Volume 29 Issue 12

Issue Date: April 4, 2024 « Previous Issue | Next Issue »

The following articles were included in our Exchange Messaging Outlook (EMO) newsletter published on April 4, 2024.

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Today's Highlights »

Editor and spellcheck missing in new Outlook
Connected Accounts in Outlook.com
Moving Mail in Outlook for Mac
Email from Outlook country domains bounces

Editor and spellcheck missing in new Outlook

Following a recent update, users are reporting that the Editor button is grayed out and the spellcheck is not working in new Outlook. Misspelled words are either underlined in red but the spelling suggestions won't come up when they click on the misspelled word or spell check doesn't work at all.

Recent builds of new Outlook include a privacy option similar to the one in Office, where you can enable external connected experiences. It is disabled by default and users need to enable it to use Editor and spellchecking.

In new Outlook’s view tab, click on View Settings > General > Privacy and Data > Privacy Settings button. You’ll need to go to the bottom of the page, under Connected Experiences and enable Experiences that download online content by switching on “Turn on experiences that download online content”. This allows Outlook to "provide you with searchable, downloadable online content like calendars, locations, and images".

You may also want to switch on Experiences that analyze your content. This allows Outlook to "use your content to help you create, communicate, and collaborate more effectively".

For more information on the connected experiences in Office app and both new and classic Outlook, see this Microsoft article: Connected experiences in Office

Spellcheck and Microsoft Editor not working in new Outlook

Connected Accounts in Outlook.com

When Microsoft removed connected accounts from outlook.com accounts not using the feature back in May 2021, they said anyone using connected accounts would keep them.

When users with connected accounts could not view the Sync email page at View tab > View settings > Mail for weeks around the end of last year and into early this year, many users who still had connected accounts wondered how much longer we’d be able to keep them. Especially after some users said trying to edit or remove one connected account removed all the user’s connected accounts.

We now know: Connected accounts in Outlook on the web will be disabled on July 1, 2024. After that date, they will no longer sync to Outlook.com.

If you prefer using the outlook.com interface to read your mail, you can add the accounts to new Outlook. While its not quite the same as connected accounts (each mailbox will be separate), it has the same interface as Outlook on the web.

Forwarding mail to Outlook.com is also an option, although it’s not one I recommend now that more domains are using SPF and DMARC to identify potentially spoofed emails and drop them.

Moving Mail in Outlook for Mac

When you have email accounts added to Outlook for Mac as Microsoft Sync accounts, the Move to folder command only moves mail between folders within the current mailbox.

When you try to move messages to a folder in another account, the message will be Moved, Copied, or it will look like it was copied but disappears from the folder after a few seconds. It really depends on the account types are moving From and To. I’m not able to move or copy message from an Outlook.com account to a Microsoft 365 mailbox, but can copy messages between other Microsoft 365 mailboxes and my Gmail mailbox or into an outlook.com account.

Email from Outlook country domains bounces

Users with Outlook country specific domains, such as outlook.fr, outlook.hu, outlook.sa, are unable to send email to Gmail addresses and receive a bounce message that says Gmail has detected that this message is suspicious due to the very low reputation of the sending domain. To best protect our users from spam, the message has been blocked.

Microsoft is aware of the issue and working on fixing it. Until then affected users can add an outlook.com alias to their account and use that to send mail to Gmail accounts.

Some users are reporting similar messages from yahoo as well.