The following articles were included in our Exchange Messaging Outlook (EMO) newsletter published on June 2, 2022.
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Today's Highlights
Changing To-Do Account in Outlook
This tip is for Office 365 users with Coming Soon enabled or one of the beta builds, where the folder navigation buttons are in a vertical bar on the left side of Outlook.
The vertical navigation bar adds new icons for Office 365 apps and services, from Word and Excel to services such as To-Do and Yammer. If you have more than one Office 365 (or Outlook.com) account in your profile, only one account is available in To-Do (and Yammer).
How does Outlook decide which account’s To-Do to display? It uses the account listed in File > Office Account, under User Information. If you want to view another To-Do in Outlook, you need to switch accounts. Or use the separate To-Do app or use Outlook's Tasks.
BTW, everyone will get the vertical navigation bar in the coming weeks (or months). If you don't like the bar on the left, please vote for a comment on this suggestion: Navigation bar chnge · Community (microsoft.com)
Adding Company Holidays to Outlook
A user wanted to know how to distribute company holidays to users.
The easiest way is to create a HOL file and send it to the users. When they open the file, Outlook will bring up the Add Holidays to calendar dialog. They just need to select the holidays list and click OK.
The HOL file is just a text file with the HOL extension and the holiday dates are in a specific format.
[location] # of events
Holiday description, yyyy/mm/dd
Holiday description, yyyy/mm/dd
The location is added to the location field in the calendar event. Using this as a example, the HOL file will create 4 events with “Slipstick Holidays” in the location field of the events.
[Slipstick Holidays] 4
Summer Break, 2022/07/08
Summer Break, 2022/07/15
Summer Break, 2022/07/22
Summer Break, 2022/07/29
You can have multiple locations in the HOL file, for example if you wanted to distribute one HOL file but have different HOL in some regions. Or home users wanted to separate events for each family member.
When I recreate custom HOL files, I use Excel, putting the holiday name in the column A and the date, properly formatted, in column B. If the events fit a pattern such as my Summer break every Friday, I use a formula (=B2+7) and drag to fill the cells. Save as CSV and change the file extension. Double click on the HOL to add them to Outlook.
For more information, see Add Holidays to Outlook's Calendar . I have a day and week number HOL file, plus a US Holidays file split between federal holidays and popular observances linked at the bottom of the article.
Gmail POP accounts in Outlook
Fingers crossed that this is the last article on Gmail disabling Allow Less Secure Passwords. I promise.
Switching off Less Secure apps has not generated as many problems as I expected – with one exception: POP accounts in newer versions of Outlook.
Users with POP accounts receive this error message:
Task 'user@gmail.com - Receiving' reported error (0x800CCC92): 'Your email server rejected your login. Verify your username and password for this account in Account Settings. The server responded: -ERR [AUTH] Username and password not accepted."
This is because no version of Outlook supports oAuth2 with POP accounts. All Gmail POP accounts added to Outlook require two-step verification and the use of an app password in place of the real password.
IMAP accounts in Outlook 2016 and newer will work without enabling two-step verification. IMAP accounts in older versions will need to use two-step and an app password.
Latest information: Outlook and Gmail's Less Secure Apps Setting
New & Updated Exchange Server Support Articles
Exchange Server Roadmap Update - Microsoft Tech Community
MEC is Back! - Microsoft Tech Community
New & Updated Outlook Support Articles
Outlook email stuck
Learn how to fix email stuck in Outlook.com or Outlook.
Other Resources
Outlook on the web Quick Actions moved to the right
Users began complaining last week that the quick actions in Outlook on the web (when the reading pane is off or on the bottom) moved from the From field on the left side of the message list to the far right, in the Received column, which for many users, is a long mouse movement to use the quick actions.
Error: Message archive has reached maximum size
Outlook error message: The message archive has reached the maximum size. You can reduce the amount of data in this message store by selecting some items that you no longer need to permanently delete (Shift + Del) to delete them.
New Outlook for Windows
Office 365 subscribers in the beta channel and with an Office 365 business account in their profile, will have a switch in the upper right corner for Try the New Outlook.