The following articles were included in our Exchange Messaging Outlook (EMO) newsletter published on July 19, 2018.
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Today's Highlights:
- You're not being blackmailed
- Hide Appointments by Category
- Searching By Categories in Outlook on the web
- Highlight 'Today'
You're not being blackmailed
A blackmail spam message is making the rounds this week. It begins with "Let's cut to the chase. I am aware [the password here] is your password. More to the point, I know your secret..." The spammer goes on to say that he knows you visited sites that might be embarrassing and has all of your contacts and will tell them about your browsing habits if you don't pay him off.
It's spam, pure and simple, and should be reported as junk mail and deleted. Don't even think about paying the spammer. He's counting on a bad habit many users employ to make you think he knows what you've been up to: reusing a password on many sites.
I've received 3 so far this week, from different addresses (all outlook.com), asking for differing amounts of bitcoin to keep quiet. The password they have is an old password, one I haven't used in years as its lower case alpha. I don't recall if I ever used it as my email password, but if I did, it was a long time ago, before I moved to Office 365 in 2013, because it doesn't meet Office 365 requirements for password complexity.
It's hard to say which database hack it came from, but the spammers don't care that it's from an old database hack, they got the email address and password you used on the hacked site and hope you used the same password for email and you'll believe them, panic and pay up. Yes, they are playing you for a sucker.
This is important: if you are still using that password for email or on any other sites, change it immediately, preferably to different passwords for each site.
Hide Appointments by Category
A user wanted to know how to hide calendar appointments by category, just like in the Mac version. He also wants to completely hide free appointments on Shared calendars.
While Outlook doesn't have the nifty category feature found in the mac version, you can show or hide appointments by calendar, busy time, or other conditions using filters on custom views.
It's definitely not as convenient as the Mac version, where you tick and untick categories much like you tick and untick calendars in Outlook on Windows.
In Outlook on Windows, create a custom view from the View menu, Change View menu, Manage Views. After creating the new view, click Modify, then Filter. On the More Choices tab, click Categories button to select the category or categories you want to show. Create the filter on the Advanced tab if you want to show all categories except certain ones.
To create a view to hide Free appointments, create the filter on the Advanced tab, for 'Show Time As' is not equal to Free.
Searching By Categories in Outlook on the web
An Outlook.com user wondered what the point of categories was, since it appeared to be impossible to search by category.
It's actually very easy to search by categories in the new Outlook.com, but its not very obvious: just click on the category assigned to a message to find all messages in that category. While there is a not pre-defined search for categories, you type the category in the search field: category:category-name
In the Classic Outlook.com interface, you need to add categories to the folder pane or set up a predefined filter in Options, or type category:category-name in the search field.
On the business side of Office 365, type you'll type the search string. Use the full category name or a partial name to find all categories containing that word.
Highlight 'Today'
'Today' in Outlook's calendar has a faint highlight but it's not as visible as some people would prefer and I'm often asked if its possible to highlight 'today' so it more visible.
If you want today more visible because you need to go back to it, you can use the Today button on the ribbon or the CTRL+T keyboard shortcut, rather than looking for it on the calendar. But if you just want to make the day more visible, you're limited to tricks such as creating a all-day event and assigning a category, which will add a highlight to the entire day.
New & Updated Exchange KB Articles
An Office 365 primary mailbox user cannot be assigned full access permissions for an on-premises mailbox in Exchange Server
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4058473
Matching journal rules for Internet email received through EOP in an Exchange Server hybrid environment
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4344001
New & Updated Office 365 KB Articles
'Microsoft Office cannot verify the license for this product' error when you start an Office app
https://support.microsoft.com/help/2797062
'The Customer subscription ID ... is not authorized for creating route filters for Office 365' error when enabling route filters
https://support.microsoft.com/help/3181709
'Unlicensed Product' error when you open an Office Professional Plus 2010 application
https://support.microsoft.com/help/2390460
'You may have already signed in to Outlook Web App' error when you try to open Outlook Web App in Office 365
https://support.microsoft.com/help/2798988
Azure Active Directory Connect upgrade fails with error code 1603
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4054462
Can't sign in after update to Office 2016 build 16.0.7967 on Windows 10
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4025962
Deprecating TLS 1.0 in O365 GCC High and DoD and preparing for TLS 1.2
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4341731
Description of the security update for Office 2016: July 10, 2018
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4022176
Preparing for TLS 1.2 in Office 365
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4057306
Reports show anonymous instead of actual user names in Office 365
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4090039
Security Settings for COM objects in Office
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4058123
New & Updated Outlook KB Articles
'A program is trying to send an e-mail message on your behalf' warning in Outlook
https://support.microsoft.com/help/3189806
I can't send or receive messages in Outlook
https://support.microsoft.com/office/i-can-t-send-or-receive-messages-in-outlook-97748418-bbd5-4743-a05b-581f22a466dd
Issues that can occur when you add multiple Exchange accounts in the same Outlook profile
https://support.microsoft.com/help/981245
July 3, 2018, update for Outlook 2013 (KB4022242)
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4022242
July 3, 2018, update for Outlook 2016 (KB4022230)
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4022230
Let ZeroConfigExchange automatically create first Outlook 2016 profile only
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4046818
Manage the Google sign-in prompt in Outlook 2016 for Mac
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4340460
Outlook 2013 or 2016 may not connect using MAPI over HTTPs as expected
https://support.microsoft.com/help/2937684
Outlook for Mac search returns 'No Results,' and task items are not displayed
https://support.microsoft.com/help/2741535
Update adds a Group Policy to disable the Do Not Send a Response option in Outlook 2013 or hide it in Outlook 2016
https://support.microsoft.com/help/3085591
Other Resources
Bug: Only one version of Outlook can run at a time
Outlook error message: Sorry, we're having trouble starting Outlook. Only one version of Outlook can run at a time. Check to see if another version of Outlook is running or try restarting your computer.
Remove Do Not Send a Response option in Meeting Requests
Remove the Do Not Send a Response option from meeting requests to force users to accept or decline meetings.
July 2018 updates for Microsoft Office
There are 17 security updates and 22 non-security updates.