Volume 22 Issue 8

Today's Highlights:

• Office 2013 removed from the Office Portal
• Coming soon to Outlook 2016 for Mac
• Focused Inbox in Outlook desktop
• Create a List of Meeting Recipients
• Spring Ahead Bug

Office 2013 removed from the Office Portal

As of March 1 2017, Office 2013 is no longer available for download in the Office 365 portal or at office.microsoft.com. Officially, support for the click-to-run versions also ended, but all that really means is that you won't get much help with it if you call Microsoft Support. Office 2013 will continue to work. (Mainstream support for Office 2013 Professional Plus, Professional, and Standard editions ends 4/10/2018.)

While I recommend installing the latest version, if you need to stick with Office 2013 because you need to connect to Exchange 2007, are not using autodiscover and need to manually configure Exchange accounts, or use Business Contact Manager or other software that does not work with Office 2016, you will be able to download the setup file using a direct link or the Office Deployment Tool.

Links for the most common SKUs are below, you'll need to create links for other product versions and languages. (It's easy.)

O365ProPlusRetail 32-bit
https://c2rsetup.officeapps.live.com/c2r/download.aspx?productReleaseID=O365ProPlusRetail&platform=X86&language=en-us&version=O15GA&source=O15OLSO365

O365BusinessRetail 32-bit
https://c2rsetup.officeapps.live.com/c2r/download.aspx?productReleaseID=O365BusinessRetail&platform=X86&language=en-us&version=O15GA&source=O15OLSO365

O365HomePremRetail 32-bit
https://c2rsetup.officeapps.live.com/c2r/download.aspx?productReleaseID=O365HomePremRetail&platform=X86&language=en-us&version=O15GA&source=O15OLSO365

HomeBusinessRetail 32-bit
https://c2rsetup.officeapps.live.com/c2r/download.aspx?productReleaseID=HomeBusinessRetail&platform=X86&language=en-us&version=O15GA&source=O15OLSO365

If you are using other product versions or languages, you will need to create the download links for Office 2013 SKUs. You can look up the respective components using these references:

For Product ID, see Product IDs that are supported by the Office Deployment Tool for Click-to-Run. For language, see  Language identifiers (TechNet) For platform, you'll use x86 for 32-bit and x64 for 64-bit. The version won't change; you'll always use O15GA&source=O15OLSO365.

Replace the product id, language, and platform values in one of the links above with the appropriate values.

If you want to use the Office 2013 Deployment tool, you can download it from Office 2013 Deployment Tool for Click-to-Run. Instructions and a sample configuration file are available at Using the Office Deployment Tool for Click-to-Run  and at Deploy Office 365 ProPlus from a local source

Microsoft's announcement: Support for the 2013 versions of Office 365 ProPlus ends February 28, 2017

Coming Soon to Outlook 2016 for Mac

Outlook 2016 for Mac has some new and improved features coming out over the next few weeks. Office Insiders should see these changes in the newest builds (version 15.33.228 and up), everyone else will see them in the coming weeks.

Possibly the most popular is support for Google Calendar and Contacts in Outlook 2016 for Mac. This is in a test phase and is slowly being offered to users adding Google accounts, with general availability later in the year. My own Gmail account isn't in the test yet, so I can't verify, but I believe this uses the "Microsoft Cloud", not CalDAV and CardDAV. This cloud service began rolling out to Windows Insiders a couple of weeks ago (for testing in the Windows Mail app). This will eventually make it into Outlook 2016 for Windows.

For more information, see Outlook 2016 for Mac adds support for Google Calendar and Contacts  and Support for Google Mail, Calendar, and Contacts

Office Groups are coming to Outlook for Mac. The first update will allow you to view your top 10 groups in the folder pane and you'll be able to read, compose, and reply to group conversations. More features will be added over time. Support for Groups in Outlook for Mac

Adding accounts to Outlook for Mac is a little easier with a new UI and new autodiscover detection service. All you need is your email address and password. As with Outlook 2016 on Windows, it will suggest adding a mail account for the account you used to activate Office. This service includes predefined providers for Office 365, Outlook.com, Exchange, Google, iCloud, Yahoo.
Better and easier way to configure mailboxes

If you want to join the Office for Mac Insider program, all you need to do is check for updates (Help menu) and select Join the Office Insider program then select Fast or Slow. For more information, see Office for Mac: Insider Fast and Slow Builds

Focused Inbox in Outlook desktop

The Focused Inbox is finally rolling out to Outlook desktop users (both Windows and Mac). When it's available, Outlook will pop up a dialog alerting you to the new feature and asking if you want to use it.

If you are unfamiliar with the Focused Inbox, Outlook sorts your mail by what it thinks is important, classifying some mail (mostly bulk mail) as the less important, "Other". This is a special view, not a folder - the mail remains in the Inbox.

If you say yes then change your mind, you can turn it off on from the View ribbon in Outlook for Windows or on the Organize tab in Outlook for Mac. It's also on the All menu (formerly By [field]) in Windows and on the By: [field] menu in Mac.

When messages are misclassified as either Other or Focused, right click on the message and choose Move to the [focused or Other] Inbox.

When Focused Inbox is turned off, the only tab you'll see is Inbox; Unread and Mentions was removed as tabs but are on the All menu (and work with Focused Inbox enabled).

Create a List of Meeting Recipients

I have a macro at Create a List of Meeting Attendees and Responses, that creates a message with a list of meeting attendees and their response. One visitor wanted it to do more:

Is there a way to add the city the attendee is from as well?

Of course, there is a way to add any contact field to the results, assuming you have a contact for the attendee. We just need to get the attendees' email address from the meeting request then use it to find their contact. Once you get the contact, you can add any contact field to the attendee string.

A code sample is at Include other contact fields

Spring Ahead Bug

I know I mention this nearly every March, but knowing the correct time of appointments is important to many Outlook users, so it's worth repeating…

It's not really a bug, but a view anomaly, and only appears the week the Daylight time goes into effect and you are displaying two time zone scales. It goes away after the first week, or when the calendar is no longer starting the week on Sunday.

The problem: the time scale in Outlook's Day and Week views doesn't drop the hour we skipped when daylight time goes into effect. It also uses the time scale for the first date in the view, so all days appear to be off an hour but are correct when opened.

To avoid display issues, don't start the week on Sunday. Rather than changing your Outlook calendar settings, you can select one day and hold Shift as you click on another day, up to 14 days in the future. The keyboard shortcut to add more days to the Day view is Alt+1 through 0 (for 1 to 10 days).

For more information, see Dual Time Zone & DST Calendar Display Bug

Other Resources

Outlook.com Sync Failure
I've had a lot of complaints this week from users who said Outlook.com stopped syncing in Outlook. One told me he received an email from Microsoft telling him to reconnect. So he did… using manual setup to add it back as an ActiveSync account. Another user tried to add the account using Outlook Connector. In

Outlook.com Winmail.dat Bug
Some users are discovering that Outlook sends winmail.dat files attached to messages when sending to contacts in their address book. Only Outlook on Windows desktop (all versions) is affected; messages sent from Outlook on the web or the Outlook app do not have the rogue winmail.dat file.