Recent Discussions
Keep Excel. Add Intelligence.
For years, I watched larger players in data, analytics, and reporting downplay Excel. The message was often: “Are you still using Excel for analytics and reporting? It is time to switch to our platform.” But I discovered the value of Excel early in my career. Excel remains popular for a simple reason: it is familiar, flexible, accessible, and deeply embedded in how business teams work. For many HR and compensation professionals, the spreadsheet is not the problem. The real challenge is turning spreadsheet data into reliable insights and actionable decisions. After leaving one of those large technology companies—somewhat involuntarily—I decided to build something based on a different philosophy: Keep Excel. Add intelligence. I created a suite of compensation modules that uses Excel files as the starting point. Organizations can upload employee-level data—including compensation, performance, job, market, and budget information—and use the modules to support: Salary benchmarking Pay equity analysis Merit planning Budget distribution Compensation audits Job leveling The system analyzes the uploaded data, identifies patterns and risks, and produces findings that compensation and HR teams can review and act upon. Results can also be exported in familiar formats, including Excel, CSV, and PDF. The goal is not to replace the tools people already understand. It is to help them get more value from those tools. Sometimes innovation does not require abandoning what works. It means building intelligence around it. Learn more about NorCal AI Solutions: https://norcalaisolutions.net #Excel #DataAnalytics #Compensation #HumanResources #ArtificialIntelligence #FutureOfWork
What's the simplest way to make a genuinely random name selection system using Microsoft tools?
For example, suppose I have a list of participants in Excel and want to randomly select one winner without manually choosing from the list. Would you use RAND/RANDBETWEEN in Excel, Power Automate, or another Microsoft 365 approach? I'm also interested in preventing the same person from being selected twice when several winners are needed. I'd appreciate an approach that's easy for someone without much Excel or Power Automate experience to understand.
one drive mapped network drive Win 10
I want to use my onedrive CID number to connect to a mapped network drive in windows explorer. But, as soon as I type my microsoft account credentials at the login prompt, it doesn't log in but just loops back to the login screen window. What should I do ? Has microsoft stopped allowing onedrive mapped network drive on windows 10 explorer ?M365 only admin locked out MFA error 53003
I am learning this the hard way....so here it goes. Currently I am locked out of as the only admin on the tenant with error 53003. I was updating some Microsoft MFA default policy settings in Entra and mistakenly deleted the admin user from the exclusions list, and got locked out. Thankfully I have another tenant, not as big the one locked out. Initiated several support tickets for which everyone calls, and despite of subline mentioning the issue says that they have to assign this ticket to Entra. Then the ticket gets updated and noone has been assigned every since. I have initiated severity A support tickets from Azure portal but no one has called in last 24 hours to help. We area business with Business Premium licenses with over 20 users, and now completely locked out. I have looked almost everywhere online. There is no phone number that takes you to a support agent - PLEASE HELP........
Word and Excel stuck in Read and Print mode only
I have M365 Family Plan and one of my devices can't use Word or Excel. App tells me they are in Read and Print mode only. I have attempted multiple times to get support to resolve this via chat sessions, but they are unable to help. They have escalated this to Tier 3 Support and still no help. They recommended I go here for support. Here are some of the details. Case Number: 7108165505 (current one) Microsoft 365 Family subscription Word and Excel opening in Read Only / Print mode on one Windows 11 desktop Error when accessing the subscription management page Previous escalation to Tier 2 and Tier 3 Case marked as Resolved despite the issue remaining unresolved Note that extensive troubleshooting has already been completed and that you believe the issue may be related to subscription validation or account provisioning rather than the local Office installation.
Group Column Data, With Values (Bypassing Blanks)
For an eventual home in a SharePoint List and in turn, a PowerApp, I'm looking to combine the contents of potentially many columns (maybe hundreds of potentials) with only a few having values. Given the fact that I'm not sure how many columns I may stick the formula/code in to the 300th column (assuming the number of columns caps well under 300). I'm less concerned about exactly where as I can copy and paste code in to whatever column. I'm just clueless on the actual formula/macro. From there, I would import the excel to a SharePoint List and eventually pull data from a dropdown in a PowerApp. I've attached a file for reference. Any insight would be appreciated.
Office Home & Business 2019 license no longer recognized after reinstall ("No license found")
Hello everyone, I'm looking for some help because Microsoft Support has not been able to solve this issue. I own a genuine perpetual license of Office Home & Business 2019 for Mac, linked to my Microsoft account since August 2019. The license is still listed under Services & Subscriptions, but Office no longer activates. My hardware MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2012) Model: MacBookPro10,2 Intel Core i5 8 GB RAM macOS Ventura 13.7.8 Installed using OpenCore Legacy Patcher Office version originally working: 16.78 Later tested with 16.101 and 16.93 Same result on every version What happened Office had already been successfully activated and worked normally. I was able to: create documents edit documents save documents After restarting the Mac, Office suddenly requested activation again. Since then it has never activated successfully. Initially Office failed to activate with an unknown error. After completely uninstalling and reinstalling Office using Microsoft's installer, the activation process changed. I can now successfully sign in with my Microsoft account, but after authentication Office displays: "No license found for this account." My Office Home & Business 2019 license is still present in my Microsoft account under Services & Subscriptions. Even though my Microsoft account clearly owns Office Home & Business 2019 for Mac. Microsoft account The license appears correctly under: Services & Subscriptions Office Home & Business 2019 for Mac Added to my account on August 7, 2019. The website instructs me to open an Office application and sign in to activate. Everything I've already tried Uninstalled Office completely Installed Office again using Microsoft's installer Installed Office 16.78 Installed Office 16.93 Updated to Office 16.101 Removed Office containers Removed Group Containers Deleted OneAuth cache Deleted Entrabroker cache Removed activation tokens Cleared Office preferences Signed out and signed back into Microsoft account Deleted Office credentials from Keychain Reinstalled Microsoft AutoUpdate Verified no MDM profile exists Verified Internet Accounts Verified Microsoft account Microsoft Support remotely accessed my Mac and repeated all troubleshooting steps Nothing solved the issue. Additional information Running: defaults read com.microsoft.office returns: OfficeActivationLicense = NoLicense although: OfficeActivationEmailAddress = email address removed for privacy reasons is correctly detected. The activation window successfully reaches Microsoft's login page. Office now asks for my Microsoft account credentials. Authentication completes successfully. After a few seconds Office reports: "No license found for this account." It then offers only two options: Buy Microsoft 365 Use another account Microsoft Support remotely connected to my Mac, completely removed Office, installed a newer official installer, and the problem remained exactly the same. My question Has anyone experienced this after reinstalling Office 2019? Could this be: a licensing server issue? an incompatibility introduced after Office 2019 reached end of support? an activation problem related to OpenCore Legacy Patcher? something else? I would really appreciate any suggestions. Thank you very much. Additional notes: The Office license has been associated with the same Microsoft account since 2019. The same installation was successfully activated and worked normally before the problem started. The issue only appeared after restarting the Mac. Microsoft Support has already remotely accessed my computer and could not resolve the problem.Locked out of Microsoft 365 Business Tenant
I am the sole global admin for my Microsoft 365 Business tenant and I have been completely locked out due to an MFA issue. I cannot access the admin portal, cannot reset MFA, and cannot verify my identity through the automated system. When I call Microsoft support, the automated system incorrectly states that I am not a global admin and immediately disconnects. All UK support numbers (0800 026 0329, 0344 800 6006, etc.) hang up instantly before reaching an agent. No callbacks have been received despite multiple requests. I now have an open case with the Data Protection team: Microsoft 365 Data Protection – TrackingID#2609030040002192 This situation has caused: Business disruption Financial loss Inability to manage users or services Customer service impact Complete loss of administrative control over our tenant I urgently need escalation to the Data Protection team for identity verification and MFA reset. The normal support channels are not functioning, and I cannot reach a human through any published phone number. Any assistance or escalation from Microsoft moderators or engineers would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
HELP!! Combinations have me so confused
So I found a website last year that did all this for me when I was trying to do it, but I cannot for the life of me remember what I googled to find this so I am starting from scratch because every thing I am coming across is not helping. I have a list of 22 people (11 guys and 11 girls). I need to find all the possible combinations of making 11 couples out of these 22 people. Andrew Asia Brett Bria Cam Cali Dan Jasmine Kwasi Kayla Lewis Kenya Moe Lauren Shamoy Maria Tevin Morgan Tomas Nutsa Zak Samantha so I was able to use a formula to determine how many possible couples there are (which is 247) BUT what I really need is to find all the possible ways to arrange these couples into 11 possibilities using each of the 22 people if that makes sense. If you have ever seen the show Are You The One, this is for that show. They take 11 guys and 11 girls and stick them in a house and it is up to those 22 people to figure out which is the correct combination of couples to where everyone is paired with their perfect match. But this is giving me a headache trying to remember how I found all the possible combinations of 11 couples last year!! PLEASE HELP!Why Entra Administrators Cannot Disable Their Own Accounts
When attempting to disable a user account in an interactive Graph session, I was told that the command failed because the accountEnabled property was invalid. The error is obviously incorrect because it’s very possible to update the property to disable or enable an account. However, different rules apply when the account is holds a privileged role, like Global Administrator. Entra imposes some reasonable blocks, even if the error messages are not good. https://office365itpros.com/2026/09/14/strange-accountenabled-error/AutoSave disabled when opening SharePoint-synced files from Finder after macOS Tahoe 26.6 update
Files stored in SharePoint Online and synchronized locally through OneDrive are opened as local documents when launched from Finder. Office applications display "Saved to my Mac" and AutoSave is turned off by default. However, opening the exact same files through Word/Excel > Open > Sites, or via SharePoint "Open in Desktop App", correctly identifies them as cloud documents. In that scenario, AutoSave is enabled and collaboration/version history features work as expected. Troubleshooting already performed: OneDrive reset and re-linked SharePoint library re-synced Signed out and back into both Office and OneDrive Removed Microsoft credentials from macOS Keychain and re-authenticated Recreated local OneDrive sync relationships Verified OneDrive File Provider extensions are enabled Verified Office applications and OneDrive are fully up to date Tested with newly created files and existing files Tested "Always Keep on This Device" with no change in behavior The issue appears to be specific to the Finder-to-Office launch path after upgrading to macOS Tahoe 26.6. Before upgrading to macOS Tahoe 26.6, opening the same SharePoint-synchronized files directly from Finder correctly preserved cloud document identity and AutoSave was enabled as expected. I discussed this issue in detail with Apple Support, but they quickly dismissed it, saying that the problem is not on Apple's side and that I should contact Microsoft instead.
HEIC codec is not working with Windows 11
My client has 350+ users, no one has this kind of issues with their windows machines. This laptop has Windows 11 v 25H2. In his team, coworkers shared some pictures over the shared drive and teams app also (remember I already checked its NOT application or file corruption issue) because same file opens everywhere except by this laptop. While opening the .HEIC file in windows the "Photos" app said there is no codec installed and give the link to download from MS store. After, moving on MS store, the codec asks us to purchase it. We proceed to buying the codec it says use only personal Microsoft ID. In my research I found that MS restricted to buy anything using any business account. The problem is not buying this codec in actual, the purpose to ask and provide further solutions. Why this particular laptop or windows 11 missing this codec? (low priority question) What is the other easiest way to fix the problem? like copy some file from healthy system and paste in somewhere. or whatever else. The client is not agree to reformat the OS and Download any Third party app from MS store, as they said to find the way in fixing this problem.Is there a way to create role-specific competency frameworks in Microsoft 365?
We already have a lot of employee information in Entra ID, like job title, department, manager, location, and other user attributes. What I’m trying to figure out is whether we can use those attributes to automatically assign different competency frameworks to different groups of employees. For example, engineers would have one set of competencies, sales another, and managers would have additional leadership competencies. Ideally this would update automatically when someone changes role or department in Entra rather than HR maintaining everything manually. Has anyone built something like this with Entra + SharePoint/Power Automate, or is there a better way to manage competency frameworks while still keeping Microsoft 365 as the source of employee data?Onenote cannot search for handwriting
I have a problem where my Microsoft OneNote cannot search for ink/handwriting, though it used to be searchable. It can search for text but not handwritten notes. My friend who just downloaded OneNote is able to do so, while my other friend who has used OneNote for years is also unable to search for handwriting. Interestingly, I can search for a 5-year old handwriting on a single section of a notebook, but new handwritings on a new section of that notebook is unsearchable. After writing on that page, it rendered handwriting on that page unsearchable, including the words that used to be searchable. I am using: Windows 11 version 25H2 desktop app, Onenote web (tried writing on both too) I have tried: Lasso tool > treat ink as > handwriting OneNote is synced to OneDrive Attempting to delete and redownload (couldn't fully delete OneNote) File > Options > Advanced > Pen > Enable automatic handwriting recognition Making a new notebook Searching handwritings from different ages. Handwritings from 6 months ago, and days ago cannot be searchable. Deleted cache Repaired Microsoft 365 Rebuilt windows search index
Recent Blogs
- Support for Office LTSC 2021 ends soon—start your migration to Microsoft 365 today.Sep 14, 2026
- Excel champion Jasper van Merle shares six techniques he often uses to work smarter, not harder.Sep 10, 2026
