Recent Discussions
External people can't open files with Sensitivity Label encryption.
Question: What are the best practices for ensuring external users can open files encrypted with Sensitivity Labels? Hi all. I've been investigating proper setup of sensitivity labels in Purview, and the impact on user experience. The prerequisites are simple enough, creating and configuring the labels reasonably straightforward, and publishing them is a breeze. But using them appears to be a different matter! Everything is fine for labels that don't apply encryption (control access) or when used internally. However, the problems come when labels do apply encryption and information is sent externally. The result is that we apply a label to a document, attach that document to an email, and send it externally - and the recipient says they can't open it and they get an error that their email address is not in our directory. This is because due to the encryption, the external user needs to authenticate back to our tenant, and if they're not in our tenant they obviously can't do this so the files won't open. So, back to the question above. What's the easiest / most secure / best way to add any user we might share encrypted content with to our tenant. As I see it we have the following options: Users have to request Admins add the user as a Guest in our tenant before they send the content. Let's face it, they'll not do this and/or get frustrated. Users share encrypted content directly from SharePoint / OneDrive, rather than attaching it to emails (as that would automatically add the external person as a Guest in the tenant). This will be fine in some circumstances, but won't always be appropriate (when you want to send them a point-in-time version of a doc). With good SharePoint setup, site Owners would also have to approve the share before it gets sent which could delay things. Admins add all possible domains that encrypted content might be shared with to Entra B2B Direct Connect (so the external recipient doesn't have to be our tenant). This may not be practical as you often don't know who you'll need to share with and we work with hundreds of organisations. The bigger gotcha is that the external organisation would also have to configure Entra B2B Direct Connect. Admins default Entra B2B Direct Connect to 'Allow All'. This opens up a significant attack surface and also still requires any external organisation to configure Entra B2B Direct Connect as well. I really want to make this work, but it need to be as simple as possible for the end users sharing sensitive or confidential content. And all of the above options seem to have significant down-sides. I'm really hoping someone who uses Sensitivity Labels on a day-to-day basis can provide some help or advice to share their experiences. Thanks, Oz.
Range showing (table array) in the wrong place
I’ve got a VLOOKUP pulling data from another excel file (sources.xlsx) the formula works as intended it's pulling the right department names based on id number, but here’s the weird part, when I double click the formula to check it, the table array ($A$2:$B$23) gets highlighted in the current sheet instead of the actual source sheet (which is in the other file). The data is still coming in correctly, just excel is showing the range in the wrong place. Is this normal when referencing another workbook? I never experience this before, and I am not sure if it new thing or a bug Example
Calculate Average Up Periods and Down Periods
Good afternoon, all. I am doing an analysis on data going back to 1984 (monthly data). The data set has positive and negative numbers. I am trying to create a formula that will go through all the data points and calculate the average of all the positive data points. Also, want the same calculation for all the negative data points. How should I set that up? What is the best function to use? Thank you in advance. Regards,Complex Cell Format, Maybe!!!
Hi, I'm in the eyecare profession and we make use of vision measurement (visual acuity) standards, and these are supposed to be indivisible fractions, but here are what I's faced with: Unless I format the cell to text, excel will either divide the fraction or convert it to date via the date picker I'm using what other means can I use? I'd like to use this fraction like 6/18 or 20/60 to count in the count function, would this be possible? This is just the start, I want to solve this first and then see how it goes. Thanks for your guidance. Cheers.Entra Agents are Promising but Could do More
Microsoft's Alex Simons came to the TEC 2025 conference to talk about the future of Entra ID, a lot of which hangs on the use of AI in components like the Entra agents that are now in preview. The idea of using agents to relieve hard-pressed human administrators is great, but only if those agents do more than a skilled human administrator can do, and that's not the case so far. https://practical365.com/entra-agents-could-do-more/
Excel will not start. Stuck at ATPVBAEN.xlam 100%
Hi everyone, As the title suggests, I have noticed that excel does not start on my PC anymore, and it hangs at I can get it to start ONLY in safe mode, where, even when deactivating all add-ins, I can never start it normally. Furthermore, when following through to the Excel Add-In folder, I see nothing there. There is also a ghost open-solver add-in which has been "deleted" many times but keeps coming back. This is after 2 clean installs and nuking the folders in Program Files, and a full online repair. I'm at my wits' end. Any help? ThanksRack of Lambda
There’s been a lot of content shared recently to commemorate the upcoming 40th anniversary of Microsoft Excel. Personally, I’ve only been using Excel for around half that time, but October also marks my 2-year anniversary since "joining the conversation" on this forum. As a gift from me to you (anyone interested), I’ve spent some time over the past few weeks revisiting old posts, updating methods I shared previously and packaging them into a collection of generalized Lambda functions to assist with a variety of common array manipulation and transformation scenarios. The attached file contains some 35+ Lambda functions, ranging from very simple concepts to much more advanced techniques. You can also import them directly from my gist, if desired. While they were all compiled and composed of my own accord, I would be remiss if I failed to credit the community and its members as a major resource in my own development. The amount of knowledge, tips and tricks gained through community collaboration is simply invaluable. You may notice some recurring themes in the way I’ve written many of the functions. For example, I like to keep the optional arguments as simple as possible, using either Boolean values passed to IF, or numeric options from 0 to 3 passed to CHOOSE. Also, many of the array transformation functions use TOCOL-IF-SEQUENCE in one way or another, with MOD-QUOTIENT-SEQUENCE used only a few times in the more complex algorithms (e.g. HWRAP and VWRAP). The collection also includes a few examples of Lambda recursion, the most notable being PF (Prime Factorization). CROSSJOINM was written as a "how-to" demonstration for filtering multiple optional arguments using LAMBDA and NOT-ISOMITTED. There’re also some powerful scanning functions like SCAN3, which can handle multiple input arrays, as well as EVALS with VALS2 to VALS7, which can store and recall multiple variables at each iteration (useful for corkscrew calculations). What you won’t find, however, are methods that use INDEX in an iterative manner with functions like MAKEARRAY, SCAN, etc. as these are only efficient when iterating over a range reference (they will bog down considerably and become practically unusable after just a few thousand iterations when looping over an array object). As such, I don’t recommend them as "generalized" solutions, although they can be very effective on a case-by-case basis. Similarly, you will only find 2 examples in this collection that use REDUCE-STACK in a limited capacity, with fewer than 10 iterations, as I also consider this to be a method of last resort due to its problems with efficiency when the number of iterations cannot be controlled. Hopefully one or two of them proves useful. If not, no big deal. Many of the examples in the attached file are interactive, so you can see how the different options affect the output. For those brave enough, please feel free to share your own custom functions too. I’d love to see what you got. Cheers!Office 365 Problems
Hello everyone, I have been experiencing the following problem since today: As soon as I try to open Excel, Word, Outlook, etc., they close again immediately. Online repair and reinstallation did not improve the situation. Some of my colleagues are experiencing the same problem. Background: We roll out updates at intervals. The users who were in the first interval are experiencing these problems. The update interval has been stopped, but unfortunately I can no longer undo the update. The following version is displayed: Version 2509 Build 16.0.19231.20138. The computers are running Windows 11 with the 24H2 update. Does anyone have the same problem or know a solution? Thanks in advance.Maintaining Productivity During Hybrid or Phased Rollouts in Microsoft 365
Rolling out Microsoft 365 (M365) in phases—or running a hybrid setup where cloud and on-premises environments coexist—can help organizations manage risk, budget, and change effectively. However, without proper planning, these transitions can easily disrupt productivity. The good news: with the right approach, your workforce can stay connected, collaborative, and efficient throughout the rollout journey. In this post, we’ll explore how to maintain productivity during hybrid or phased rollouts in Microsoft 365, focusing on practical strategies, governance, and change management. https://dellenny.com/maintaining-productivity-during-hybrid-or-phased-rollouts-in-microsoft-365/Agent Mode continuously loading
Hi all, I installed Excel Labs today and have tried to use https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2025/09/29/vibe-working-introducing-agent-mode-and-office-agent-in-microsoft-365-copilot/ for Excel in the web. However, no matter which prompt I use, it just loads continuously, even when left for hours. Has anyone got this working? Or know how to resolve this? I appreciate it's a Preview feature, so happy to wait if it's a temporary glitch, but thought it'd be worth checking.
Macro to copy
Hello all you "Brilliant Minds" here is a chance to prove your "Excel-ence. I want to copy a value to one cell from the source which is random and as I haven't a clue about this stuff I asked Microsoft CoPilot. Being on the 4th version Where Microsoft excel still will not accept Microsoft CoPilot's creation, I am appealing to the Community. So here is your chance to prove that you are smarter than CoPilot. Here we go, everything but attach a file. If anyone is interested send me an email so I can send a couple of small files. Donald
Azure AD Health Failing
I am on the latest version of Azure AD Connect (2.5.79.0)... There are no network/DNS/connectivity issues at our site, it seems to me that Azure AD Health Service is having trouble because the endpoint is experiencing a service issue.. Is anyone else having the same problem with failure alerts/etc? I checked by running "Test-MicrosoftEntraConnectHealthConnectivity -Role SYNC" command, the stack trace throws an undocumented error number and complains of rate limiting issues... smells like the server is being overwhelmed or there are other issues slowing down the endpoint/service with the consequence that connections are piling up causing this error: Connectivity Test Step 1 of 2: Testing dependent service endpoints begins ... AAD CDN connectivity is skipped. Connecting to endpoint https://login.microsoftonline.com Endpoint validation for https://login.microsoftonline.com is Successful. Connecting to endpoint https://s1.adhybridhealth.azure.com/providers/Microsoft.ADHybridHealthService/diagnostics/version Endpoint validation for https://s1.adhybridhealth.azure.com/providers/Microsoft.ADHybridHealthService/diagnostics/version is Successful. Connectivity Test Step 1 of 2 - Testing dependent service endpoints completed successfully. Connectivity Test Step 2 of 2 - EventHub data upload procedure begins ... Tenant Id is successfully collected during agent registration. Server rejected Eventhub data upload, here is the exception: Microsoft.ServiceBus.Messaging.ServerBusyException: The request was terminated because the entity is being throttled. Error code : 50002. Sub error : 101. Please wait 4 seconds and try again. To know more visit https://aka.ms/sbResourceMgrExceptions and https://aka.ms/ServiceBusThrottlingS:N:ADHSPRODWUSEHSYNCIA:EVENTHUB:ADHSPRODWUSEHSYNCIA~22527,CL:30,CC:32,ACC:356250,LUR:WinEnd,LUT:2025-10-08T03:03:12.2035867Z,RC:1 TrackingId:<<< anonymized tracking ID>>> 0, SystemTracker:adhsprodwusehsyncia:eventhub:adhsprodwusehsyncia~22527, Timestamp:2025-10-08T03:03:13 at Microsoft.ServiceBus.Common.ExceptionExtensions.ThrowException(Exception exception) at Microsoft.ServiceBus.Common.AsyncResult.End[TAsyncResult](IAsyncResult result) at Microsoft.ServiceBus.Messaging.EventHubSender.Send(EventData data) at Microsoft.Identity.Health.AgentV1.ConfigurationPowerShell.TestAzureADConnectHealthConnectivity.TestInsightServiceDataUploadProcedure() Azure AD Connect Health agent could not communicate to the Health Service using port 5671. As a result, agent communication will fall back to use port 443, but use of port 5671 is recommended. Please allow outbound communication using port 5671. Tenant Id is successfully collected during agent registration. Server rejected Eventhub data upload, here is the exception: Microsoft.ServiceBus.Messaging.ServerBusyException: The request was terminated because the entity is being throttled. Error code : 50002. Sub error : 101. Please wait 4 seconds and try again. To know more visit https://aka.ms/sbResourceMgrExceptions and https://aka.ms/ServiceBusThrottlingS:N:ADHSPRODWUSEHSYNCIA:EVENTHUB:ADHSPRODWUSEHSYNCIA~22527,CL:30,CC:32,ACC:356837,LUR:IncomingUsage_ADHSPRODWUSEHSYNCIA-5,LUT:2025-10-08T03:03:54.9448143Z,RC:1 TrackingId:<<< anonymized tracking ID>>>, SystemTracker:adhsprodwusehsyncia:eventhub:adhsprodwusehsyncia~22527, Timestamp:2025-10-08T03:04:00 at Microsoft.ServiceBus.Common.ExceptionExtensions.ThrowException(Exception exception) at Microsoft.ServiceBus.Common.AsyncResult.End[TAsyncResult](IAsyncResult result) at Microsoft.ServiceBus.Messaging.EventHubSender.Send(EventData data) at Microsoft.Identity.Health.AgentV1.ConfigurationPowerShell.TestAzureADConnectHealthConnectivity.TestInsightServiceDataUploadProcedure() Azure AD Connect Health agent could not communicate to the Health Service using port 5671. As a result, agent communication will fall back to use port 443, but use of port 5671 is recommended. Please allow outbound communication using port 5671.Data Validation Conditional Formating
I have a shared spreadsheet where coordinators enter staff codes for particular tasks they would like them to do (it's not a timesheet, just a future planning tool). I have set up a data validation to warn them if they enter a staff code that is not in the list, however if someone leaves after their code has been entered, the validation doesn't re-check so the now-invalid code remains happily in the spreadsheet. I need the cells to highlight if the staff code is not in the list. Does anyone know if this is possible? Currently, I need to search for each code as someone leaves and manually remove them from the spreadsheet and then ask coordinators to re-enter new values. It would be great if it would just flag them in red when I remove them from the staffing list and coordinators can see if there is (now) an error that needs fixing. Not sure how to attach a file as it's not 'link'able with a URL, so here's screen shots:
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