Recent Discussions
**bleep**. Security Update (like KB5101650) breaking SmartCard Authentication for Office 2024 apps to O365
Looking for some support on this issue. I have Win11 clients that were upgraded from 24H2 to 25H2 last year. They were functioning well until earlier this year when the Cumulative Updates started breaking smartcard authentication on our clients (day after installing/rebooting/cache clearing). This seems to be a known issue but are there any real fixes? Symptom is that after the update is installed, next day (after a reboot or cache cleared) the user starts their Outlook or Teams application, when receiving the prompt that says "you will be prompted for your PIN" nothing follows, you will see the blue dots circling and after 5 or so minutes it times out. Clicking on the "..." shows an informational message error #50058, which says that not enough information was provided. The authentication process is failing... BTW - web authentication works just fine, it's just the local application (Teams, Outlook, etc.) that fail. I found that creating a new account on the system seems to work just fine, but for people that have established accounts and program environments that are setup for them to work, creating a new account is very unappealing to them. I'd like to be able to just get their current accounts working. Creating a new profile, wiping current profile info from registry doesn't seem to work thanks to automagic backups the OS is doing, but even that would still require setting up a new profile and copying over non AAPDAT file structure info... Does Microsoft not have a fix to this "known" issue? I spent a few weeks really digging into this and the best I can find as a work around is to disable the automatic backups of the NTUSER.DAT, blow away current profile info in registry, rename current profile structure, and then have the user login "anew". Again, this still requires a copy of the non-AAPDAT data back into the new structure (at least permissions won't be an issue) but that will not restore all application-based information for that user--that still will have to be re-created, which I think the users will not want to do because it means starting over from scratch.Feature Request: Add Support for Merged Table Cells in OneNote Interop API XML Schema
I'm writing to request an enhancement to the OneNote Interop API — specifically, the ability to support merged table cells in the XML schema used by the UpdatePageContent method. With the recent addition of cell merging in OneNote for Microsoft 365, this feature has become essential for creating more flexible and visually organized tables. However, the current Interop API does not reflect this capability, and there is no documented support for attributes like colspan or rowspan in the XML schema. Why this matters: Developers cannot programmatically replicate merged cells created in the OneNote UI. I am the author of the OneMore add-in (github.com/stevencohn/OneMore). Automation and content generation tools are limited in their ability to produce rich, structured layouts. Imported tables with merged cells are automatically flattened, leading to data loss or formatting issues. Suggested enhancement: Extend the OneNote XML schema to include support for merged cells, possibly via new attributes or nested structures within <TD> elements. Update the documentation and SDK to reflect these changes and provide examples. This feature would greatly improve the fidelity of programmatic content creation and align the API with the capabilities of the OneNote client. Thank you for considering this request. I’d be happy to provide use cases or collaborate on testing if needed.Braille Translator Challenge
Using the Braille Alphabet lookup table provided: Part 1 - convert the given phrase from Braille to words. Part 2 - convert the given phrase from words to Braille. ✅ Solutions should be in the form of a single-cell formula. ✅ Generalized Lambda functions are welcome, provided the function definitions are included with your solution. ✅ Keep in mind, the "best" solution is not necessarily the shortest... Strive for conciseness, if you wish; just don't let your solutions be ordinary. 😉 Good luck and have fun!
Employee performance management tools in Microsoft 365?
So we are a relatively large organization and in drastic move, we've decided to shift from Google Workspace to Microsoft, primarily centering our employees around Microsoft Teams while trying to encourage them to use Copilot as effectively as possible. In this transition, one of the platforms we will be saying goodbye to will be our performance management software. Are there any Microsoft native performance management tools that can help us go through goal-setting, performance reviews, and feedback? Third party suggestions would also be good but only if they fit into the whole Microsoft workflow well.
How can I test block download policies in SPO?
I have a Microsoft 365 E5 developer tenant. However, I am unable to activate the SharePoint Advanced Management trial from the SharePoint Admin Center. I need to verify my code in this configuration. Specifically - I need to check how `File.OpenBinaryStream()` behaves. Please advise.Need suggestions for managing email signatures organization-wide
Hi everyone, I'm looking for advice on managing email signatures organization-wide in Office 365. Right now, every user creates their own signature in Outlook. This has led to inconsistent branding and outdated contact details across the company. I explored a few built-in options, but nothing seems to give proper centralized control, and manually asking every user to update their signature isn't practical. I'm wondering if there's a better way to handle this natively within Microsoft 365, or if most organizations end up going with a third-party tool for this. If you've dealt with something similar, I'd love to hear how you approached it and what worked for you. Any suggestions or experiences would be really helpful. Thanks in advance!
Calculating the Licensing Requirement for Entra Conditional Access Policies
After the discussion about the licensing gap prompts shown in the Entra admin center, here’s a PowerShell script to compute the set of user accounts that should have Entra P1 licenses. The information comes from the conditions property of conditional access policies with group and directory role membership expanded to find individual accounts. The set is checked against the set of users licensed for Entra P1 to find the accounts that need to be licensed. https://office365itpros.com/2026/08/18/find-entra-p1-accounts-to-license/OneNote Interop API NavigateToUrl fails if called again too quickly
Using the Interop API, IApplication.NavigateToUrl(pageURL) Invoke once with a valid page URL, it succeeds Invoke again (within about two seconds) with a different valid page URL, it fails with COMException, HResult: 0x80042014 "The object does not exist" However, if you wait at least about three seconds in between calls, then it will always succeed. It doesn't matter whether the second page is in the same notebook or a different notebook. All notebooks tested here are synced to the cloud. It appears that NavigateToUrl causes the notebook to sync, because the OneNote notebook panel shows the sync glyph on top of the notebook icon and that is perhaps blocking subsequent interop APIs until completed? The IApplication instance is instantiated and disposed in a "using" block for each callOneNote Interop API UpdatePageContent changes lastModifiedTime of unmodified child elements
Using the Interop API, IApplication.UpdatePageContent(xml, lastModTime, XMLSchema.xs2013, true) Given a page with one Outline and two OE paragraphs where each OE paragraph was contributed by different authors on different dates. If any change is made to the Outline, such as appending a new OE, without modifying the existing OEs, then when the page is saved using UpdatePageContent, the lastModifiedTime attribute of all descendants of that Outline are updated to the current time. This results in losing information regarding when a particular author applied their changes. The expectation is that the EditedByAttributes (per 0336.OneNoteApplication_2013.xsd) of an OE should be preserved unless that OE's content has changed. Users who share notebooks often rely on the EditedByAttributes (who and when) for individual parts of a page to track independent changes. The current behavior loses that auditing capability. Note that this usage is based on https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/client-developer/onenote/application-interface-onenote#updatepagecontent-method which explains: You must include page-level objects in the UpdatePageContent call The dateExpectedLastModified is nothing more than a pessimistic locking type of safe-guard and is not considered in any regard in relation to the lastModifiedTime attributeOneNote Interop API UpdatePageContent breaks Spell Checking
Using the interop API, IApplication.UpdatePageContent(xml, lastModTime, XMLSchema.xs2013, true) Given a page with an OE paragraph, where the user selects a run of text, not including the end of the text, and the text contains spelling errors before, within, and after the selection range. When the proofing language is changed for the selected range, then the spelling errors after that range will no longer be highlighted as errors. Here is an example text run, before modification, with a selection range. Notice the word "benoyd" is misspelled and would be highlighted by OneNote. <one:OE alignment="left" quickStyleIndex="1" selected="partial"> <one:T><![CDATA[To ]]></one:T> <one:T selected="all"><![CDATA[infinity]]></one:T> <one:T><![CDATA[ and benoyd...]]></one:T> </one:OE> And after modification to change the language of the selected range: <one:OE alignment="left" quickStyleIndex="1"> <one:T><![CDATA[<span lang=en-US>To </span><span lang=yo>infinity</span><span lang=en-US> and benoyd...</span>]]></one:T> </one:OE> But the word "benoyd" is no longer highlighted as misspelled. The user can manually iterate through the text by interactively clicking the Review/Spelling button, causing OneNote to highlight the misspellings. Alternatively, if the user changes the proofing language of the selected range interactively using the Proofing Language panel, it results in exactly the same XML structure generated by OneNote natively, but OneNote retains the misspelling indicators. Making exactly the same changes to the XML using the UpdatePageContent API should result in the same behavior as using the UI.OneNote Interop API targets wrong window instance
C# with .NET Framework 4.8, Microsoft OneNote Open up two OneNote windows viewing the same page. From the second window, invoke an add-in command that uses the managed Interop API. Any queries or updates made by the API will target the first OneNote window instance, even while the second window instance is active and has focus. However, if the content of the page is manually modified from the second [active] window instance, then and only then will the API call target and update the page in the second window. Expectation is that the updated content will be visible immediately in the active OneNote window instanceOneNote Interop API: Local paragraph style attributes not retained after UpdatePageContent
Summary: When using the OneNote COM Interop API to round‑trip page XML, local paragraph style attributes are removed if they match the font properties already defined in the referenced QuickStyleDef. After this normalization, the paragraph inherits the QuickStyleDef’s color, which can cause text to become unreadable if the QuickStyleDef uses a color that is not visible against the page background. Environment: C# / .NET Framework 4.8 OneNote for Microsoft 365 IApplication.UpdatePageContent / IApplication.GetPageContent XMLSchema.xs2013 Description: If a page contains a QuickStyleDef with a specific fontColor (for example, #FFFFFF) and a paragraph that references this QuickStyleDef also includes a local style attribute that duplicates only the font family and size (but does not specify a color), the following behavior occurs: The page XML is retrieved using GetPageContent. The same XML is sent back to OneNote using UpdatePageContent, either when creating a new page or updating an existing one. After the update, retrieving the page again shows that the local style attribute has been removed from the affected one:OE elements. Because the local style no longer provides a font color override, the paragraph inherits the QuickStyleDef’s color. If that color is not visible (e.g., white text on a white background), the paragraph appears blank even though the text is still present.Reproduction steps: Create a new page using CreateNewPage. Provide XML containing: A QuickStyleDef such as: <one:quickstyledef index="1" name="p" fontcolor="#FFFFFF" font="Calibri" fontsize="11.0"></one:quickstyledef> An Outline with an OE referencing this QuickStyleDef and containing a local style attribute that duplicates the font properties: <one:OE quickStyleIndex="1" style="font-family:Calibri;font-size:11.0pt"> <one:T>Example text</one:T> </one:OE> Call UpdatePageContent with the XML. Retrieve the page again using GetPageContent. Observed behavior: The returned XML no longer contains the style attribute on the OE element. All other attributes and elements are preserved. The paragraph now renders using the QuickStyleDef’s color. Expected behavior: Local style attributes that are present in the XML passed to UpdatePageContent should remain in the stored page XML, even if they duplicate properties from the QuickStyleDef, so that the effective formatting remains unchanged. Impact: Any tool that copies or rewrites page content through the Interop API may encounter unexpected formatting changes when OneNote normalizes style attributes. If the QuickStyleDef uses a color that is not visible, paragraphs may appear blank after round‑tripping through the API. Additional note: This behavior can also occur when updating an Outline that contains multiple OE elements. If one OE is modified and the entire Outline is resent, sibling OEs may also have their local style attributes normalized in the same way. If you want, I can also prepare a shorter version optimized for Q&A’s character limits or a developer‑focused version aimed at Office engineering.Word crashes when Add-In attaches a template
We have been running a Word Add-In successfully for decades. Since Version 2606 (Build 20131.20154) the app is crashing when it loads a Macro-enabled template to a document. This crash happens without any warning or error message and when opening Word again, if brings up a message to disable the Add-In. In Version 2606 (Build 20131.20154) and earlier, this did not happen. What has change since Version 2606 (Build 20131.20154) that could be causing this issue?How to Fix Microsoft 365 Activation Failed: A Complete Troubleshooting Guide
Seeing the “Microsoft 365 Activation Failed” message can be frustrating, especially when you need to open Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Outlook and get work done. In many cases, the problem is not as serious as it looks. Activation can fail because of an incorrect Microsoft account, an expired subscription, an internet connection problem, conflicting Office installations, outdated Office apps, or an issue with the device’s date and time settings. Link to the postAccess 2608 Build 20326: Line controls disappear in Print Preview
I believe there may be a regression in Microsoft Access Build 16.0.20326.20034 (64-bit) affecting Line controls in reports. I can reproduce the problem even with a completely new blank MDB database, so it does not appear to be related to an existing application. Steps to reproduce: 1.Start Microsoft Access 64-bit Build 16.0.20326.20034. 2.Create a new blank MDB database. 3.Create a new report in Design View. 4.Add a Line control to the Detail section. 5.Add a Rectangle control to the same section. 6.No VBA code or special event handling is required. 7.Select Microsoft Print to PDF as the printer. 8.Open Print Preview. Actual result: The Rectangle control is displayed correctly, but the Line control disappears in Print Preview. The problem is not specific to a particular printer. We have reproduced it with multiple printers. Expected result: Both the Line and Rectangle controls should appear in Print Preview and in the printed output. Workaround: Rolling Microsoft Access back to an earlier build immediately resolves the problem. The same MDB file and the same report then display and print the Line control correctly. We have also reproduced the issue with Build 16.0.20326.20044 (64-bit). Has anyone else been able to reproduce this with Version 2608 / Build 20326?No clustering in clustered bar chart when secondary axis is added
Hi there, I've got a clustered bar chart with two data series, one of which needs a much smaller scale than the other. It looks fine as long as I don't add the secondary axis (see pic). Note that here I've made the y-axis range so small that you can see the second series. Displaying the full range of the first series results in the second series being invisible. Here you can't see the full range of the first series, so this won't work for my purposes. When I add the secondary axis, I get this (see pic) and I don't see any way to avoid it. It seems like it might be a bug. Adjusting the overlap or the gap width doesn't help. Anyone have any suggestions? Thank you!!
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