The following articles were included in our Exchange Messaging Outlook (EMO) newsletter published on January 23, 2020.
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Today's Highlights:
- Add Personal Calendars to Outlook on the web
- Office 365 ProPlus: Getting Binged
- Use a macro to turn on automatic replies
- Coming Soon: Storing Signatures in the Cloud
Add Personal Calendars to Outlook on the web
Microsoft is updating the calendar in Outlook on the web and adding the ability for users to add a personal Outlook.com or Gmail calendar to their work mailbox. The users will be able to create new events on the calendars and can enable an option to use events from the personal calendar in their Free/Busy (no details will be shared, only the free/busy status.)
This will be for Office 365 business mailboxes only, however Outlook.com users have their own new calendar features, such as Team Snap, school calendars, and more. These calendaring options are available now for Outlook.com accounts.
The personal calendar feature to rolling out to Office 365 targeted release customers, with all customers getting it between April and July 2020.
For more information, see Add a calendar in Outlook on the web
Office 365 ProPlus: Getting Binged
As Microsoft updates Office 365 Pro Plus to version 2002, they will be adding an extension to Chrome that sets Bing as the default search engine. Monthly Channel (Targeted) is expected to receive this update in February 2020, with the Monthly and Semi-Annual (Targeted) channel receiving it in early March. The Semi-annual channel will get it in July, unless the growing uproar causes Microsoft to change their mind.
Why are they adding the extension? Because Microsoft Search is used in Office 365 to find files, people, appointments etc. and is integrated into Bing. The extension is to make it easier for users, but for many users it’s akin to browser hijacking.
This can be disabled by editing the registry or using group policy before version 2020 is installed.
You’ll need to set this key before the update is installed.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\office\16.0\common\officeupdate DWORD: preventbinginstall Value: 1
Get the latest Administrative Templates to use group policy. Look under Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Microsoft Office 2016 (Machine) > Updates for the option to ‘Don’t install extension for Microsoft Search in Bing…’.
Office 365 admins can view the full message online at Microsoft Search in Bing and Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise
Use a macro to turn on automatic replies
A user asked me for a macro to turn off the Out-Of-Office setting when he gets back in the office, although I'm not sure why anyone would want to use a macro for this as Outlook has a feature that lets you schedule Automatic Replies, and it can turn Automatic Replies on and off automatically. Outlook also makes it pretty easy to manually turn off automatic replies.
It makes more sense to use a macro to Automatic replies ON using a macro, as you can turn 4 or more steps into just a couple of steps: click a button to run the macro, which pops up an dialog asking for the start and end dates. The times are preset in my macro, along with the automatic reply text, but you could ask for dates and updated message too. The macro also enables Automatic replies on all Exchange accounts in the profile.
With a little tweaking, the macro could be triggered by a reminder, making it fully automatic.
Get the code at Use Redemption to enable Automatic Replies
Coming Soon: Storing Signatures in the Cloud
On the Microsoft 365 Roadmap: Outlook for Windows: Signature cloud settings
"Your Signature settings are stored in the cloud so your experience is consistent when you access Outlook for Windows on any computer. "
While we need to wait for it to be released to know exactly what is involved, including if it will be enabled for Outlook.com accounts or only for Office 365 business mailboxes, it appears to be limited to the Outlook on Windows at this time, with signature settings syncing between all computers where your mailbox is opened in an Outlook profile.
More details as they become available.
New & Updated Exchange KB Articles
Exchange 2019 Setup Prerequisite Check fails for .NET 4.8 Framework in CU4 on Windows builds 1909 and 1903
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4538303
Mac Outlook:Sent message is saved in Drafts folder instead of principal's mailbox Sent items
https://support.microsoft.com/help/2962428
New & Updated Office 365 KB Articles
Description of the security update for Office 2013: January 14, 2020
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4484227
Description of the security update for Office 2016: January 14, 2020
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4484221
The Office 365 DNS Diagnostic and DNS configuration
https://support.microsoft.com/help/2776497
New & Updated Outlook KB Articles
January 2020 updates for Microsoft Office
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4536554
Other Resources
Use Redemption to enable Automatic Replies
How to use a macro to set up an Automatic reply (out of office reply) in Outlook on Windows desktop.
January 2020 updates for Microsoft Office January 2020 updates for Microsoft Office
Microsoft released these security and nonsecurity updates for Office in January 2020.