The following articles were included in our Exchange Messaging Outlook (EMO) newsletter published on April 15, 2021.
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Today's Highlights:
- Could not read the calendar
- Outlook is not saving preferences
- Limit your daily meetings
- New App bar in Outlook.com
- Meeting Request Spam
Could not read the calendar
Several users are reporting a calendar error: “Could not read the calendar“ when they switch to the Calendar or to the Inbox. The appointments display properly and the usual fix for this error – reset the view – does not fix the problem.
Turning off the To-Do bar calendar reduces the number of times the error dialog comes up. Keeping the calendar open in a separate window so you don't need to keep switching between the Inbox and Calendar will also reduce the number of times you see the error message.
Microsoft s investigating this. In the meantime, if you are affected by this bug and the error is too annoying, you can roll back to an older version of Office.
To rollback, type cmd on the start menu, right click on the Command Prompt, choose Run as Administrator then copy and paste the line in the command prompt. (This is a March 30 2021 build)
"C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun\officec2rclient.exe" /update user updatetoversion=16.0.13901.20312
Uninstall Updates in Office 'Click to Run' (slipstick.com)
Outlook is not saving preferences
Quite a few users are reporting that Outlook is not saving options such as Mark as Read options in the reading pane, Send Immediately, and Save sent items. When the user closes Outlook and reopens it, the settings are changed.
This is caused by setting in Outlook’s options to sync settings with the cloud. To stop Outlook from changing the settings, go to File > Options > General. In the Cloud Storage Options, remove the check from "Store my Outlook settings in the cloud"
This option syncs your settings in the cloud, so when you open Outlook on another computer, your settings sync.
Limit your daily meetings
Anyone who has a lot of meetings can understand this user's request: the ability to limit the number of meetings users can schedule with him each day by making Free/Busy appear busy.
The solution: a macro counts the number of Busy periods. If there are too many, it creates an all-day busy appointment to block the day (and hope people don’t ignore your Free/Busy and invite you anyway).
Get this macro at Limit the number of appointments per day
This macro is based on an earlier macro I have that auto accepts meetings after checking Free/Busy. You can find that macro at Autoaccept a Meeting Request using Rules
One of my plans to update the auto accept macro to check the entire day and decline meeting if I'm at my daily limit.
New App bar in Outlook.com
Users are starting to see a new app bar in Outlook on the web, on the left size of the window, not at the bottom of the folder list – and it has buttons for the online versions of the Office apps.
Office 365 Premium subscribers should be familiar with the app bar in this position as they’ve had it on the left for many months, but not with the Word, Excel, OneNote and Powerpoint icons.
This is a new design and cannot be disabled; the app bar cannot be moved to the bottom of the folder list.
Meeting Request Spam
One way spammers found to get in your face that might get past the spam filter is with meeting requests. As if spam isn’t already annoying enough… many mail clients will automatically add it to your calendar as a tentative appointment and add a reminder.
If the junk email filter moves the message to the Junk Email folder, it should not be processed by Outlook and added to the calendar.
If the meeting request is in your Inbox DO NOT respond to it. You'll just end on on more spam lists. It verifies your address is good and valid addresses are worth more on the spammer’s resale markets. Just delete the invitation. If the tentative meeting is on your calendar, delete it too. Deleting the invitation from your Inbox will not delete it from the calendar.
If you are getting a lot of meeting request spam, you can make a rule to delete meeting requests. Don’t forget to set an exception for people who send you legitimate meeting requests.
New & Updated Office 365 KB Articles
April 2021 updates for Microsoft Office
Side effects after you apply April 2021 security updates for Office (KB5003251)
New & Updated Outlook KB Articles
Description of the security update for Outlook 2010: April 13, 2021 (KB4493185)
Description of the security update for Outlook 2013: April 13, 2021 (KB4504733)
Description of the security update for Outlook 2016: April 13, 2021 (KB4504712)
Other Resources
April 2021 updates for Microsoft Office
Microsoft released security and nonsecurity updates for Office in April 2021.
These updates are intended to help customers keep their computers up-to-date.