BLOG: Microsoft 365 Family - A nine steps plan for security and savings
Table of Contents Introduction What Is Microsoft 365 Family? Benefits Over Office LTSC 2024 Microsoft 365 Copilot at Home OneDrive: Storage, Sync, and Mobile Device Optimisation Protecting Your Microsoft Account (Passwordless Sign‑in) Why OneDrive Is Not a Backup Streamlining Microsoft 365 Apps for Home Users (Removing Unused Components) Outlook, Publisher, and Future Changes Upcoming Blog: Migrating and Syncing Contacts and Calendars and effective sync across devices with Outlook New Final Recommendations 1. Introduction Microsoft 365 Family offers a modern, flexible, and secure digital environment for households. This post explains how to streamline your setup, protect your data, and keep your devices organised with minimal effort. Microsoft 365 Family is a subscription designed for households that need up‑to‑date productivity tools, secure cloud storage, and seamless use across Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. This article explains why Microsoft 365 Family is a better long‑term choice than Office LTSC 2024, how to streamline the installation by removing unused apps, how to protect your Microsoft Account with passwordless sign‑in, and how to combine OneDrive with Macrium Reflect for proper backup. It also includes recommendations for reducing local storage usage and outlines the role of Copilot for home productivity. 2. What Is Microsoft 365 Family? Microsoft 365 Family is a subscription service for up to six people. Each user receives: Their own private Microsoft apps • 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage • Email, productivity, and security services • Cross‑device access (Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Web) Latest changes require all members to become part of a family group, but each users data remains independently. So as long every Microsoft Account member birthday is of age 18 or older (Account > Birthday setting), there is no issue. Mind the licensing terms: you may only share M365 Family with family members. You may not use it for any business use, incl. micro-businesses. $$$ Savings: Consolidate costs for other Cloud storages, such as Google Drive. I believe Google Photos is very nasty keep prompting users for cloud backups of their pictures, even when they declined multiple times. OneDrive will not do this. Try to disable the recurring billing. Amazon has great offers or bundles - don't get trapped for Security suites, Defender is more than enough. Caveat for Amazon based Subscriptions: You can use them but keep in mind that they become activated and effective immediately after purchase. In contradition to the "activate" buttons that exist, the remainder of the subscription time is set at purchase date. Amazon cannot change it. Microsoft Support won't fix it either. Means that hoarding activation keys from Black Friday is no longer possible :/ If you bought a subscription too early, you can return it by calling Amazon Hotline / Callback > Digital Services. 3. Benefits Over Office LTSC 2024 In comparison to Office LTSC 2024, Microsoft 365 Family provides: Continuous feature updates The new Outlook with an ad‑free experience Full Copilot support and experience, even with benefits beyond Office Applications PST read/write support Premium Word, Excel, PowerPoint features (Online Version is available for free). Cloud integration and collaboration tools Better value over time Multi‑device use without extra licences, mobile, tablet and PC Office LTSC 2024 is static, does not support Copilot, and receives only security fixes. $$$ Savings: Office LTSC is the most cost efficient solution with no subscription attached. OneDrive is Limited to 5 GB per Microsoft Account. If you do not need much space and no AI this is for you. Outlook New is still usable, with few ads, but no PST support. 4. Microsoft 365 Copilot at Home Copilot helps you: Summarise long documents Draft messages or essays Organise tasks Extract information quickly Improve language and translation Coding (PowerShell and other lanugages), with Visual Studio Code integration Learn more: https://www.microsoft.com/copilot Consider to install the M356 Copilot app to get the most out of it. On your phone (iOS / Android) you can also use this app, along with Edge Browser and OneDrive for a seamless experience. Microsoft Outlook on Android / iOS has not the same featureset as Outlook New, very unfortunately. $$$ Savings: M365 Family includes Copilot and expands it to everywhere: Edge Browser, M365 Apps. Spare a seperate Copilot or GPT plan. 5. OneDrive: Storage, Sync, and Mobile Device Optimisation Each user gets 1 TB of cloud storage. Key features: Automatic sync across devices • iOS and Android photo upload • Files On‑Demand to reduce disk usage • Access to all files from any device • Easy sharing and version history on all devices, including PC. Stop saving Document version 1, Document version 1.2 :) Trust the XML based Office files and power of OneDrive, which is a bit similar to enterprise trusted SharePoint features. To reduce smartphone storage usage: • Enable camera upload • Keep files online‑only when possible • Store large media primarily in OneDrive On Android Phones, within OneDrive > Settings > Free up Space on your device - you can delete uploaded pictures from your phone, at your own pace with a fingertip. iOS does not have this cleanup feature. Mind you have to use OneDrive or pin - means download caching - files as on PC, if you want to have them accessible when there is no internet connection or your data plan is limited. You can share or download pictures to apps like Whatsapp without manual download. OneDrive now supports optional AI based face recognition which makes it a blast sorting pictures of people. Very unfortunately it does not work with cats. I would love to see OneDrive organizing all cat pictures into a virtual collection, too. Collections made on the Phone or in Windows 11 will seamless sync with Windows Photo App. This makes organizing digital pictures and videos so much easier. Protip: If you trust your partner / friend / family member to the fullest, you can share the OneDrive Picture Upload into one single account across phones. So both share the same pictures, picture of the day / week. Also this makes it obsolete to "can you send me over the photo that you took..." $$$ Savings: Save big on required phone capacity. With OneDrive at hand, you'll never need 128,256 or even 512 GB phone storage, you'll find use for a 64 GB phone again, even more that the HW crisis, thanks or no thanks to AI made flash memory super expensive. :/ - let's not talk about other resources like water, energy and CO2e. 6. Protecting Your Microsoft Account (Passwordless Sign‑in) All Windows 10/11 users are strongly advised to protect their Microsoft Account. Passwordless sign‑in reduces risk and enhances convenience. I recommend this especially when you store files in OneDrive. Windows Hello PIN, Passkeys and Microsoft Passwordless Accounts have not been compromised in my bubble, opposite to Microsoft Accounts without MFA protection or traditional passwords and Windows local users (Password spraying, NTLM attacks). Setup guidance: https://support.microsoft.com/office/passwordless $$$ Savings: Save you mind and sleepless nights that you'd have after an successful hack. The danger is real, and there is no exclusion to home users - even if they pretend there have "nothing to hide", an argument I hear quite often when it comes to account security and password management. 7. Why OneDrive Is Not a Backup OneDrive synchronises files. If you delete a file locally, the deletion syncs to OneDrive. same goes for encryption attacks on your device, especially PCs For real resilience, you need an offline or image‑based backup. To build a safe and simple backup system: Move your OneDrive folder to a dedicated physical drive or partition (not C:) but O:. I recommend a 5400 rpm Harddisk or SATA SSD, as the performance requirements are negible. Disconnect OneDrive and login again, choosing a folder on Drive O: Let OneDrive do the initial sync. Then Configure OneDrive to download all files locally. Use Macrium Reflect X to create an image of that partition (Drive O: - OneDrive). Update the image regularly. If you need super speed > Use external NVMe case from UGreen or Sabrent, and a cheap but reliable NVMe like Samsung, Crucial (as long as available). Note: Macrium Reflect 8 support ends on 27 February 2026, this means it will not receive any updates. In addition I found it is not compatible with SecureBoot certificate 2023 updates. Why I recommend Macrium Reflect X lightweight, no bloat like Acronis nowadays and tons of services one of the few fully x64 apps in the home market supports synthentic full backups, esp. great on SSD or NVMe easy UI, works on Server Core (for business use) Does Backup and Recovery with excelleny, but serves also as Partitioning and Cloning Tool Neat Windows RE integration One of the first to support Secure Boot with CA2023 certificates super fast esp. on NVMe or external NVMe (compared to other products) multi-language support Hyper-V Boot support (with Windows 11 Pro) meaningful and regular application updates, influenced by a strong and active community excellent support agents and quality $$$ Savings: No savings here in terms of money but peace of mind. The cloud is not a backup. Period. I have seen people loosing their digital life. 8. Streamlining Microsoft 365 Apps for Home users (Removing Unused Components) Many home users do not need the full suite of Microsoft 365 You could remove: Access – rarely needed privately • Publisher – discontinued in 2024, will change to read-only access for pub files. Alternatives: Migrate your pub files content to Word or PowerPoint or 3rd party App by copy paste. • Legacy Outlook – supported until ~2029 • Teams (Classic), if unused - -Teams often comes preinstalled in Windows 11 anyway. • OneDrive – comes preinstalled in Windows 11. With Microsoft 365: You receive the new Outlook • Copilot is enabled • You benefit from an ad‑free inbox. • PST files are fully supported / Attach - read - write ODT allows you to install Microsoft 365 with a custom configuration. Do not use the default OfficeSetup.exe in this case, that you would receive from your invitation or Microsoft Account page Typical use cases for ODT at home: Install only Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook Exclude Access, Publisher, and Teams Reduce disk footprint and complexity How-to deploy customized M365 Family: Download ODT to your download folder Extract ODT / execute setup in your download folder Create a config file to your needs at config.office.com - no login required - choose M365 for a while Export & Save the file to your download folder named YourOfficeConfig.xml, Choose Office Format or ODT, depending on your preference. Run PowerShell Windows Key + X > Terminal (Admin) Change to your download folder e.g. cd c:\users\username\downloads Download Microsoft 365 Family .\setup.exe /download c:\users\username\downloads\YourOfficeConfig.xml Install Microsoft 365 Family customized .\setup.exe /configure c:\users\username\downloads\YourOfficeConfig.xml $$$ Savings: Save valuable space on the OS drive (C:). Save monthly update size and time. Benefit from a smaller attack surface. Here is an example for a working officeconfig.xml that will download office without the forementioned features. <Configuration ID="d1fde4ee-5072-4e95-b319-9c0682773668"> <Add OfficeClientEdition="64" Channel="Current" MigrateArch="TRUE"> <Product ID="O365HomePremRetail"> <Language ID="de-de" /> <Language ID="MatchOS" /> <Language ID="MatchPreviousMSI" /> <ExcludeApp ID="Access" /> <ExcludeApp ID="Groove" /> <ExcludeApp ID="Lync" /> <ExcludeApp ID="OneDrive" /> <ExcludeApp ID="Outlook" /> <ExcludeApp ID="Publisher" /> </Product> <Product ID="ProofingTools"> <Language ID="en-gb" /> </Product> </Add> <Property Name="SharedComputerLicensing" Value="0" /> <Property Name="FORCEAPPSHUTDOWN" Value="TRUE" /> <Property Name="DeviceBasedLicensing" Value="0" /> <Property Name="SCLCacheOverride" Value="0" /> <Updates Enabled="TRUE" /> <RemoveMSI /> <AppSettings> <User Key="software\microsoft\office\16.0\excel\options" Name="defaultformat" Value="51" Type="REG_DWORD" App="excel16" Id="L_SaveExcelfilesas" /> <User Key="software\microsoft\office\16.0\powerpoint\options" Name="defaultformat" Value="27" Type="REG_DWORD" App="ppt16" Id="L_SavePowerPointfilesas" /> <User Key="software\microsoft\office\16.0\word\options" Name="defaultformat" Value="" Type="REG_SZ" App="word16" Id="L_SaveWordfilesas" /> </AppSettings> <Display Level="Full" AcceptEULA="TRUE" /> </Configuration> Bonus: If you think this Office customisation isn't giving enough of savings on the OS drive, try this: #windows key + X > Terminal (Admin) #Powershell #PS C:\Users\username> powercfg /h off #saves a bunch of space, if you are not using hibernation / standby (suspend to RAM/ to file). The more RAM installed, the more your savings. powercfg /h off 9. Outlook, Publisher, and Future Changes Publisher will be removed from the Office product family by October 2026. Or change to Read-Only mode when installed, both for security reasons. See announcement • Legacy Outlook will reach its end around 2029. • The new Outlook supports modern sync, Gmail integration, iCloud Integration and PST files support and sophisticated anti-spam and other Exchange Online like security features. $$$ Savings: Nothing to see here. Move on. 10. Upcoming Blog: Migrating and Syncing Contacts and Calendars and effective sync across devices with Outlook New In a follow‑up blog I will cover: Migrating IMAP contacts and calendars to iCloud Why the iCloud Windows app is no longer functional Why Outlook‑for‑Gmail no longer works New approach: add your Google Account directly to the new Outlook 11. Final Recommendations Use Microsoft 365 Family for a modern, secure, up‑to‑date system. • Streamline the suite to what you actually need using ODT. • Protect your device with passwordless sign‑in. • Store data in OneDrive, but use Macrium Reflect for real backup. • Keep an eye on upcoming changes to Outlook and Publisher
Sync New Outlook with iCloud Calendar
I just got a new laptop and am trying to sync the New Outlook Calendar with my iCloud Calendar. The intent is to have any Calendar changes made on one device (iPad, iPhone, laptop) to sync to all device Calendars. The problem I'm having is that iCloud Calendar only synchs with Outlook (Classic) and I want to sync with New Outlook. The Outlook version is 1.2025.1121.100 ; the Outlook Client Version is 20251128003.09 The list of Apps that comes up after clicking on Start shows both Outlook and Outlook (Classic). If I right click on Outlook (Classic) and click on uninstall (thought that might help fix this), the only Outlook listed in Apps > Installed Apps is Outlook. I did not uninstall Outlook. To set-up Calendar synching I opened iCloud > Calendars and Contacts > Calendars and Contacts Settings. I turned on "Automatically sync your iCloud calendars and contacts to Microsoft Outlook". After syncing completes, all iCloud Calendar entries appear in the Outlook (Classic) Calendar, but nothing syncs to the New Outlook calendar. I'm assuming this is an Outlook issue, not an iCloud issue. Any ideas on how to fix this? Thanks
Mobile app Sub folder notifications
We have pushed all our users to use Outlook mobile apps on iOS and Android, however many are complaining that they have created rules on the Outlook desktop client to put emails in certain sub folders (i.e. all emails from my manager go into a sub folder) and not getting notifications. As the email is moved to the folder before it gets to the client, the mobile apps do not display a notification. As a work around I've had to set up some Flows so that if email received from a certain email address, it displays a notification. The user can then open Outlook and go to the relevant folder. Its not pretty. This seems like a basic feature, its available in the iOS and Android stock mail apps which most used before we pushed them to Outlook. Any plans on the mobile apps to have notifications for sub folders?It’s now easier to access iCloud Mail, Calendar, and Contacts in Outlook
We’re excited to announce that the new Outlook for Windows, Outlook for Mac, and Outlook for iOS and Android now support easier iCloud Mail, Calendar, and Contacts access. You no longer need to create and enter app-specific passwords to access your iCloud data in Outlook apps. Now using the OAuth 2.0 authentication protocol, simply sign in with your Apple Account to access your iCloud Mail, Calendar, and Contacts in Outlook. If you already have iCloud set up in Outlook, in the coming months you will be asked to sign in, which will reauthenticate using the new OAuth 2.0 flow. Availability The ability to access iCloud Mail, Calendar, and Contacts using the new authentication flow is rolling out across the new Outlook for Windows, Outlook for Mac, and Outlook for iOS and Android. If you attempt to access iCloud data and are presented with the previous Basic Authentication flow (prompting for an app-specific password), ensure you’ve updated to the latest Outlook app version and restart Outlook. For classic Outlook for Windows users, we recommend trying the new Outlook for Windows, which provides both the new authentication flow and built-in support for iCloud Mail, Calendar, and Contacts without the need for an Outlook add-in. Feedback We would love to hear from you. To submit your feedback, select: Help > Feedback in the new Outlook for Windows and Outlook for Mac Settings > Help & Feedback > Send Feedback in Outlook for iOS and Android
How to block image only spam in outlook?
Keywords aren’t working as any text that appears in the “from” or “subject” field, or message body, is encoded, and/or the body is just an embedded image hosted on a random rotating website. The email domains rotate every single email (they are all just random word + random word @ random word + random word . com) The spam filter is catching them and moving them to junk but I’d like to know if there’s a way to block them or delete them so I don’t even have to see them. I receive so many of these daily from affiliate marketers for the same companies: National Debt Relief, Optima Tax, TruGreen, Amerisave, First American Home Warranty, Thermivest, Keranique, Orangetheory, Miracle Sheets, eHarmony, Empire Today, VSP Vision Plans, Canvas Prints, Jacuzzi Bath Remodel, AARP, Blissy, Healthcare.com, Debt Relief, Life Line Screening, Leaf Filter, JG Wentworth. I never want to see the names of any of these companies in any folder in my email again. Is this possible or am I going to have to go through the hellish process of starting a new email and moving everything over?
Synchronization issue in New Outlook for Mac – ״Failed to refresh subscriptions.״
Hello, I am using Microsoft 365 (Exchange Online) on Mac, running macOS 26.1 (Tahoe). My Outlook client is: Outlook for Mac Version 16.103.3 (25113013), with a Microsoft 365 Subscription license. Since yesterday morning, in the New Outlook interface, my inbox has suddenly appeared empty, and I constantly receive the following error message: “Failed to refresh subscriptions.” It’s important to note: In Legacy Outlook, everything works perfectly. The web version and the Outlook app on my mobile phone also work well. The issue persists regardless of the network I am on (home, office, cellular, etc.). Troubleshooting steps I already tried: • Updating Outlook to the latest version • Removing and re‑adding the account • Clearing cache and preferences • Formatting my Mac and reinstalling everything from scratch Unfortunately, none of these steps has resolved the issue. Is this a known bug, and is there a recommended workaround or an upcoming fix? Appreciate assistance on that issue.
