Pinned Posts
Forum Widgets
Latest Discussions
Microsoft Issues Updated Guidance for Defender for Office 365 Licensing
Some inconsistencies in the MDO P2 service description and licensing terms exposed a need for tenants to license every user and shared mailboxes. Microsoft has changed the service description and licensing terms to make them simpler. Mailboxes still need MDO licenses, but only if they benefit from MDO protection, including MDO P2 if that’s what they use. Tenant admins have some extra work to do to deploy policies. All explained here. https://office365itpros.com/2025/10/31/mdo-p2-licensing/
Import data from a Microsoft Forms PDF into Excel
Hi all. I have a number of PDFs for clients which contain questionnaires, score sheets, etc. Some are completely external, and some are from Microsoft Forms. A while back, I created a Macro/some VBA code to read data from the external PDFs, import it into Excel and display the figures; it works really well. Today, I've tried to update it to load data from the PDFs created by "printing" a Microsoft Forms complete questionnaire and saving as a PDF - unfortunately, when trying to import this into Excel (using "Get Data -> From File -> PDF"), the "Likert" questions are appearing but showing "null" for all the columns, not identifying which contains the "selected" checkbox. Possibly a slim hope, but I was wondering if anyone has experience doing something similar, or can recommend a way to get this to work? I know there are potentially other ways to approach this (I tried connecting it directly to the linked Sharepoint Excel file, but the URL is entirely powered by URL arguments ?foo=bar&baz=boing etc, and Excel demands those all be deleted when giving it a filename to connect to to get data from the web, helpfully); connecting it to a "local" version of the Excel file on OneDrive is a possibility, but ideally I'd a) want the tool to be accessible to people who have access to the PDFs but not the spreadsheet, and b) have to save the print-out PDFs in every client folder to store their data together, and the spreadsheet may occasionally be purged, so the PDF is the "safe" way to access the data.) PDFs can't be run through any online tools due to containing sensitive data. Many thanks.Using the SharePoint Site Attestation Policy
The site attestation policy is designed to require site owners to make a positive statement that the settings of their site, including its current membership, are accurate. The idea is that requiring site owners to attest that their site is still needed will force people to decide whether sites are still in active use and should be kept online. If not, the policy can move the sites into Microsoft 365 Archive. https://office365itpros.com/2025/10/30/site-attestation-policy/
Outlook Classic for M365 - File > Encrypt > 'Encrypt-Only' option applies 'Do Not Forward' label?
I recently joined a new company and am helping support their M365 tenant and admin duties. I'm running into a very weird issue where no recipients can actually read/view the message when we encrypt emails using only 1 specific method (our organization largely uses the Outlook Classic for Microsoft 365 desktop app). If a user follows this method, for some reason the 'Do Not Forward' label is applied to the encryption, despite specifically selecting 'Encrypt-Only' - it defaults to 'Do Not Forward' every single time: New Email > File > Encrypt > Encrypt-Only Sending emails with this method gives any/all recipients a "You don't have sufficient permissions to open the mail." regardless of where they try to open the email (OWA, Outlook Classic, New Outlook) Yet, if the user tries this other method below - the proper Encrypt-Only label is applied, and any Outlook client immediately and opens/views the email as you'd expect: New Email > Options ribbon > Encrypt properly applies the Encrypt-Only label I verified IRM (Identity Rights Management) is enabled for our tenant: And encryption tests pass with flying colors: Ultimately, I'm at a loss for what's going on here and specifically where to check to fix this issue for this 1 specific encryption method. Poking around in the Purview portal, I'm having a hard time figuring out where these encryption policies/settings lie and how to get this method to stop defaulting to 'Do Not Forward' even though 'Encrypt-Only' is checked.
Office apps simply disappeared??
A user under a Microsoft 365 Business Standard (formerly O365 Business Premium) license reported to me today that all Office 365 apps have disappeared from her Win 10 Pro computer. No errors, nothing, the software is simply gone. Googling on this, most people focus on missing icons. This is not that. The software is gone completely, nothing in Apps, except the generic Office Click to Run icon that's usually found on Win 10 machines whether Office was actually installed or not. Malware is not suspected on this one. The only slight clue I have on this is that, given that it's gone, I decided to first just re-download the installer after logging into office.com. Running the installer, it tells me an installation is already in progress, yet there are no taskbar/notification area icons. Task Manager shows some OfficeC2R stuff, which I tried to End Task. It wouldn't end, it would just pop back up again in Task Manager (but again nothing in the actual UI). I did the Open File Location, found the exe for this thing, renamed it with .old, (surprisingly it let me without hassle), and upon doing that, I then was able to kill the now-memory-only OfficeC2R exe file from Task Manager. This then let me start the installer I had downloaded, which is currently in progress for downloading (though, extremely slowly, despite a 19ms / 120Mbps connection - MS having issues I wonder? - 11:35 AM Eastern May 15 2020). So I suspect in some kind of dumb way, Office was updating itself and screwed up? The last Windows update was May 12, the quality update for .net framework. I'm not actually sure where to look in the event logs for stuff related to install/uninstall for Office - the started Application log shows msiinstaller stuff related to my installing it, but keyword searching for "office" shows nothing that points to a removal or an update of the software. *sigh*. F'ing computers.Modernizing Sensitivity Label Grouping for App Display
Microsoft announced the modernization of grouping for sensitivity labels to a new “dynamic architecture.” It doesn’t take much to be more dynamic than the previous parent-child arrangement. Even if the announcement is a tad overhyped, it’s still goodness because administrators can now move labels between label groups in a way that wasn’t possible before. The new way of displaying labels should be everywhere in December 2025. https://office365itpros.com/2025/10/29/sensitivity-labels-groups/Unified Company Calendar for Mixed Microsoft 365 and Non-365 Users – 2025
Seeking a Shared Calendar Solution for Mixed Microsoft 365 and Non-365 Users I’m working on a solution to create a shared company calendar that everyone in our organization can view, while keeping editing permissions limited to a few selected individuals. The challenge: Some of our team members do not use Microsoft 365, and I’d like them to still be able to subscribe to or view the calendar and receive updates. Ideally, this should work without requiring full Microsoft accounts. I initially considered using an ICS-based calendar, but it seems Microsoft 365 Group calendars don’t support sharing via ICS links. I also explored creating a Group calendar as suggested in other threads, but ran into issues making it accessible to external users or those without 365 accounts. For context, I’m a Global Admin, so I have full access to configure settings in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center and Exchange if needed. We’re a small business, and our main goal is to have a centralized calendar for vacation schedules and company-wide events. It should be simple to access and maintain, with a focus on collaboration and accessibility across the board. What I’m looking for: A calendar that’s viewable by all, including non-M365 users Editable only by a few delegated team members Compatible with Microsoft 365, but not dependent on it for basic access Any tools, workarounds, or best practices that have worked for others in similar hybrid environments
Loop development has seemingly stopped
Our team adopted Loop since many of us prefer the personal knowledge management system style of Notion or Obsidian to other classic note-taking and sharing software. However, many core features are still not present that have been Day 1 features of these other tools, and a quick check of the Loop Roadmap leads me to believe that most features will be security/governance focused. That's disappointing if true, because right now Loop is clearly inspired by those tools, but incredibly far behind in a way that makes it hard to justify their continued use. For example: Cannot embed documents inside Loop-- in Notion you can just drag and drop a PDF to upload, and the /embed command lets you put an interactive document inside the page Cannot select multiple pages to re-arrange structure No Copilot to perform page cleanup-- Notion lets you use AI to fix formatting, and it works very well. No command palette-- this is a must for operating in a knowledge management system No Mac app No mind map a la Obsidian I could continue to produce these examples, but I am hoping to find out that once some core governance features are completed, Microsoft will be focusing some development efforts on improving this platform-- we hope it is not abandonware a few years into it's launch.
