A Method to track current and upcoming changes to M365 Products
Good evening (from Ireland at least), I've spent most of today traipsing down a variety of dead-ends and soon-to-be-discontinued features looking to create a useful location where I can find/send all new updates to products that I can peruse and ultimately highlight ones that may be of particular importance in my organisation. I've had a long chat with Copilot today and while I've made significant progress in some areas (had upwards of 30 great questions according to Copilot! ;P), when it comes to the final product, there's always some missing connector, or some RSS feed that is no longer supported. What I'm looking for here is any input on how you manage to stay ahead of changes and I'll share everything I'm doing and have learned as well, in the hope that the discussion is somewhat mutually beneficial. What I do: Message Centre: Manually check the Message Center (under Service Health in M365 Admin Center). You can sort by product here and by relevance which is quite handy. Link: https://admin.cloud.microsoft/?#/MessageCenter (Access to the M365 Admin Center on your tenant is required for this). Today I found out you can also send emails to yourself (and Teams channels) here so awaiting the next message to see if this has worked. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way of migrating past messages over so I'll have to go through these myself first. Road Maps: These have been the bane of my day. Currently, I actively check the road maps of the products I manage but going forward, I'd like to be able to track major changes to products used in my organisation so I can give users a heads up. I initially tried Power Automate to send updates to myself, however, it's not a feature widely used in our org yet and isn't well supported, so I wasn't too surprised when my efforts were blocked by existing policy. Not long after, I found RSS feeds, which seemed to be the answer to my problems. I created RSS Feeds for each of the Road Maps that I found useful, assured by Copilot that these would work. The assurance wasn't fell founded however as, true to form, once I showed Copilot by errors, they remembered that they were there all along! :') I'm yet to find a useful solution here beyond my current efforts so any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Community Blogs The final recommendation was these Community Blog posts which, to be fair, I've had immense success with to date. However, there is a slight issue with filtering. While I did finally get the RSS Feed to work on something (the Tech Comm M365 RSS Feed), it did then proceed to send me a mass of emails on every topic under the Sun & Moon. I've decided to return to the drawing board tomorrow with this, but I'm content in knowing that RSS isn't just a myth at least. I think what I'd like here is just to receive notifications when approved Blogs are posted (i.e., Monthly OneDrive Updates and the equivalent for other products). OneDrive Office Hours: This is a fansastic resource I do use every month as it gives you the opportunity to get in contact with the people who know the most about the product and the issues you're facing. I've spent weeks in a ticket before, only to raise it in one of these meetings and get a solution that took half an hour to set up. You'll get a yes or a no, but at least you'll have an answer. Copilot Chat: I don't have the full Copilot license because I haven't had a need for it yet. Everything I've wanted to do, I've been able to do in Copilot Chat. We haven't yet looked too much into Agents, and as a Public body, aren't going to rush into it until we know it's viable and can be supported. In the interim, I'm happy to test the waters with Copilot Chat asking it for Monthly Summaries on a variety of products, time frames, etc. It isn't perfect but it's faster than I am. It can find the sources for me and I can take it from there. As an organisation, we'll be pushing out all users on the most recent version (-1) on the Monthly Enterprise Channel. This means that they'll be supported whilst also being shielded from any brand new features. Our team will be on the most recent version and will be able to note any upcoming changes ahead of time. These are what I'm using so far but would be very grateful for any further input. Thanks in advance, Chris Martin
OneDrive/SharePoint permission problem
Hello, the problem is that we have a user which wants to share file(s) with another user. If he shares the file and he gives him permissions for read and write the he is still not allowed to open it, even if he askes for permissions an those will be granted it still does not work. This works (or does not work) with several files, but not with all. If those files ares shared with other users it works instantly. We have another user with this problems, the only thing they have in common is, that both were deactivated over a period of I think 5-6 months or even longer. It is not with every file, and it does not matter if those files were uploaded in SharePoint or OneDrive and it does not really matter who uploaded it. If I e.g. downloads a file which does NOT work and I upload it again it works. I am not sure if I described it properly, but this problem only appears for 2 users which were disabled and unlicensed for a longer period of time. Is the only way to fix this to delete the account and create a new one, so that a whole new User ID is created and nothing is related to the old user or is there a proper way to handle it, because to delete the account and create a new one is more or less the last thing I want to do. Thanks in advanceSharePoint sync issues when opening from File Explorer
Hi there, Some users in my company are having issues with files not syncing with SharePoint when they save them and are also unable to concurrently edit files. They open the files via File Explorer and the 'autosave' functionality is disabled. Enabling autosave prompts them to save as a new copy. These users have recently switched to a new laptop running Windows 11 (previous laptop was Windows 10) and had no sync issues when using the old laptop. If the user first opens Excel/Word and then uses the File menu to open the document then the autosave is enabled and the file syncs with SharePoint. Here are some of the troubleshooting steps I've tried: stopping the sync and starting it again unlinking the pc and re-syncing the SharePoint site uninstalling and re-installing OneDrive Has anyone come across this issue or know of a fix that I haven't tried yet? Regards, SteveSharePoint vs Teams vs OneDrive: When to Use Each (and When Not To)
If your organization uses Microsoft 365? then you have gone through the pain point of which tool to use “Should this live in SharePoint, Teams, or OneDrive?” At first glance, all three tools seem to do the same thing store files, share documents, and help people collaborate. But using the wrong tool in the wrong situation can quickly lead to duplicated files, messy permissions, frustrated users, and lost productivity. This blog breaks down what SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and OneDrive are actually for, when to use each one and more importantly when not to. https://dellenny.com/sharepoint-vs-teams-vs-onedrive-when-to-use-each-and-when-not-to/
Has Your Organization Set Up a Viva Engage Community for Microsoft 365 Collaboration?
Hi everyone! As a trainer, I often get great questions during my Microsoft 365 sessions. While I share answers live, only the attendees benefit—leaving many others without that valuable info. I’ve already set up a Microsoft Learning Pathways SharePoint site as a resource, but I’m exploring ways to extend knowledge-sharing beyond the classroom.Has anyone created or participated in a Viva Engage community to share tips, answer questions, and collaborate around daily Microsoft 365 tools? I’d love to hear about your experiences, best practices, or ideas on how to maximize impact and reach across your organizations. Thanks in advance for sharing! Let’s empower everyone to get more from Microsoft 365.😃
macOS - duplicate OneDrive file storage
The files in my macOS (Sequoia 15.6.1, M2 MacBook Air, Microsoft 365 Family) OneDrive folder at /Users/XXX/Library/CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal/ use 111 GB of hard drive space. The exact same files appear in /Users/XXX/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/, consuming another 111 GB of storage space. Is this really the case, and if so, WHY? Could one set of files just be APFS clones, and if so, how to verify this? The Finder as well as apps GrandPerspective and OmniDiskSweeper seem to suggest that both groups of identical files are consuming real hard drive space. Thoughts?Outlook for Mac - Upload and Share is not working as access "Recipients of this message" is missing
New Outlook for Mac has since some versions back gotten the feature where the user can upload a file and share it to the recipients of the e-mail. The file will be per default be uploaded to DOWNLOAD folder in OneDrive. Now this is not working on Outlook for Mac as the whole access permission Recipients of this message" is missing. On Windows and Outlook on Web, this is available, but not for New Outlook for Mac. It seems that this feature is not yet fully developed on Outlook for Mac. Any others that see the same and can confirm?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.Chromium 141 Update Will Affect Offline Access for SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business
An update for Chromium 141 can affect the ability of SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business to access offline content, including files and lists and lead to degraded performance. The change is designed to improve user privacy, but some Microsoft 365 apps need browsers to be able to access local files, notably for OneDrive synchronization. Prepare by upgrading the OneDrive Sync client and distributing a new policy to workstations. https://office365itpros.com/2025/10/07/chromium-141-spo/
