In a lot of organizations — across healthcare, government, finance, and operations teams everywhere — InfoPath is the quiet workhorse nobody talks about: the incident report, the equipment request, the procurement approval that's run on a SharePoint form for a decade. It works, so it's invisible. That's exactly what makes the retirement deadline dangerous: the forms most at risk are the ones everyone forgot were built on InfoPath.
Microsoft has set a firm end-of-support date, and it's close. Here's what actually changes, what it will cost to replace, and how to get ahead of it without a scramble.
The deadline, precisely
InfoPath's end of support lands on July 14, 2026. For SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365, Microsoft is removing InfoPath Forms Services for all tenants after that date.[2] The date isn't arbitrary — it aligns with the end of extended support for the InfoPath 2013 client, which Microsoft's lifecycle page pins to the same July 14, 2026.[1] InfoPath 2013 was the final release; there will be no newer version.[3]
| Environment | What happens |
|---|---|
| SharePoint Online / Microsoft 365 | InfoPath Forms Services is removed; forms no longer open, submit, or publish. |
| On-premises SharePoint Server | InfoPath Forms Services becomes unsupported — no security patches or compatibility fixes. |
| InfoPath 2013 desktop client | Extended support ends; no further updates. |
Source: Microsoft lifecycle and SharePoint documentation (see Sources below).
InfoPath Forms Services 2013 is the last release of InfoPath Forms Services.
What actually breaks for your team
The risk isn't the form file — it's the process running on it. When InfoPath Forms Services is removed from SharePoint Online, a form stops capturing data, so any live workflow it feeds simply halts. If an intake, an approval, or a request still flows through an InfoPath form, that flow needs a replacement before the cutoff, not after.
On-premises is not the reprieve it looks like. Microsoft lists InfoPath Forms Services as deprecated and supported only through July 14, 2026 on SharePoint Server; after that it's unsupported — no security patches, no compatibility fixes.[4]
Unsupported is its own finding
In a regulated environment — PHIPA, HIPAA, SOX, and the like — running core processes on unsupported software is a risk an auditor can flag on its own, independent of whether the form still happens to render. The on-premises clock is quieter, but it's still running.
What replacing InfoPath actually costs
Microsoft's recommended path is Power Apps, with Power Automate and Microsoft Forms for the surrounding pieces.[2] The SharePoint documentation names Power Apps as the replacement directly.[3] It's a capable platform — but going from InfoPath to Power Apps is a project, not a setting, and it's worth budgeting for honestly.
Licensing becomes a recurring, per-seat cost. InfoPath came bundled with Office and SharePoint; Power Apps and Power Automate are per-user or per-app subscriptions:[5][6]
| Plan | List price |
|---|---|
| Power Apps Premium (per user) | ~$20 / user / month |
| Power Apps per-app plan | ~$10 / user / app / month |
| Power Automate Premium (per user) | ~$15 / user / month |
Source: Microsoft list prices, USD, billed annually; varies by enterprise agreement.
The shape is the point: a per-seat line item where InfoPath was effectively free at the desktop. Across hundreds of staff, it adds up.
It's a rebuild, not a port. Microsoft doesn't ship an InfoPath-to-Power-Apps converter. A few third-party tools can auto-import a simple InfoPath form into Power Apps — but that's where the automation stops: they don't carry over the approval workflow, and the layout comes across changed, not faithful. Anything with multi-view layouts, non-trivial rules, or code-behind gets recreated by hand in a different designer. And an InfoPath form is rarely just a form — it's usually the front end of an approval workflow backed by a SharePoint list of historical submissions. So the real job is three problems: the layout your people know, the workflow (routing and thresholds), and the data already captured.
Plan for retraining. A new tool and a redrawn form mean retraining users and rebuilding admin familiarity — a soft cost that's easy to underestimate but real.
Check where the data will live. Power Apps runs in your existing Microsoft 365 cloud; many third-party form tools host your data on their cloud instead. If your environment has on-premises or data-sovereignty requirements, that genuinely narrows the field — and it's worth settling before you choose a tool. Reproducing your exact form as a modern web app you can host where you need it is the gap services like AfterPath exist to close — but whatever route you take, these are the costs to plan for.
What to do now
You don't need a transformation program. You need a short, deliberate sequence:
- Inventory every InfoPath form. List each form library and the process it runs. The ones nobody remembers are the ones that bite.
- Flag the live, data-capturing forms. A form still collecting submissions is far higher risk than an archived one — triage by what's running, not by what's tidy.
- Preserve the data. Export the SharePoint lists behind each form so records survive the cutoff regardless of what you rebuild.
- Choose a path per form. Rebuild, replace with a modern web app, or retire — decided case by case, not all at once.
- Don't forget the workflow and the audit trail. The approval routing and the record of who approved what often matter more than the form's fields — especially where regulators expect a defensible trail.
The date is fixed, but the outcome isn't. Teams that inventory their forms now and migrate the live ones first will treat July 14, 2026 as a non-event. The ones that wait will find out — the hard way — which invisible workhorses were holding a process together.