Volume 23 Issue 25

Today's Highlights:

• The message list is blank and other display issues
• Outbound Spam Notification
• Quarantine Email Notifications
• Paste email addresses into TO/CC fields
• Mailbox is full message

The message list is blank and other display issues

A user had a problem with Outlook: the message list was blank. He could see his mail in Safe mode, but disabling all add-ins and resetting the view didn’t fix it.

This behavior was caused by a new feature in Office: Optimize for Compatibility. It's supposed to help with fuzzy text and buttons when you use 2 monitors with different resolutions or remote desktop.

When Outlook detects a situation when it might be needed, Display Settings will show up on the bottom right of the status bar. Click to enable (or disable) compatibility and restart Outlook. It’s also in File, Options, General, near the top of the page.

Office support for high definition displays

Outbound Spam Notification

An Office administrator was looking for a way to limit users who accounts were sending spam, so the account would not get locked down for spending spam.

While an admin can’t set a send limit on the individual users, you can configure Office 365 to send a copy of suspicious outbound messages to another address. Use a mailbox that is monitored and you will be able to identify the problem account quickly.

When a user’s account is compromised you'll need to block the user’s sign in to stop the spammer. This revokes the user’s password and blocks new sign-ins immediately but can take up to 60 minutes to sign users out of any services they are signed in to. When the block is lifted, the user will need to change their password.

To set up outbound spam notification, log in the Exchange admin portal, select protection, outbound spam. Edit the default outbound spam filter.

To block a user whose account is sending spam, log into the Office 365 admin portal, select the user’s account and click Block Sign-in at the top of the page.

Quarantine Email Notifications

Another admin wanted to be notified when inbound messages were quarantined, rather than waiting for the daily message containing links to the quarantined messages.

We want to be notified when an email is quarantined. Currently we receive one email at around 12 noon which list the emails in quarantine for the last 24 hours. Can we change this so that when an email comes in that gets quarantined, the person is notified immediately?

Notifying the user immediately somewhat defeats the purpose of quarantine to reduce mail flow and the minimum time of the quarantine notification is 1 days. If the option is enabled, users can log into the portal to check for quarantined mail. Adjusting the spam filter and whitelisting domains or senders that are quarantined will eliminate most of the false positives.

Paste email addresses into TO/CC fields

A user wanted to know how to paste a list of addresses into the BCC field in Outlook on the web. His list in in Excel and while he can paste into the address fields, the addresses are not recognized as addresses.

While it’s logical to have one record per row and very easy to copy a column, Outlook on the web needs a semi-colon separated list, not one address per line.

Converting a column to a semi-colon separate list requires a few steps:

1. Copy the address column
2. Paste Special > transpose into a new sheet
3. Save as CSV.
4. Open the CSV in notepad and use find/replace to change the comma to semicolon.
5. Copy the list and paste into the address field.

When using Outlook installed on Windows desktop, you can paste the address column into the address fields. Outlook will resolve the addresses and convert it to a semi-colon separated list.

Tip: if copy or paste is not on the right click menu, use the keyboard shortcuts or Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. They work pretty much everywhere.

Mailbox is full message

When you receive a message that says "You've exceeded the storage limit for your mailbox. You need to delete some items before you can send and receive emails.", you need to delete mail from your mailbox and empty the deleted items folder.

Just deleting mail isn’t enough as the deleted items folder counts towards your mail quota.

You can delete the mail in Outlook or using web access, but mail may begin flowing again a few seconds sooner when you delete items directly from web mail. If you use the sync slider to limit the amount of mail that syncs down to Outlook, you’ll need ot log into Outlook on the web to delete older email.

Warning: On the chance that the message is a phishing attempt, do not click any links in the message. Open a browser and type in your web mail address.

New & Updated Office 365 KB Articles

'Invalid provider specified' error when you use an Office 2016 application to access Office 365 resources
https://support.microsoft.com/help/3096080

Can't sign in after update to Office 2016 build 16.0.7967 on Windows 10
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4025962

Disable the Word chat feature for Office Online
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4088923

Keep your commitments with Heads-up emails
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4340549

Microsoft Teams now the primary client for meetings and calling in Office 365
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4465277

You can't sign in to Office 365, Azure, or Intune
https://support.microsoft.com/help/2412085

New & Updated Outlook KB Articles

'Invalid provider specified' error when you use an Office 2016 application to access Office 365 resources
https://support.microsoft.com/help/3096080

The macros in this project are disabled for macros assigned Digital Signature certificate in Outlook
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4465120

Outlook contact card doesn't display user details or presence
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4467874

Other Resources

Scheduling a Recurring Message
How to configure Outlook to send a recurring email on a schedule, using VBA or PowerShell. Included on this page are a list of third party utilities that can be used to schedule messages.