Office 365, Exchange, Windows Server and more - a spam-free diet of tested tips and solutions.
Posted on Inbox rules in Office 365 (or Microsoft 365, if you like the newer name better) help users and admins make Outlook a better place. They can be employed to fight distractions, get things organized, block unwanted correspondence or automatically forward selected emails. With the never-ending onslaught of information that flows into Outlook, they are invaluable. In this article, I’ll show you how to work with Office 365 inbox rules using PowerShell.
Posted on No-reply email addresses are useful in many scenarios, like sending notifications from transaction systems, shipping progress information, etc. In the case of such messages, you do not expect any user feedback and most of them are generated and sent automatically.
Even though you cannot stop users from sending emails to a no-reply address, you can create a mailbox which will block all incoming traffic, meaning you will not have to monitor it.
Posted on Microsoft 365 (or to be more precise, Exchange Online) has certain mailbox size limits. Those limits depend on two variables: the subscription plan assigned to the mailbox and the mailbox type. This article shows what the maximum mailbox size is, how to increase mailbox size, how to check the current mailbox usage for all mailboxes and what to do to prevent mailboxes from reaching their size limit. You may find it useful if you’re planning to migrate from on-premises Exchange Server to Microsoft 365.
Posted on Some applications and services for Microsoft 365 (for example, Skype for Business) use app passwords as an authentication method when multi-factor authentication (MFA) is enabled. The problem is that after enabling MFA for the organization, some or even all users may not be able to create and use app passwords. This article shows what you can do if you find out that app passwords are not working in your Microsoft 365 tenant.
Posted on If you have ever received a plain text email, you will know the message format will remain the same when you reply to it or forward it. Because of that, you won’t be able to add hyperlinks, formatting and images to your email. What’s more, instead of your carefully designed HTML email signature, the recipient will just see its simple plain text version. Fortunately, with some minor setup, you can reply to plain text emails using HTML format messages in Outlook or in other email clients. What’s more, you can force the HTML format in every email sent from your organization.
Posted on Microsoft 365 security groups, formerly known as Office 365 security groups, allow admins to easily manage access to e.g. SharePoint sites by grouping together users that require identical permissions. This way you only need to assign access once for the entire group, not for each user individually. In this article, we will show you how to create a security group as well as add and remove members from this group using Microsoft/Office 365 admin center and how to streamline the process using PowerShell cmdlets.
Posted on Out of office messages in Office 365 (let’s assume Office 365 = Microsoft 365, to make things easier) are an extremely useful thing. Not everyone knows though that this simple automatic reply is more than just an email. In this article, I’ll quickly go over the basics: what out of office message in Office 365 is and how to set it up for your account. For the real treat, I’ll show the easiest way to set up an out of office reply for another user (or all users).
Posted on End of Mainstream Support for Exchange 2016 is planned for October 13, 2020. It means that 5 years after its release, this on-premises server enters the Extended Support period. The end of extended support (or end of life) for Exchange Server 2016 is planned for October 14, 2025. Read on to learn how this affects you, what to do next and what will be the last on-premises Exchange version.
Posted on The article was updated on February 25, 2021
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a huge change of plans concerning disabling basic authentication in Microsoft 365 (for connections to Exchange Online). The complete shutdown has been postponed indefinitely. While it gives organizations much more time to prepare, it’s a good idea to get tenants ready before the actual deadline. Continue reading this article to learn more about basic authentication in Microsoft 365, how to block it on your own and when exactly it will be disabled.
Posted on In one of my previous articles, I’ve shown how to create simple email signatures in Outlook using VBScript. In this article, I will show you how to take your email signatures to a higher level. I will use VBScript to create an HTML email signature for every Outlook (for Windows) installation in your organization. The script will create a professional email signature with data taken from Active Directory. Next, I will explain how to use GPO to distribute the script to every user in your organization.
