Microsoft literally just backported Windows 10 emojis to Windows 7

Microsoft today released a new update to Office 2016, backporting Windows 10 emojis to Windows 7. Office 2016 on Windows 7 previously displayed the good old square boxes instead of emojis in documents, and the latest update addresses this issue. Windows 10’s emojis are part of a font called the Segoe UI Emoji, and Microsoft is installing the font with the new update for Office 2016 — bringing all of Windows 10’s emojis to Windows 7. If you are a Windows 7 user, this will essentially mean that you will no longer see random square boxes in place of the actual emojis anymore which is pretty great.

I REPEAT
MICROSOFT HAS BACKPORTED EMOJI pic.twitter.com/SybRCEJAce

— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) July 21, 2017

Microsoft explains:

Emojis are sometimes displayed as square boxes in Office 2016 applications in Windows 7. This issue occurs because Office 2016 applications request Emojis to be displayed in the Segoe UI Emoji font, and the font is missing in Windows 7. This update installs the Segoe UI Emoji font.

This obviously isn’t going to be available to all Windows 7 users as Microsoft is backporting the Windows 10 emojis as part of an update to Office 2016. As a result, only the Windows 7 users with Office 2016 will be able to get the new emoji font. But once you get the new update for Office 2016, the emojis automatically display wherever the Segoe UI Emoji font is being used to display emojis.