard, and it is gone.

Can you still get your boards back?

It depends on your account. Boards saved in OneDrive are still there. Microsoft says older boards that were not moved to OneDrive or exported before 16 October were permanently deleted and cannot be recovered.

With a work or school account, the retirement did not remove whiteboards stored in OneDrive. Open them in Teams, on the web, or from the Whiteboard files in your OneDrive. To keep a copy outside Microsoft 365, export each board as an image, using the steps in Microsoft's export guide:

1. Open the board and select Settings in the upper right.
2. Select Export Image.
3. Choose standard or high resolution. High is worth it for handwriting.
4. Select Export. The image saves to your Downloads folder.

With a personal account, Microsoft asked people to export the boards they wanted to keep before 16 October 2026. Its pages describe no way to open or recover a personal board after that date. If you exported boards before then, look in your Downloads folder: that is where the export saved them.

An exported image keeps how the board looked, so you can still read it and send it to a student. You cannot edit the strokes in it, so treat the exports as a record of past lessons rather than something to keep working on.

What should a replacement do for teaching?

A whiteboard for lessons needs different things from one for meetings. Before you choose, check that it gives you:

• Paper that fits the subject. Graph paper for plotting to a scale, isometric paper for drawing 3D shapes, ruled paper for written working.
• A lesson you can find again. A worked example from last term should be where you left it, not somewhere on a board you have to pan around.
• Saving you do not have to think about. Mid-lesson is not the time to remember a save button.
• An easy way to hand work out. A PDF or an image you can send the moment the lesson ends.
• Pen-first drawing on a tablet. Ink that keeps up with your hand, if you teach with a stylus.
• Nothing to set up. No team or workspace to create before you can draw.

How is Kallydo different from Microsoft Whiteboard?

Kallydo is an online whiteboard app built for lessons rather than meetings. The main differences are in how your work is organised:

Each Kallydo page has its own paper: ruled, grid, dots, graph, isometric or blank, so one lesson can mix a ruled page of notes with a graph page for a worked example.

Pause

Every page in Kallydo saves itself to your account and syncs across your devices, so you can plan on a laptop and teach from a tablet. When the lesson ends, you can export a single page or the whole document as a PNG or a PDF. How each paper is used, with free printable graph and isometric paper, is in free online graph paper, and handing work out is in how to export a whiteboard page as a PDF or PNG.

How do you keep lessons organised?

In folders. Each lesson is a document, documents live in folders, and a folder can hold other folders. So a class can have a folder per topic, with that topic's lessons inside, and home shows your recent documents with the folder each one lives in.

Pause

Questions about the Whiteboard retirement

Is Microsoft Whiteboard gone completely?

No. Only the standalone apps for Windows, iOS and Android retired. For work and school accounts, Microsoft says Whiteboard itself is not retiring and carries on in Teams and on the web.

What is Microsoft replacing Whiteboard with?

For work and school accounts, Whiteboard in Microsoft Teams and on the web. For personal accounts, Microsoft's retirement page names no replacement.

Can I recover a board that was deleted on 16 October?

Microsoft says older boards that were not moved to OneDrive or exported were permanently deleted on 16 October 2026 and cannot be recovered.

Does the Whiteboard app still open?

An app that is still installed shows a retirement screen instead of your boards. Microsoft no longer supports it.

Try Kallydo

The Kallydo demo board is a working whiteboard that runs in your browser, with no account and no sign-up. Open it and redraw one of your lessons on it: pick the paper, draw the example, and export the page. That one lesson will tell you whether it suits the way you teach.