Since it’s Throwback Thursday, it feels like the right time for a brief in memoriam.

This post is intentionally a little different. It’s less essay, more list, and meant to be a palate cleanser before we hit the final stretch.

Not a roast. Not a dunk. Just a moment to acknowledge some SharePoint features that, at one point, felt like the future.

These weren’t bad ideas. They were ideas that didn’t survive reality.

Most of these lived during my consulting years in Washington, DC, hopping between government and international development contracts. World Bank. IDB. Mostly on-prem days. Different tenants, different clients, same optimism that this feature would finally be the one.

In hindsight, it’s very much a “wow, we really thought that was the future” moment. If you were around back then, you already know where this is going. If you weren’t, welcome to my memory lane, built on equal parts optimism and hard-earned lessons.

The features we once bet on

SharePoint Designer (2007–2013, supported through 2026)

SharePoint Designer workflows were one of the things that made me truly fall in love with SharePoint. I’ve always been a puzzle solver, and workflows let me solve real business problems quickly and creatively.

I still remember how blown away I was when loops were added in SharePoint 2013 workflows. Infinite loops were never an issue. Ever. Definitely not something we accidentally created and then spent hours debugging.

Designer stopped evolving after 2013, and Microsoft later announced the retirement of SharePoint 2013 workflows, marking the official end of an era for many of us who built entire solutions around them.

InfoPath Forms Services (2003–2014, supported through 2026)

InfoPath was the nightmare of the nightmares.

This is where I first learned about frankenforms. Forms with unnamed field, stitched together over years, modified by multiple people, doing far more than they were ever designed to do, yet somehow running mission-critical processes.

InfoPath was officially discontinued in 2014 and will fully retire in 2026, closing a very long chapter that taught many of us hard lessons about complexity and ownership.

Classic Publishing Infrastructure (2007–2019, effectively replaced)

I took week-long courses just to learn how to build master pages.

Classic publishing gave us total control over branding, layouts, and navigation. It also gave us fragile sites, terrifying upgrades, and accessibility issues we didn’t always fully understand at the time.

Modern pages didn’t just replace classic publishing. They rescued a lot of us from it.

SharePoint Spaces (2019–2025)

Remember when 3D was a thing?

SharePoint Spaces arrived around 2019, right when immersive experiences were everywhere. It looked impressive in demos.

In real conversations with users, this was the feature that earned me the most side eye. Microsoft announced its deprecation in 2025, which felt less like failure and more like reality catching up.

Access Services (2010–2018)

Access Services promised a future where databases could live comfortably inside SharePoint.

It peaked in the SharePoint 2010 and 2013 era, generated endless proof of concepts, and very few solutions that survived long term.

By 2018, Access Services was effectively retired, making room for more resilient approaches.

PerformancePoint Services (2010–2016)

PerformancePoint was enterprise BI before Power BI existed.

It required Silverlight, patience, and a very specific audience. When Power BI arrived with a clearer story and better usability, the shift was immediate.

PerformancePoint didn’t fail. It was outgrown.

Many of these features also shared a dependency on Silverlight, which aged about as well as Macromedia Flash. Yes, I went there.

Site Mailboxes (2013–2017)

Site Mailboxes launched with SharePoint 2013 and tried to bridge email and documents.

They worked right up until everyone realized they could create an email account without IT involvement.

That discovery alone sealed their fate.

SharePoint Alerts (2001–2025)

I always loved alerts.

They’ve been around since the earliest SharePoint days and quietly did their job.

Alerts didn’t fail. They were simple, effective, and useful, until Microsoft eventually announced their retirement as collaboration patterns changed.

Groove Sync App (2007–2016)

Groove, later renamed SharePoint Workspace, powered sync for years.

It was also the source of countless helpdesk tickets, mysterious failures, and user distrust.

Its retirement paved the way for the OneDrive sync client we rely on today.

Basic Authentication (forever–2026)

Basic authentication was simple, ubiquitous, and absolutely insecure.

Everyone relied on it. Everyone postponed replacing it.

Its final retirement in 2026 marks the end of an era where convenience regularly beat security.

stsadm.exe (2001–2016)

Before PowerShell, there was stsadm.exe.

So many migrations. So many commands memorized or copied from dusty documents.

PowerShell replaced it around the SharePoint 2016 era, but stsadm remains a core memory for many of us.

Honorable mentions

SharePoint Wiki Pages (2007–2019)

I used wiki pages a lot in my early days. They showed up with SharePoint 2007 and felt like the fastest way to get knowledge out of people’s heads and onto a page.

The problem was never creation. It was longevity. When modern pages started taking over around 2018–2019, most wiki content never made the jump. A lot of writing was simply left behind and eventually tossed away.

My Sites and personal blogs (2007–2020)

My Sites were once pitched as your personal space in SharePoint. Profile pages, document storage, social feeds, and yes, personal blogs.

Those blogs existed. People wrote thoughtful things. Then OneDrive, Delve, and newer Microsoft 365 experiences took center stage. By around 2020, classic My Sites and their blogs were effectively gone, with very little ceremony or migration.

It wasn’t malicious. It was just the cost of evolution.

One last thing

Network file shares

If you still have network file shares lingering around your organization like zombies waiting for the rapture, let me break it down for you.

They are not coming back.

If your organization is still reluctant to let them go, be careful. Network file shares tend to quietly accumulate sensitive data, stale permissions, and content no one remembers owning. What feels familiar often ends up being the least visible and least governed place in the environment.

Once content moves into SharePoint, those file shares will never get touched again. Not because people are lazy, but because version history, permissions, search, and collaboration change expectations permanently.

File shares didn’t die overnight. They just stopped being where new work happens.

Some of these ideas shipped as features. Others lived as sandbox or farm solutions, deeply embedded into environments and even harder to unwind later.

Network file shares fall into a different category. They weren’t deprecated. They weren’t retired. They were simply outgrown.

Once people experience version history, shared ownership, real permissions, and content that shows up everywhere they work, expectations change.

And when expectations change, there’s no going back.

That’s the real reason SharePoint is still here after 25 years. Not because every idea worked, but because it permanently changed how people think work should work.

Survival beats hype. Every time.

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This post is part of my 25 days of SharePoint series, created to celebrate SharePoint’s 25th anniversary and lead up to the SharePoint at 25 digital event on March 2.

Each post reflects on what actually made SharePoint last 25 years, the wins, the mistakes, and the lessons learned from building, breaking, and rebuilding it in real organizations.

You can find all posts in this series here.

If there’s a topic you think I should cover next, a SharePoint mistake you keep seeing, or a question no one ever answers straight, leave a comment. This series is shaped by real experiences, not marketing slides.