Recent Discussions
The Great Loop Departed User Process
When employees leave a Microsoft 365 tenant, they might leave a user-owned Loop workspace behind which contains some valuable information that the organization wants to retain. Two years or so after announcing that a workflow to handle user-owned workspaces was coming, Microsoft is rolling out the update to tenants worldwide. The process is manual, but not much automation is possible to review and preserve workspace content. https://office365itpros.com/2026/06/04/user-owned-loop-workspaces/
Excel 365: Unexpected Predictive Behaviour Causing Retroactive Cell Changes in Structured Dataset
Hi everyone, I’m posting this to share an unusual and potentially important issue I encountered in Excel 365 this morning. I’ve already submitted a detailed report to Microsoft via the Feedback Hub, but I felt it would be useful to document it here for visibility and to see whether anyone else has experienced something similar. While entering data into a structured table (a parts‑catalogue workbook), Excel began exhibiting behaviour that did not match Flash Fill, AutoFill, or the standard predictive typing feature. Specifically: Grey predictive text appeared beyond the cursor and extended into cells below the active cell Excel began rewriting previously validated cells in the same column Each time I pressed Enter, Excel updated earlier rows based on its latest inferred pattern Attempts to correct earlier rows caused further cascading changes Undo did not revert all changes The behaviour resembled an AI‑style inference engine trying to “learn” my pattern, becoming progressively more confused This was not the normal predictive typing behaviour (which only shows grey text inside the active cell and does not affect other cells). The behaviour stopped only after I clicked the Flash Fill button twice, which suggests an internal state reset. I’m not seeing the issue now, and other workbooks behaved normally, so this appears to have been a transient internal mode rather than a persistent setting. I’m sharing this here because: it caused silent data corruption in a structured dataset it may indicate an experimental feature or feature‑flag activation others working with structured data may want to be aware I’d be interested to know if anyone else has seen similar behaviour If helpful, I can provide the reproduction steps, screenshots, and the engineering‑style report I submitted to Microsoft. Thanks, JohnMicrosoft Launches Container Management Support for Security Groups
A recent blog from the Microsoft Digital (IT department) discusses the preview implementation of container management labels for security groups. The implementation is limited because it encompasses just one control: the ability to have guest accounts in the membership of security groups. However, just that limited control is sufficient to stop unintended access to sensitive information by guest accounts, and that’s a very good thing. https://office365itpros.com/2026/06/03/security-groups-labels/
Error on regression analysis
Hello everyone, I want to perform a regression analysis on my survey data, but I keep getting this error message: “Regression - The RGP() function returns an error value. Check the input ranges.” I’ve since figured out that it’s due to a specific row, but I couldn’t find any incorrect numbers, letters, or anything else in it that would trigger this message. Does anyone know what might be causing this and how I can fix the problem? Thanks in advance!
Word/PowerPoint are not suitable replacements for Publisher
I’m writing following the guidance that Word and PowerPoint can be used as replacements for Publisher. This feedback is based on completing a real production document, not theoretical use Having just completed a fairly complex, layout-heavy technical document, I thought it only fair to share how that works in practice. In theory, I can see the logic: Word handles documents PowerPoint handles layouts Therefore, between the two, everything should be covered Unfortunately, in reality, this appears to be more of a theoretical exercise than a practical solution. Publisher was clearly designed for: Fixed, page-based layouts Precise positioning of objects Efficient alignment of mixed content (text, images, tables) Producing consistent, professional multi-page documents By comparison: Word is admirably committed to reminding you that it would prefer everything to flow freely, regardless of whether you want it to or not PowerPoint, while better behaved, does seem to assume every page is a standalone slide rather than part of a structured document Both tools can, with enough persistence, be persuaded into doing the job. However, this involves a level of manual intervention, workaround, and general negotiation with the software that feels somewhat at odds with modern productivity software. To put it simply: They are not replacements in any meaningful, real-world sense. The end result can be achieved, but the process is unnecessarily time-consuming, fragile, and prone to unexpected layout changes—particularly when precision actually matters. Replacing a purpose-built publishing tool with two applications that were never designed for that role gives the impression that this use case has been… optimistically simplified. I would strongly encourage Microsoft to either: Provide a genuine page-layout solution within the Office suite, or Enhance existing applications so they can support fixed-layout publishing without constant workarounds At present, the gap left by Publisher is very noticeable for anyone producing structured documents beyond basic text. I appreciate the direction of Microsoft 365 overall, but in this particular area, the experience feels less like an evolution and more like working around a missing tool. Regards AndyEquation editor renders properly on screen but does not print properly
For multiple people at my workplace, on both their home and work computers, Equation Editor expressions are often not printing properly, either to pdf or to physical printers. On screen, everything shows correctly. It's especially frustrating because equations are partially rendered -- cos x will be printed as co , a polynomial expression will be missing the last term, etc. -- which means that the errors don't jump out in a quick look at the printout or pdf. As far as we can tell, the longer you wait after opening the document in Word, the more renders properly, but there are no guarantees, and there are often a great many errors on a one- or two-page sheet with lots of formulas. I didn't see this problem before this last year or so. We are using version: Word for Microsoft 365 MSO (Version 2604 Build 16.0.19929.20164) 64-bitMicrosoft Cans Power BI App for Reporting Microsoft 365 Usage
Microsoft has announced that the Microsoft 365 Usage Analytics Power BI app will retire on August 1, 2026. The alternative is the usage reports in the Microsoft 365 admin center or to develop a custom Power BI dashboard based on data imported through the Graph usage reports API. The decision isn’t surprising, but I’m sure that some will mourn the passing of Microsoft’s first tool to report usage information. https://office365itpros.com/2026/05/29/microsoft-365-usage-analytics/
BYROW/BYCOL/MAP Variants for Nested Arrays + BENCHMARK
Hey everyone! I made some simple BYROW, BYCOL, and MAP variants that can return nested arrays, and I also made a BENCHMARK function for performance testing. Here's some code for testing: BYROW⊟ = LAMBDA(array, function, [orient], LET( me, LAMBDA(me, seg, LET( n, ROWS(seg), IF( n = 1, function(seg), IF( orient, HSTACK( me(me, TAKE(seg, INT(n / 2))), me(me, DROP(seg, INT(n / 2))) ), VSTACK( me(me, TAKE(seg, INT(n / 2))), me(me, DROP(seg, INT(n / 2))) ) ) ) ) ), IFNA(me(me, array), "") ) ); I didn’t put a huge amount of effort into polishing this but In my tests on my device, these performed a lot better than using REDUCE + VSTACK for the same kind of thing, so maybe it’ll be useful to someone. Really curious to see how people use it, and if something looks like it should be optimized or changed, say so. I'll update them regularly, fix bugs whenever I can. You can find the rest of them on my Gist pages: https://gist.github.com/Medohh2120/f565516bc636700adf5ba27fd8f0d19e, https://gist.github.com/Medohh2120/d9d04f56d93694aed9d0c49d516f0fbf.
Migration from Hosted Exchange (Hybrid) to M365 Classic Outlook Client Problems and Solutions
Hello Everyone, I'm a tech who started on a 8088 processor in the 80's. Not mentioning the Vic20 and C64 since that hardly seem relevant! I'm posting here to hopefully help the next person with the issues I've had over the last few weeks. My client had to port his email from a provider with an on-perm Exchange server in a Hybrid setup with M365 to his own M365 environment. I expected this was to be about 3 hours of work for me - setup M365 environment, plan the cut-over window, update the Outlook clients on each PC. It ended up being roughly 20 hours of my time and at least 10 hours of dedicated time for my client. For those wanting to jump directly to what mostly fixed it use this link, it should get you past the dreaded "an encrypted connection to your mail server is not available" when trying to add the mail account into a clean profile. Use https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/classic-outlook-troubleshooters-086e3d66-5404-4034-9cc5-545909dcc166 and pick "Classic Outlook Profile Setup Troubleshooter" Most hits are going to tell you its an autodiscovery issue, but if you're reading this I'm going to assume you've already confirmed that. Our issue was some ghost configuration, only on the PCs previously setup for mail on the old server. A new PC could add the same account without issue. Some of the research suggested this would not happen if the proper Microsoft migration process is followed to move the account - but in our case the previous provider was unable to perform the migration. I'll skip over the research we tried along the way, such as New Outlook Profiles, Registry entry changes, MS Personal users with the same email as MS Business Users, Autodiscover problems (including concerns that the base website for the client was offering invalid data), and so on. After each hit where we applied a fix we again had to try adding the mail to the profile, and each time we sat watching the little circle for up to 5 minutes only to get the same error. Now, once we found the link above - which did not come up in most searches - things got better, but not 100%. We added the profile ok but then Outlook gave a permission error while starting. To fix that, the user signed in must have administrative access and you use File Explorer to navigate to the folder identified in the error. In our case it was in folders kept under \Windows\System32\. When prompted that we need to grant permanent access we said yes. In our case this is where Outlook was storing the ost files. That worked for most of the clients, but we had one additional issue where the error was pointing to a folder that didn't exist. Just creating the folder was not enough, the final fix was to hold CTRL-SHIFT down while opening Outlook to start in administrative mode to allow it to create the ost file in the newly created folder. Finally 3 weeks after our cut over window, while the client had to use OWA, we were able to get outlook running. This was critical for my client because they did not have access to the mail history since the migration didn't happen - they had to open a copy of their PST in Outlook and use mail in OWA and constantly bounce back and forth. I hope this helps someone avoid the pain we went though!Microsoft Rolls Out the New Calendar Sharing Model
An automatic upgrade is currently ongoing to move Outlook calendar sharing from the old MAPI-based model to a new REST-based model. The new model has been available to Outlook classic clients on an optional basis and is now becoming the default. The REST model is simpler and exploits the Exchange Online service instead of depending on client transactions. It’s also part of the transition to the new Outlook. https://office365itpros.com/2026/05/28/calendar-sharing-outlook/
Microsoft Authenticator führt Wiederherstellung nicht aus
Ich möchte die App auf meinem neuen Handy weiter nutzen und habe dafür auf dem alten Gerät eine Sicherung erstellt. Wenn ich nun die App auf dem neuen Handy einrichten möchte, bekomme ich eine Fehlermeldung, daß es angeblich keine Sicherung gibt. Ich benötige die App dringend für die MFA. Kann jemand helfen?Sending a Welcome Message to New Employees Part 2
Recently, I wrote about how to use PowerShell to send a welcome email to new employees together with attached ICS files for corporate events. Although new employees can add the ICS files to their calendars (so the solution works), simply inviting employees to attend those events by updating the participant list with PowerShell is an easier and better approach. This article explains how to find calendar events, update participant lists, and update events with the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK. https://office365itpros.com/2026/05/27/new-employee-email2/Combinar correspondencia ahora que han desaparecido los DDE con resultados con solo dos decimales
Buenos días: antes combinaba correspondencia de un word con un excell, para hacer mis facturas mensuales con DDE, pero ahora esa opción ha desaparecido y cuando combino me salen muchísimos decimales. He aplicado el formato directamente en Word modificando el campo de fusión con un cambio de formato numérico (por ejemplo, \# "#,##0.00" para forzar dos decimales), pero sigue sin hacérmelo... alguna idea para poder fijar solamente dos decimales en el excell para que los resultados de la combinación en word den solo 2 decimales?
UltraTax CS Cloud Hosting for Secure and Flexible Tax Operations
Accounting firms are increasingly adopting UltraTax CS Cloud Hosting to improve operational flexibility, simplify collaboration, and securely manage tax preparation workflows. As remote work continues to grow across the accounting industry, cloud-hosted tax environments provide firms with reliable access to applications and client data from virtually any location. One major benefit of UltraTax CS Cloud Hosting is enhanced accessibility. Tax professionals can securely log in to their accounting environment using laptops, tablets, or desktop systems without being restricted to a physical office. This flexibility allows accounting teams to continue working efficiently during busy tax seasons while supporting hybrid and remote work models. Another advantage of hosted UltraTax CS cloud solutions is improved data protection. Cloud environments typically include encrypted access, automated backups, multi-factor authentication, and disaster recovery systems to help protect confidential financial records and client information. Centralized hosting also minimizes the risk of data loss caused by local hardware failures or unexpected disruptions. Performance and collaboration also improve in cloud-hosted tax environments. Multiple users can work on tax files simultaneously, share information securely, and maintain better workflow coordination across departments or office locations. Centralized management additionally reduces the burden of maintaining local servers and handling frequent software updates. Scalability is another important factor for growing accounting firms. Businesses can easily expand storage capacity, add users, and support larger workloads without making major infrastructure investments. Apps4Rent offers reliable hosting solutions designed to support secure tax-preparation environments, remote access, and efficient accounting operations for firms using UltraTax CS. Overall, UltraTax CS hosting services help accounting firms improve productivity, strengthen data security, simplify collaboration, and support more efficient tax preparation operations in modern digital work environments.Allow Canvas Studio Public Embeds in Microsoft Sway
Sway is a hidden gem inside of Microsoft 365. I just discovered it, and it's an amazing tool to turn old PowerPoints or even lecture notes into dynamic lessons for students! One limitation I'm running into is the embed whitelist. While I know this app likely has low priority, is there any chance there is a way to request a specific site be added to the embed whitelist? My biggest priority would be Instructure's Canvas Studio. Microsoft's new LTI 1.3 integration with Canvas has some rough edges, but it's an amazing start! Thing is, I don't want to share a wall of text lecture notes from Microsoft Word through OneDrive. I like the dynamic and more visually oriented style of Sway. The Problem: Currently, when trying to embed instructional videos from Canvas Studio into a Sway presentation, the platform blocks the embed code. This forces educators to either upload duplicate files to a different hosted service (like YouTube or Vimeo) or break the seamless student experience by using text hyperlinks. And the problem with YouTube is that many of our local community partners at K-12 schools have YouTube blocked on the Chromebooks early college students use. Proposed Solution: White-list Canvas Studio public embed domains so that users can seamlessly paste iframe code from Canvas Studio directly into Sway Embed Cards. This will create a smoother workflow for the thousands of schools utilizing both Microsoft 365 and Canvas LMS. And while you're in there adding Canvas, You might consider expanding that whitelist further. Scribe tutorials would be great, or similar services. TikTok might be controversial, but that would be good. Students don't click links; they'll click play on embedded content. Expand the whitelist, please!
Pasting formatted tables from Excel into other software - issues
I am copying and pasting a large table, with lots of cells merged into, headers for combined rows and colums, with lots of coloured and formatted cells. When it is pasted into Word or Excel, the first 20-30 rows are OK, but then after a while, mid-row, the colour formatting (but not the cell text contents) becomes displaced a two cells to the right. The colouring then corrects itself further down the table, but then drifts in and out of alignment. I think it may be an issue with the merged cells, particularly in the case where if they weren't merged then the content of the cell is wider than the cell, so requires wrapping - but this does not appear to be consistently the issue. I have tried unmerging everything and allowing columns to autofit to full width, but that does not resolve... it had been fine until around March 2026 - was there an update around then? Any suggestions welcome.Reporting Usage Patterns for Room Mailboxes
A recent post on the EHLO blog discusses how to find whether room mailboxes are active. I've been down this path before and created a PowerShell script to analyze the usage of room mailboxes. In this article, I explain some of the finer points about the topic, including whether to use Exchange Online PowerShell or the Graph Places API to find room mailboxes, the permissions required to retrieve event data from the room mailboxes, and what has to be done to run the check on an ongoing basis. https://office365itpros.com/2026/05/26/room-mailboxes-usage/How to Send a Welcome Message to New Employees with Attachments for Calendar Events
ICS files are a useful method to send information about calendar events between different IT systems. This article discusses using PowerShell to create ICS files for Teams Online meetings as part of a project to send welcome messages to new employees that contain information about upcoming corporate events that the new people might like to attend. Suffice to say that formatting the ICS files to Outlook’s satisfaction takes some effort. https://office365itpros.com/2026/05/25/online-meeting-ics-files/Microsoft 365 PC: The Modern Windows Experience for Work and Business
In today’s workplace, a computer is no longer just a machine used to write documents or browse the internet. Modern businesses need devices that are secure, connected to the cloud, easy to manage remotely, and powerful enough to support hybrid work. That is where the concept of a “Microsoft 365 PC” comes in. https://dellenny.com/microsoft-365-pc-the-modern-windows-experience-for-work-and-business/Switching Data Loss Prevention Client-Side Checks for OWA
Purview Data Loss Prevention (DLP) rule checks can happen client-side and server-side. This change updates the Exchange Online organization configuration to instruct OWA to stop using Exchange Online to detect potential DLP rule violations before users send email. Instead, OWA will use the workload-neutral Data Classification Services (DCS). Using a workload-neutral service comes with some consequences in terms of OWA being unable to evaluate Exchange-specific predicates. https://office365itpros.com/2026/05/22/data-loss-prevention-dcs/
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