Microsoft 365 topics

Restricting Access is The Most Important Step in a Microsoft 365 Copilot Deployment

TonyRedmond — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 10:30:37 GMT

I was asked what the most important step is in the deployment of Microsoft 365 Copilot. It’s a good question. Put simply, restricted access is the answer. That is, restricting Copilot access to information stored in Microsoft 365 locations until your tenant is ready for unrestricted Copilot search and retrieval. The fortunate thing is that tools exist today to make it relatively easy to establish guardrails for Copilot, which is exactly what you need to do.

https://office365itpros.com/2026/06/10/microsoft-365-copilot-prep/

Office 365 Mailbox Export to PST - Third Party Tools: What’s Your Experience?

KastroMoff — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 08:00:46 GMT

Exporting Office 365 mailboxes to PST is still a common requirement in many Microsoft 365 environments, especially for backup, compliance, and migration scenarios. While Microsoft offers native options like Purview eDiscovery and Outlook export, many administrators also consider third-party tools when dealing with large mailboxes or bulk export requirements.

In real-world scenarios, factors like speed, ease of use, permission handling, and consistency of exported data often influence the choice of tool. Some teams prefer native methods for compliance control, while others explore third-party solutions to simplify large-scale or repeated export tasks.

For those working with Microsoft 365, what has your experience been with third-party PST export tools? Have they helped in your environment, or do you still rely mainly on Microsoft’s native options?

How to Find Inactive (Stale) User Accounts

TonyRedmond — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 09:26:48 GMT

Inactive accounts can soak up a lot of paid-for but unused product licenses. With increases for Microsoft 365 licenses due to come into effect from 1 July 2026, it’s time to find and remove unused licenses from inactive user accounts. We discuss two approaches by using the Microsoft 365 Licensing Report or a PowerShell script that assesses inactivity based on sign-in dates and refresh token baselines.

https://office365itpros.com/2026/06/09/find-inactive-accounts/

Microsoft Extends Sensitivity Label Block for Connected Services

TonyRedmond — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 09:10:04 GMT

The BlockContentAnalysisServices sensitivity label setting blocks access to Microsoft connected services for the content of labeled Office documents. The intention is that users assign sensitivity labels with the block setting to protect an organization’s most sensitive files. Regretfully, Microsoft’s documentation and explanation offered in the message center post don’t convey a clear story about its value.

https://office365itpros.com/2026/06/08/blockcontentanalysisservices-label/

Microsoft rewards, how am i gonna redeem my rewards

Isaiah_Cacho_95 — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 19:44:30 GMT

How am i gonna redeem my rewards in Microsoft rewards if i can't even do phone verification?? It says it's not allowed…

Microsoft pls fix this. Thanks

Microsoft Wants PowerShell Developers to Change How They Download Microsoft Modules

TonyRedmond — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 10:10:57 GMT

A Microsoft blog describes some changes for PowerShell developers in terms of installing modules and the role of the Microsoft Artifact Registry (MAR). In a nutshell, Microsoft intends the MAR to be the go-to place to download first-party PowerShell modules and other artifacts. This solves the problem of potentially compromised modules found in the PowerShell Gallery, but MAR can’t work if it doesn’t contain the modules people use.

https://office365itpros.com/2026/06/05/microsoft-artifact-registry/

The Great Loop Departed User Process

TonyRedmond — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 10:22:56 GMT

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/

need exchange se for hybrid environment

andrea_rinaldi — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 12:32:07 GMT

We have a hybrid Office 365 environment with an Exchange Server 2016 that no longer performs any role. It does not host any mailboxes and is not used as an SMTP relay.

We would like to keep an Exchange installation solely for administrative purposes through the GUI.

Questions:

1. Can we keep Exchange Server 2016 installed?

2. If we need to install Exchange Server Subscription Edition (SE), do we need licenses for this installation, considering that all our Office 365 licenses are Business licenses?

Thank you.

Microsoft Launches Container Management Support for Security Groups

TonyRedmond — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 10:16:48 GMT

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/

Employee performance management tools in Microsoft 365?

EmmaHastings — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 20:59:35 GMT

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.

Word/PowerPoint are not suitable replacements for Publisher

AJR1 — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 07:39:26 GMT

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

Andy

Taken over MS365 tenant, failed payment stuck

FreekvH — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 18:39:38 GMT

Hi all,

I have taken over an MS365 tenant for a customer that took over another company. This was a tenant managed by an MSP, but they canceled the relationship.

So I tried to purchase a Business Premium subscription for one month and couple it to my admin account, so that I can decoupled some devices from Intune, and also reinstate 1 or 2 accounts for the time being.

I added a new billing profile (I could not add a billing account) while ordering from Microsoft directly.

However the payment failed, there were 3 attempts in very quick succession. Probably because my card setting were too strict. So I switched the payment method to another card after this. However since then I have one product under "Your products" with the label "failed", the errors it gives: "We weren't able to create a subscription for one of your products. Update the selected filters and choose subscription status Failed to view the product in the list below." Clicking the product just shows "subscription failed". It does show renews on 1-7-2026. So it is expiring? How can I retry the payment?

Unfortunately all support options keep pointing to the previous tenant owner so I'm posting here.

So I'm trying here. I've been at this for way too long already.

Cannot install addins

pavanmaverick — Sat, 30 May 2026 10:56:40 GMT

I am a Microsoft 365 Personal user. When I try to add the Claude for Excel Addin (for the Desktop version of Excel), I get an error: "Error loading add-ins. One or more add-ins failed to load. See your add-ins.". However, this is not specific to the Claude addin, since every addin gives the same error. When I click on the My-Addins option and then "refresh", I get another error: "Access denied to catalog."

Signing in and out of Office does not fix the issue.
Clearing the Office 365 cache did not fix the problem.
The issue extends to Powerpoint and Word as well.
I cannot add any addins to the web versions of Office either.

Interestingly, if I download an XML manifest file, I can use the "Manage my addins" option in the web versions of Office 365 to manually add the addins. But still no luck with the Desktop versions.

Anyone have any thoughts on how to fix this? Do I need to manually reinstall Office 365?

I also noticed that the "Get Add-ins" button in "Account" settings is disabled.

Microsoft Cans Power BI App for Reporting Microsoft 365 Usage

TonyRedmond — Fri, 29 May 2026 09:41:30 GMT

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/

Migration from Hosted Exchange (Hybrid) to M365 Classic Outlook Client Problems and Solutions

pinkish_panther — Thu, 28 May 2026 13:14:51 GMT

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

TonyRedmond — Thu, 28 May 2026 07:17:22 GMT

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/

Sending a Welcome Message to New Employees Part 2

TonyRedmond — Wed, 27 May 2026 09:48:41 GMT

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/

Allow Canvas Studio Public Embeds in Microsoft Sway

DallasNM — Tue, 26 May 2026 15:49:04 GMT

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!

Reporting Usage Patterns for Room Mailboxes

TonyRedmond — Tue, 26 May 2026 09:41:15 GMT

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/

Outlook Cached Mode Repeatedly Re-syncs Mailbox After Restart (Starts Again Around 3.99 GB)

AhBAy2335 — Tue, 26 May 2026 05:52:55 GMT

Hi everyone,

I’m experiencing a strange Outlook Cached Exchange Mode issue with a Microsoft 365 mailbox after a recent Windows rebuild and wanted to see if anyone has seen similar behavior.

Environment:

Microsoft 365 mailbox (Exchange Online)
Outlook for Microsoft 365
Version 2605 Build 16.0.20026.20076 64-bit
Windows 11 25H2
Fresh OS rebuild performed twice
New Outlook profile created
Office completely reinstalled
OST recreated multiple times

Issue:
When Cached Exchange Mode is enabled, Outlook starts downloading/synchronizing mail normally, and the OST file continues to grow correctly. However, after every reboot or Outlook restart, Outlook again shows “Downloading…” starting from around 3.99 GB.

Important observations:

Online Mode works perfectly
OUTLOOK.EXE closes properly after exit
OST file is NOT deleted and continues growing
Sync slider changes (1 month, 1 year, all mail) make no difference
Disabling Outlook indexing did not help
New Outlook profile did not help
Reinstalling Office did not help
Problem only started after OS rebuild
Before rebuild, same mailbox worked normally in Cached Mode
No pending office or windows update.

It does not appear to actually re-download the mailbox from scratch because the OST size keeps increasing, but Outlook repeatedly processes/downloads from around the same 3.99 GB point after restart.

Has anyone seen:

Cached Mode replaying synchronization repeatedly after restart?
Similar behavior on recent Current Channel builds?
Security/EDR products interfering with OST synchronization state?
Any known regressions with Outlook Version 2605 Build 16.0.20026.20076?

Any suggestions or similar experiences would be appreciated.