Volume 25 Issue 3

Today's Highlights:

• Winner: Feb 2 Office 365 Home Giveaway
• Problems adding Gmail account to Outlook?
• Send message using a command line: broken
• Top Results in Search Results

Winner: Feb 2 Office 365 Home Giveaway

This month’s winner of an Office 365 Home subscription is Bart from Canada. He joined Exchange Messaging Outlook in December 2019.

The next drawing will be March 1, 2020. All active subscribers will be included in the drawing.

Problems adding Gmail account to Outlook?

I’m seeing some reports where users are unable to add a Gmail email account to Outlook2016, 2019 or Outlook 365. When the user gets to the final step of the add account wizard, they may receive an error message: “Sorry, we could not sign you in to Google- IMAP. Please try again later.” Or the button to complete the steps is not clickable.

This happens because the user has Connected Experience disabled. Go to File > Account > Account Privacy and select Manage Settings. Enable connected experience at the bottom of the dialog.

Other accounts may be affected if Connected Experiences is turned off. Check the settings if you have problems adding any email account.

Send message using a command line: broken

The latest release of Office 365, Version 2001 (Build 12430.20184) broke the command line switch /m. This switch allows users to send mail using a command line:
outlook.exe /c ipm.note /m "email@domain.com&Subject=Subject&body=nothing to see here"

Now it adds the subject and other fields to the To line of a new message. Oops.

Until this is fixed, users have two options:

Use a mailto instead. This works as a command line and can be used in PowerShell scripts.

Use this as the command line:
mailto:alias@domain?subject=test&cc=test@domain&body=test

Or use this with PowerShell:
Start-Process "mailto:alias@domain.com`?Subject=testing This&Cc=me@domain.com&Body=nothing to see here.`""

The other option is to rollback to the previous build. If you rollback, you need to disable automatic updates for a few weeks, until the bug is fixed.

Right click on the Start button and choose Command Prompt (Admin). If you don't see Command Prompt on the menu, you'll need to type cmd on the Start screen to find the Command Prompt then right click on it and choose Run as Administrator.

Paste the following line in the command prompt and press enter.
"C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun\officec2rclient.exe" /update user updatetoversion=16.0.12325.20344

For more information and screenshots, see Uninstall Updates in Office 'Click to Run'

Top Results in Search Results

In trying to be ever so helpful, Outlook displays search results with what it thinks is the messages you are looking for, in a section called Top Results. The message I’m looking for is in the Top Results maybe half the time and honestly, it is sometimes confusing when older messages are in Top Results.

Fortunately, Top Results can be turned off in Search Options. Open the File > Options dialog, choose Search and untick “Show most relevant search results on top”.

New & Updated Exchange KB Articles

Exchange Server 2010 support extended
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4521825

New & Updated Office 365 KB Articles

Office 2016 Office 2010 for Mac end of support October 13, 2020
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4540884

Microsoft Lifecycle FAQ - Office
https://support.microsoft.com/help/17624

New & Updated Outlook KB Articles

Description of the Connection Status dialog box in Outlook
https://support.microsoft.com/help/2737188

How to use the Out of Office or Automatic Reply in Outlook
https://support.microsoft.com/help/4026693

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.