Microsoft Office 365 Home: Office on up to 5 PCs/Macs, 5 tablets and 5 phones – legally – without breaking the bank

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 9 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I’ve mentioned previously that I’m planning on writing a series of Windows 10 blog posts over the coming months, but what about the apps I use every day?

Most people buy PCs with Windows 8, upgrade to 8.1 and then 10 for “free” but then find they need some Office productivity tools.  For a long while, my family was using Office from a number of sources:

  • Office 2010 on my wife’s work PC, purchased outright from the Microsoft store back when I had MVP benefits.
  • Office 2013 on my work PC, provided by my employer.
  • Office 2013 on the Family PC, purchased under the Home Use Program (HUP) with my previous employer’s Enterprise Agreement (EA).

Recently, a new PC for my wife meant that I decided not to reinstall Office 2010 (which is just about to drop out of mainstream support). The family PC also got a rebuild after a hard disk failure and my change of employer a few months ago means I’m no longer covered by an EA to use the HUP copy.  My children increasingly use Office applications (including the lesser-known ones like Publisher) and we really needed to sort something out.

Office 365 Home - transcript with MicrosoftI use Office 365 at work and I expect I could have asked to use that on a home PC (it covers me for up to 5 devices) but then I found Microsoft Office 365 Home. For under £80 a year (or just under £8 a month), I can get a legal copy of Office on all of my family’s PCs, my Mac, and our other devices (up to 5 PCs/Macs, 5 tablets, and 5 phones).  Those who do have HUP rights may still be better off, depending on the number of PCs they use and the number of copies of Office they need to buy at £9.95 each, although, with the launch of Office 2016 next week, my PCs will get updated to the latest copy – without me having to go out and purchase upgrades.  And, should I remove Office from a PC (like the demo PC I have on loan at the moment), then the license goes back into the pool for me to deploy again elsewhere (I wasn’t sure if that would be the case, so I checked with Microsoft).

It’s a really good deal (cheaper than upgrading my Office 365 E1 plan to an E3 – although that would give me some extra benefits too) but it’s not just Office either. We each get 60 free Skype minutes a month (could come in handy for calling our friends who recently moved to Australia!) and our OneDrives (I’ve recently given the kids OneDrives too so their files are backed up to the cloud if something happens to the family computer again…) are now each upgraded to 1TB of cloud storage.

Strangely, although it’s branded Office 365, everything is linked to Microsoft accounts (not work or school accounts – previously known as organisational accounts), but I guess that’s because it’s a consumer product. I can view all of my details, including which devices have Office installed, in my account settings, as well as sharing the subscription with other family members for them to install on their devices.

Office 365 Home - Managing installed copies

I’m not sure how heavily promoted Office 365 Home is, but it’s certainly worth considering if you have multiple PCs that need Office in your home.

Refresh or reset a Windows 10 PC

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 9 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Having a demo PC on loan from Microsoft at the moment, means that, from time to time, I want to undo some of the changes I’ve made and restore default settings. This is where the ability to refresh or reset a Windows 10 PC comes in.

PC Refresh and Reset have been Windows features since Windows 8, but it’s the first time I’ve used them.  The intention is that a refresh reinstalls Windows whilst retaining data, applications and settings. A reset restores the PC to the out of the box settings.

Unfortunately, attempting a reset from my Windows 10 installation media didn’t help much, resulting in a “There was a problem while resetting your PC” message.

The resolution was to instigate the reset from within Windows (Settings., Update and Security, Recovery, Reset this PC), rather than from “Repair my computer” in Windows Setup.

Windows 10 - Update and Security - Recovery

The PC will reboot and a progress screen (similar to at Windows startup) will show “Resetting this PC” and the percentage complete. Then , the next phase is “Installing Windows”. After this, select regional settings, accept the legal agreement, customise settings and wait for setup to complete (including critical updates).

Within half an hour or so, I’d reset the PC to its initial state and was able to start work again, knowing that my previous “fiddling” and application installations would no longer interfere with my work.

Short takes: checking your IP in Google; writing to a text file in PowerShell; and confirming which IE security zone a website uses in Internet Explorer

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 9 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Another eclectic mix of snippets merged into a single blog post…

What’s my IP address?

Ever want to check the IP address of the connection you’re using? There are lots of websites out there that will tell you, or you can just type what is my IP into Google (other search engines are available… but they won’t directly return this information).

Writing output to a text file in PowerShell

Sometimes, when working in PowerShell, it’s useful to pipe the output to a file, for example to send to someone else for analysis. For this, the Out-File cmdlet comes in useful (| Out-File filename.txt) , as described on StackOverflow.

Internet Explorer status bar no longer shows security zone for a site

Last week, I was trying to work out which security zone a site was in last week (because I wanted to see if it was in the Intranet zone, whilst tracking down some spurious authentication prompts) but recent versions of Internet Explorer don’t show this information in the status bar. The workaround is to right click any black space in the website and select Properties. Alternatively, use Alt + F + R.

Check the security zone in Internet Explorer

Can’t add a domain to Office 365 because it’s already in use

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 9 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Adding a domain name to Office 365 is usually pretty straightforward. That is unless it’s already been used for another tenant that you don’t have access to – perhaps a trial that’s expired? Or someone signed up for some Microsoft Online services using their work email address but doesn’t have administration rights?

Sorry, you can't add domainname.tld here because it's already in use

I came across exactly this scenario with a customer last week – although luckily we managed to extract ourselves from the situation. Actually, there’s some pretty good documentation from Microsoft on the topic: “How to manage a domain already in use by people in your organization who signed up with their work or school email address“.

What we did was to:

  • Sign up for a Power BI trial (we couldn’t sign up for Office Online at work as it said it wasn’t available in our region, and Office 365 for education was not an option for us either) using an email address at the domain name we wanted to reclaim.
  • Once the new trial was in place, logon to the portal and click the Admin tile in the App Launcher, which starts a wizard to become the administrator for the associated Office 365 tenant.
  • Create a DNS entry to prove ownership of the domain.
  • Change any account using the domain name that is to be reclaimed over to their tenantname.onmicrosoft.com address for logon.
  • Log off/on.
  • Remove the domain from the tenant (and then leave it to expire in time…).
  • Add the domain to the tenant where it should be used.

 

Pick the primary domain when activating Yammer on an Office 365 tenant

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 9 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

One of the challenges with working with Office 365 for a living is that it now offers a pretty broad range of services. I work in a unified communications and messaging team (think Skype for Business and Exchange) but I also need to know about:

  • Windows identity topics including Active Directory (AD), Azure Active Directory (AAD), Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS).
  • Windows server roles/features like Web Application Proxy as well as the obvious infrastructure services candidates (DNS, etc.).
  • SharePoint – if not to set up site collections etc. then at least to manage OneDrive for Business.
  • Office – integration of office apps – desktop and mobile.
  • Yammer

(…and the list goes on)

Yammer can be challenging, partly because it’s still fairly loosely-coupled to Office 365, but also because it keeps changing (as do all of the Office 365 services, I guess).  Last week I was working with a customer who had several domain names on their Office 365 tenant and who wanted to bring them together in Yammer.  Unfortunately I’d already activated Yammer Enterprise on their Office 365 tenant, using the domain name for one of their subsidiary companies and you only get one shot at the initial activation.

After raising a service request, we were directed to a Microsoft Office support page on consolidating multiple Yammer networks… but any subsequent moves will result in data loss – which is why it’s important to pick the primary network when activating Yammer (you can export the data, but often the Yammer networks are unmanaged, informal networks created by employees outside the control of the IT department). I’m hopeful that Microsoft will be able to switch the primary network for us before merging the networks.

Default site collections in SharePoint Online

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 9 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

When an Office 365 tenant is created with SharePoint Online, several site collections are created.  It can be confusing to work out what each is for, so here’s a quick reference, based on the SharePoint 2013 sites – I guess this may change as SharePoint 2016 is rolled out.

  • https://tenantname.sharepoint.com – team site for the company – you can always create more, but this is the “top of the tree”.
  • https://tenantname.sharepoint.com/portals/community – not sure about the purpose of this one, although I suspect it’s a SharePoint 2013 community forum.
  • https://tenantname.sharepoint.com/portals/hub – Office 365 Video.
  • https://tenantname.sharepoint.com/search – the search site for the tenant
  • https://tenantname-my.sharepoint.com – the site collection for all of the users’ OneDrive for Business sites, each one named https://tenantname-my.sharepoint.com/personal/UPN (with the .s replaced by _s).

Note that the SharePoint URL is one of the few places where the Office 365 tenant name is exposed to users.

Connected accounts in Office 365 (Exchange Online)

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 9 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I have a customer who is adopting Office 365 – but in a targeted manner for certain parts of his business. The business case just doesn’t stack up for a total deployment but he does want to make the most of the features and functionality that are available, to showcase how it really can be used to those who are on the platform.

Because his email is still on the corporate mail platform (where the MX records point), and there is no Exchange hybrid connectivity configured, we’ve been looking at the use of connected accounts in Office 365 – so that certain key members of staff can use Exchange Online mailboxes without actually migrating their email service.

It’s an unusual scenario, and generally only mentioned as a quick and dirty solution to get people using Office 365 in pilot.  Even so, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work for a more permanent solution – provided that the on-premises mail server can be reached from the Internet using POP3 or IMAP4 (preferably secured with SSL) and that it’s well-understood that Exchange Online will poll for new mail less frequently than a direct connection from Outlook to the source mail server would.  It’s also useful for pulling email from third party mail platforms into your Exchange Online mailbox (I use it for Hotmail).

The latest advice from Microsoft on using the feature can be found in the connect email accounts in Outlook on the web Office support page and there’s also some useful information on connected accounts in the Office 365 community.

Using the Lenovo B50 all-in-one PC as an external monitor

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 9 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

A few weeks back, Microsoft asked if I’d be interested in writing some Windows 10 blog posts if they could arrange a demo machine for me for a few months.  I thought it seemed like a good idea, signed the paperwork when it came through, and promptly forgot about it whilst I immersed myself in work!

Then, earlier this week, I got a text from my wife that said:

“[…] We have a mystery parcel from Lenovo here… [my son] is speculating… what time will you be home this evening? […]”

At first I had to think “what have I bought from Lenovo?” (funnily enough, that’s what Mrs W was thinking too…) but then I remembered the PC that Microsoft were sending…

I got home to find my two geeks apprentices, aged nearly-9 and nearly-11, desperate to see what was in the box and help me set it up.  Within minutes, the Lenovo B50 all-in-one PC was taking up a sizable chunk of my desk and, over the next few months I’m hoping to write at least one Windows 10 post each week.

Having an all-in one PC has another use though: I’ve been considering buying a new monitor for a while, to use with my company-supplied Surface Pro 3 when I’m working at home and I wondered if the B50 would do the job for the next few months. As it happens, yes it will – the tech-specs include both HDMI output (to a second monitor) and input – but I couldn’t work out how to get it working (and both ports are labelled as output). I knew it was possible though as Brian Fagioli’s Betanews review mentions using the all-in-one as a display.

Eventually I found Lon Siedman’s video review which showed how to do it – pressing a tiny button on the lower-right side of the screen, just above the power button, to accept input on the HDMI port closest to the left-side of the screen.  It’s still amazing though that the Surface Pro 3’s 12″ display runs at a higher resolution than this 23.8″ beast!

Marketing for small businesses

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 9 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I’ve blogged about Milton Keynes Geek Night many times over the last 3 and a half years – and it’s still just as good as ever. Last Thursday’s geek night (number 14)  had possibly the most eclectic mix of talks I’ve seen in a while though – with a talk about Life on Mars as well as the usual collection of web design/developer topics. And then there was Chloe Briggs’ 5-minute talk about marketing for freelancers.

Although Chloe (@clever_cloggs) called it marketing for freelancers, I recognise a lot of this being applied in small-medium businesses too. Indeed, it’s only the large enterprises I’ve worked for that don’t seem to “get it”. Even so, Chloe gave what I consider to be some very good advice, so I’m blogging it here!

  • Stand out from the crowd:
    • Use blogging as a tool
    • Know your audience
      • Think about who your existing clients are and what type of clients would you like to work with?
      • Target your content to this audience
  • Look after existing clients:
    • It’s good to keep in touch
      • Send a well-crafted newsletter every month/quarter
        • Click-throughs from email outperform social media
    • Clients often appreciate a call every few months to check in
      • They will increase their loyalty to you and make them feel supported
      • You will pick up extra work
  • Productise your services:
    • Tiered packages make it easy to compare services
    • Packages provide a jumping off point to start a discussion
  • Be a specialist
    • Create your own niche
    • You can easily become knowledgeable about a particular product or service
    • Creates trust and authority
    • Increases your value
  • Create residual income
    • Sell after-sales support for maintenance etc.
    • This can be a package including other services, e.g. hosting, analytics reports, etc.
    • Retaining your services on a monthly basis creates loyalty

Hopefully these tips can help others to build their businesses and attract/retain the right clients.

Troubleshooting missing objects in Azure AD sync

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 9 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I have a half-written blog post about Microsoft Azure Active Directory (AAD) Connect – the latest incarnation of the directory synchronisation engine used to populate a cloud directory for Office 365 and other online services. That post will stay half-written for a while longer as it needs a bit more work but, yesterday, I was working with a customer whose AAD sync was missing some users. I’d set it up a couple of months previously and it had been working well, but clearly something had gone awry.

Microsoft knowledge base article 2643629 describes why one or more objects don’t sync when using the Azure Active Directory Sync tool but my problem turned out to be a lot more fundamental.

I checked the Synchronisation Service Manager (miisclient.exe) and found that there hadn’t been a sync for over three weeks. Then I looked in the Task Scheduler on the AAD Sync server; the Scheduled Task was still there and it had last run a couple of hours previously. Digging a little deeper and looking at the history though, showed that the task had been failing for a few weeks (every 3 hours), because a previous task was still running.

So, I restarted the server (to clear out long-running processes) and ran the sync, then watched in the Synchronisation Service Manager to check that it started logging the synchronisation events again. Once the sync was completed (with lots of changes, as expected), I changed the timeout on the scheduled task to 2 hours so it should always end before the next begins.

A delta sync sorted most of the issues, but I did need to force a full sync to get all of the missing users up to the cloud, by running directorysyncclientcmd.exe initial.

Incidentally, we’re all used to running idfix.exe before implementing directory synchronisation but occasionally admins create problem objects afterwards too… somehow an account had crept into scope that had a space in the username and no UPN. Predictably, AAD sync didn’t like that and my customer was being emailed after each sync with a notification that AAD Sync was:

Unable to update this object in Azure Active Directory, because the attribute [Username], is not valid. Update the value in your local directory services.

As Joran Markx explains, you can control who the identity synchronisation error reports are sent to by editing the technical contact for the tenant.

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