The following articles were included in our Exchange Messaging Outlook (EMO) newsletter published on September 23, 2021.
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Today's Highlights
- Shared Outlook Calendar Notifications
- Recover Email from an OST backup
- Sharing Tasks in Outlook.com
- Color Categories in Calendar
Barring (more) unforeseen circumstances or emergencies, Exchange Messaging Outlook is back on a weekly schedule, until the US Thanksgiving holiday.
Shared Outlook Calendar Notifications
This question comes up fairly often – users open shared calendars, but notifications don’t work (and appointments on the calendar are not shown in the
To-Do Bar calendar).
Appointment reminders only work in calendars added to your mailbox as an account. One reason is because many shared calendars belong to other users, and it would get really old, really fast, if you had 5 shared calendars and reminders fired for every appointment on every calendar.
The To-Do calendar would be cluttered if events from all calendars in your profile were displayed on the To-Do, but it would be nice if you could select which calendars to include on the To-Do, just not all calendars. Maybe some day...
A user had a slightly different question about notifications on shared calendars:
We have a shared outlook calendar that is being shared among few my co-workers. Is there a way to send notifications each time any one of us adds, edits or delete appointments in the outlook calendars?
No, Outlook won’t notify users when events are added or changed, unless they are a delegate for the calendar.
If you have a Flow account, you could use it to watch for new events. Or you can use a macro to watch the calendar.
I have a macro to watch a calendar at Send an Email When You Add an Appointment to Your Calendar. This macro would need to run on one computer that has the shared calendar open, when it detects a change, it can send and email to addresses you designate.
Otherwise, open it in Outlook with your calendar, either in side by side or overlay mode, so you can see all events.
Outlook.com users do have an option to be notified when someone creates or updates an event on a shared calendar. Users are not notified for new or updated events when you only have read-only rights to a calendar.
This option is in Outlook.com's settings: Settings (gear icon) > View all Outlook settings > Calendar > Shared Calendars.
Recover Email from an OST backup
A client contacted me to recover messages accidently deleted from an IMAP OST file. The user checked the mailbox using webmail and the messages were deleted from the IMAP server, so the only recovery option was a recent back up of the OST file.
Because OST files can only be opened by the profile and account that created them, I don’t usually recommend backing up OST files used by IMAP or Exchange. But if the profile that created the OST is still in use, and you have a copy of your OST file, you can restore an OST file.
The user closed Outlook, copied the backup OST file into the Outlook folder under %localappdata% then reopened Outlook. As the user tried to recover the mail, it disappeared as Outlook synced with the IMAP server - the mail was not on the server, so it was removed from the OST file.
The solution: set Outlook to work offline or disable the internet connection. With Outlook offline, restore the backup file, restart Outlook and move the mail or export it to a PST file. Once the mail is backed up, go back online and let it sync. The exported mail can be moved back into the IMAP folders or left in the PST file.
If you delete the account from your profile and add it back, then try to open the OST file, it won’t work – Outlook will either delete the OST file and create a new one, or create a new one using a new name. To get the data out of the OST file in this situation, you need to use third-party OST to PST software.
If you have a restore point from before you removed the profile, you can use system restore to go back. If you backup your drive using a disk image, you can get the OST out of the image and if you need the recover the profile, get it from the registry files in the image.
Sharing Tasks in Outlook.com
A user wanted to share his Outlook.com calendar and tasks with a friend. Sharing the calendar was easy. When he tries to share Tasks, he receives this error message: "Folder sharing is not available with the following entries because of permission settings on your network"
Unfortunately, you cannot share tasks in a personal Outlook.com account. You can only share tasks with a business Office 365 or Exchange account, and only share the tasks with other members of your Exchange organization.
However, not all is lost. You can share tasks using the To-Do app. You’ll need to create a new tasks folder (in either Outlook desktop or the To-Do app) as you can’t share your default tasks folder. After you create the new Tasks folder, you can share it from the To-Do app - right click on it and choose Share list.
Color Categories in Calendar
A user complained that he did not have color categories available in his calendar asked if the feature was removed from Outlook 2019.
No, color categories were not removed from current versions of Outlook, but they are not supported in IMAP data files.
If you use IMAP and need color categories, add a PST file to your profile, set it as default and move your appointments, contacts, and tasks to the folder in the PST file. (Use a list view in the Calendar folder so you can select all appointments.)
See Outlook Categories, Flags, and IMAP Accounts for more information.
New & Updated Office 365 KB Articles
Description of the security update for Office 2016: September 14, 2021 (KB5002005)
Description of the security update for Office 2016: September 14, 2021 (KB5001997)
Description of the security update for Office 2016: September 14, 2021 (KB4484103)
Description of the security update for Office 2013: September 14, 2021 (KB5002007)
Description of the security update for Office 2013: September 14, 2021 (KB5001958)
Description of the security update for Office 2013: September 14, 2021 (KB4484108)
September 7, 2021, update for Office 2016 (KB4484467)
New & Updated Outlook KB Articles
Unexpected search results when you use double quotation marks to search items in a mailbox in Outlook
Fixes an issue in which you receive unexpected search results when you use double quotation marks to search a restrictive phrase in an online archived mailbox, a mailbox in online mode, or a mailbox in hybrid mode in Outlook.
You experience issues in Outlook when you try to configure free/busy information or when you try to delegate information
Describes the issues that you may experience in Outlook because a mailbox property does not correctly reference a hidden message in the mailbox. Provides a resolution.
Other Resources
September 2021 updates for Microsoft Office
Microsoft released these security and nonsecurity updates for Office in September 2021.
Filter mail when you are not the only recipient
A user wanted "a rule that will perform an action if I am the only one in the To box, even when there are others in the CC box". He also asked for a rule "that will perform an action if I am included in the To box but am not the only one in the To box".
Quick Actions in Outlook
An Outlook user wondered why he his accounts had different icons on the right side of the message list. "I have two accounts setup in Outlook. In one account, I have the Mark as Read/Unread icon appear when I select a message. In the other account, I only have Flag and Delete."