Author: Adam the 32-bit Aardvark

A complete list of Office 365 language IDs

avatar Posted on by
0 Comments

Below, you will find a complete list of Office 365 language IDs. All of those languages are supported in Office 365. The list includes a language name in English, in the respective language and a language code (ID) used, for example, as an Active Directory attribute.

Office 365 Language ID full list

In most cases, you can take a look at the list of available languages in an Office 365 profile. You can go to Settings>Language and time zone and easily scroll through the list. However, there are two problems you might encounter:

Continue reading ‘A complete list of Office 365 language IDs’

Office 365 groups vs distribution lists – an in-depth comparison

avatar Posted on by
0 Comments

In the on-premises Exchange Server, there are three basic group types: distribution groups (a.k.a. distribution lists), dynamic distribution lists, and security groups. Office 365 presents another type: Office 365 Group. After a quick look, you can see that those Office 365 Groups can be used for the same purpose as distribution lists. The thing is, on numerous occasions, you can see that distribution lists are becoming obsolete, while Office 365 Groups are a recommended and a continually improved feature. So how are distribution groups different from Office 365 groups? I explain shortly in the article below.

Distribution Lists vs O365 Groups

Continue reading ‘Office 365 groups vs distribution lists – an in-depth comparison’

How to delete mailboxes in Exchange Server 2007/2010/2013/2016

avatar Posted on by
0 Comments

There are many reasons you might want to delete mailboxes from an Exchange Server. You might want to clear a database from some test users or remove those who have left the organization. Remember that you might need to delete mailboxes as soon as an employee leaves an organization. Mailboxes are a potential gold mine of Personal Information. They may contain sensitive information concerning both clients and other employees. That is why, in most situations, it is best to delete mailboxes quickly to ensure a high level of data protection. It is not worth risking any security breaches, especially if you want to comply with the GDPR. This article shows how to delete mailboxes along with AD users in the on-premises Exchange using PowerShell.

How to delete mailboxes from Exchange Server

Before I get technical, a word of warning. Please, make sure you are removing the right mailboxes. Just in case, temporarily forget about using -Confirm:$false parameter.

Before you start deleting mailboxes, make sure you have sufficient permissions. To run the Remove-Mailbox cmdlet, you need to have the Mail Recipient Creation role assigned. By default, only members of Organization Management and Recipient Management role groups have sufficient privileges.

Continue reading ‘How to delete mailboxes in Exchange Server 2007/2010/2013/2016’

Message tracking logs in Exchange Server

avatar Posted on by
0 Comments

Message tracking logs are a valuable source of information for any Exchange admin. While Office 365 has its message tracing, which works just fine, on-premises Exchange stores much more data in the logs, which can serve many purposes.

Message Tracking logs Exchange

Continue reading ‘Message tracking logs in Exchange Server’

How to migrate from Exchange 2010 to Office 365

avatar Posted on by
2 Comments

How is the migration from Exchange 2010 to Office 365 any different than other scenarios? First, before Exchange 2010, there was no way to create a Hybrid environment with Office 365. What is more, Exchange 2010 is one of the most popular source servers. That is because for companies which have more recent server versions, it would be a shame to leave to the cloud just yet, relatively soon after deploying a new Exchange release, and when the support is still available. Finally, there are some additional steps you need to take when you migrate from Exchange 2010 to Office 365.

Migrate from Exchange 2010 to Office 365

This article presents a short Exchange 2010 to Office 365 migration guide, to show you how to plan this journey. And how to make it easier.

Continue reading ‘How to migrate from Exchange 2010 to Office 365’

GDPR compliance and Office 365 backup

avatar Posted on by
0 Comments

GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation, is a phrase that has become quite popular lately. No surprise there – it is hard not to get interested when you hear about fines which can go up to €20 million or 4% of a company’s annual revenue. Although it is legislation which is introduced by the European Parliament and it concerns personal data of EU residents, it applies to businesses all around the globe. But you probably know that already. What you might not know is that businesses have to review the way they secure and back up their data to comply with the GDPR. But before I get to that, here is some general information on GDPR.

GDPR vs backup: a GDPR-compliant backup solution for Office 365

Continue reading ‘GDPR compliance and Office 365 backup’

How to use Active Directory user photos in Windows 10

avatar Posted on by
5 Comments

User photos stored in Active Directory can be used by applications like Outlook, Skype for Business (Lync) or SharePoint to display the picture of currently logged-in user in their interface. However, you can take even more advantage of Active Directory photos and use them as account pictures in Windows 10 (and other versions of Windows as well, starting from Windows 7). All you have to do is make sure that you already have user photos added in Active Directory (or add them yourself) and create a Group Policy object (GPO) that will execute a script to change users’ account pictures in your domain automatically. Optionally, you may also need to globally change some of the users’ privileges, but we’ll get back to that later. Some of these steps can easily be done using CodeTwo Active Directory Photos, which is completely free! As for the other steps, this article will guide you through them smoothly.

Take a good look at this default account picture, as you will probably see it for the last time:

How to use Active Directory user photos in Windows 10 - Default Windows 10 account picture

Continue reading ‘How to use Active Directory user photos in Windows 10’

Exchange 2016 and SharePoint 2016 integration (part 2) – calendar overlay & site mailbox

avatar Posted on by
2 Comments

In the previous article about Exchange vs SharePoint integration, I have explained how to configure email alerts and an email-enabled library. The first part of the article also contains information about the test environment I use. This article is dedicated to calendar overlay and creating a site mailbox with an email-enabled library. As a quick recap, I will shortly explain what the integration of those two elements is all about:

Calendar Overlay & Site Mailboxes - SharePoint Exchange intergration part 2

  • Calendar integration (calendar overlay) – enables you to synchronize Exchange and SharePoint calendars completely. Thanks to this, you can use Outlook to, for example, view and create meeting requests or book equipment, and all the changes will be automatically reflected on the corresponding SharePoint site.
  • Site mailbox – this powerful feature, available since Exchange & SharePoint 2013, lets you create a common location to save, edit and look for emails & documents alike. Site mailboxes can be accessed both from an Outlook client and a browser. This functionality can simplify your work, by eliminating the need to jump from one interface to another.

Continue reading ‘Exchange 2016 and SharePoint 2016 integration (part 2) – calendar overlay & site mailbox’

Message tracking in Office 365 (Exchange Online)

avatar Posted on by
1 Comments

Message tracking, or message tracing, as it is called in Office 365, is one of the most basic tools used by administrators to monitor the email flow. As emails travel through Office 365, some information about them gets stored in logs and is available for administrative purposes. No matter if users delete or purge messages, the administrator is able to view basic information about sent and received emails.

Message tracing in Office 365

Message tracing does not allow you to peek into a message’s contents. Still, it can provide quite a lot of important data about emails:

  • Sender and Recipient
  • Send and receive dates
  • Subject and size
  • Status and details of events. There are seven possible values in the delivery status field: delivered, failed, pending, expanded, quarantined, filtered as spam and unknown.
  • IP address used to send the message
  • Message ID a unique number identifying a message. If a message is sent to more than one recipient, it will display once for every recipient in the message trace search, but all those entries will have the same Message ID and different Message Trace ID

Continue reading ‘Message tracking in Office 365 (Exchange Online)’