M365 Business Standard renewal surprise: new subscription required!
Hi all, I wanted to share a recent experience in case it helps other Microsoft 365 admins. For many years, I have renewed several Microsoft 365 Business Standard subscriptions by purchasing annual product keys through the Microsoft eCompany Store and redeeming them in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center using the Extend end date workflow. This year, the renewal process suddenly stopped working. Symptoms When redeeming a newly purchased Microsoft 365 Business Standard key, the Admin Center displayed: "The product key you've entered can't be applied to this subscription. Instead, use this product key to add licenses to a new subscription." At first glance, this made no sense because: The existing subscription was Microsoft 365 Business Standard. The newly purchased product was also Microsoft 365 Business Standard. The purchase source was the same Microsoft eCompany Store that had been used previously. The renewal process had worked successfully for years. I initially suspected: Region mismatch Billing platform changes Subscription corruption Invalid product keys None of those turned out to be the cause. Investigation A few interesting findings: The subscription was still under MOSA (Microsoft Online Subscription Agreement). The keys were valid and recognized by Microsoft. The same behavior occurred with multiple Business Standard subscriptions. Redeeming from a US IP address vs. a non-US IP address made no difference. After multiple support escalations, Microsoft eventually confirmed that the behavior is by design. Root Cause (per Microsoft Support) Microsoft advised that although the product name is still Microsoft 365 Business Standard, the newly purchased keys belong to a different offer variant than the existing subscription. As a result: The keys are valid. The subscription is valid. However, the new keys cannot extend the existing subscription. The keys can only be used to create a new subscription. In other words, two products can both be called Microsoft 365 Business Standard while still being considered different offers internally. Workaround The Microsoft-recommended workaround was: Redeem the new product keys using Create Subscription. A new Microsoft 365 Business Standard subscription is created in the same tenant. Reassign users from the old subscription to the new one. Allow the old subscription to expire. The existing tenant, users, mailboxes, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, domains, etc. remain unchanged. Only the underlying subscription providing the licenses changes. Feedback The frustrating part was not the technical workaround. The issue was that there was no obvious indication prior to purchase that a Business Standard key purchased today would not be able to extend a Business Standard subscription that had historically been renewed using identical-looking keys from the same source. The eventual answer from Microsoft was reasonable, but it took over a week, multiple escalations, and considerable investigation to determine that the behavior was actually expected. Question for the community Has anyone else encountered this recently with: Microsoft 365 Business Standard eCompany Store purchases MOSA subscriptions Retail/prepaid product-key renewals I'm particularly interested in whether others have seen this offer-compatibility issue and whether future renewals of the newly created subscription behave normally. Thanks!
Microsoft goofed: Group Policy Office ADMX/ADML Problem
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49030 That's the link MS gives to download the Office group Policy files. Everything works until you open GP and all the policies are in German. Yes, I selected ENGLISH (it was the only option). No, I can't speak German - wish I could. I can't find these files anywhere else. PLEASE HELP. Azure Server 2022 Datacenter - need latest Microsoft Office 365 ADMX/ADML files (which may still be the Office 2016 ones, nice job keeping up with the times, Microsoft).
Online Archive Not Working for One User
Hi, I am experiencing an issue with the online archive for one of my users. The online archive has been working correctly for this user for years, but it has not archived any emails for the past six months. I have checked the licensing, retention tags, and retention policy, and everything appears to be correctly configured. I have also tried running the Start-ManagedFolderAssistant cmdlet multiple times, but it has not resolved the issue. Other users in my organization have the same retention policy and their online archives are working correctly. I have also tried changing the retention policy for the affected user to one that is known to work for other users, but this did not resolve the issue. I have tried running several cmdlets to gather more information about the issue, including Get-Mailbox | FL RetentionPolicy, Export-MailboxDiagnosticLogs -Identity -ExtendedProperties, Get-RetentionPolicy | FL Name, Get-RetentionPolicyTag, Get-ComplianceTag, Get-Mailbox | fl *hold*, Get-MailboxStatistics | fl ManagedFolderAssistantLastRunTime, Get-Mailbox -Archive | fl *, and Get-MailboxFolderStatistics -Archive | fl *. However, none of these cmdlets have helped me identify the cause of the issue. The output from these cmdlets appears to be normal and does not indicate any issues with the mailbox or the archive mailbox. One thing I noticed is that the Get-MailboxStatistics | fl ManagedFolderAssistantLastRunTime cmdlet does not return any output for any of my users, even though I have run the Start-ManagedFolderAssistant cmdlet multiple times. I am at a loss as to what could be causing this issue and would appreciate any suggestions or guidance on how to troubleshoot it further. Thank youOffice 365 Application Splash Screen / Start Screen
All office applications are opening with an alternate splash screen (the white one) I believe this is because the is a problem with my user's profile. I get the alternate screen when loading all office 365 applications. I have several odd things happening on the user's computer. Can anyone tell me what the alternate screen is telling me?
Taken over MS365 tenant, failed payment stuck
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.
Prevent Microsoft 365 meeting invites from automatically appearing in users’ calendars
Hi All, We are trying to prevent Microsoft 365 meeting invites from automatically appearing in users’ calendars as Tentative until the user explicitly accepts the invite. Setting for Outlook Classic, New Outlook and Windows or Outlook Web. Need Microsoft recommendation on this one.
Has anyone migrated from one Google Workspace to another after a company merger?
Hi all, Our company recently went through a merger and we now have two separate Google Workspace accounts that need to be consolidated into one. I need to move everything across, emails, contacts, calendars and tasks, for all users without anything getting lost in the process. Honestly not sure where to begin. Google's native tools seem limited for something like this and I don't want to start without a solid plan. Has anyone gone through a similar consolidation? How did you handle it and is there anything you wish you had known before starting?Turning off email notifications about new comments in one certain file
Hi All! I found a solution to turn off all email notifications on new comments in my shared files (through settings on SharePoint), but it doesn't really solve my problem. In project files I work on with my colleagues, email notifications are helpful for monitoring workflows and streamline the process. At the same time, I'm an owner of yearly excel files shared with a big team in order to monitor the work on all clients and automate the visualization of it, but it gets commented on a lot and I don't need to get all of that on my Outlook. Is there any way to turn off email notifications about new comments for just one file without turning them off on all my shared files? Kind regards, Jakub Banasik
