We’ve tried out famous and classic lines on Microsoft suggested reply feature. Inspired by The New Yorker’s tests with Gmail. In Google Smart Reply, Literary Critic, Bruce Handy checks out the Smart Reply suggestions from Gmail to lines like this from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18. Microsoft 365 hosted Exchange Server has
Microsoft isn’t having a good week with yet another breakdown of their cloud services. This time it’s their mail hosting infrastructure for Microsoft 365 hosted mailboxes and Outlook.com . The troubles started early on Thursday 1st October 2020 (before 7am UTC ) Initially it seemed to only affect Outlook on
The latest ebook from Office-Watch.com is a little different, it’s a heartfelt ‘Thank You’ to our Office Watch donors. Peter Deegan has been quite astonished and humbled by the generosity of readers to our reader appeal. Both the money and kind remarks have been a considerable morale boost quite beyond
An unfixed Outlook 365 bug can delete messages before you get a chance to see them. Microsoft has been ‘investigating’ for about two weeks with no fix. The only saving grace is that it’s a relatively uncommon use of Outlook and not a default setup. Even so, any bug which
A UK politician got caught sending an email with optional stock phrases and guides still in the message. Is there a simple way to stop that happening? Most organizations have standard wording and stock phrases which is understandable but there’s a risk those helpers are left in an email or
Chris Pratt released a video showing 51,000 emails being deleted from his computer. Are they really completely lost? We doubt it. On Instagram we see his shock as the Trash folder gradually counts down the messages being removed from his computer. That’s supposedly the 51,000 Inbox messages that he’d promised
When Outlook displays a ‘This will be permanently deleted’ it’s not really deleted. For anyone interested in the gory details or testing themselves, here’s how we checked that out. It’s standard database procedure for a deleted record simply to be flagged ‘deleted’ rather than fully erased or overwritten. Tagging as
Office 365 hosted organizations will soon get protection from Reply All email storms. Reply All storms happen with large distributions lists (e.g. whole company or division). Too many people hit ‘Reply All’ sending thousands of messages to already cluttered mailboxes. Now, if there’s too much ‘Reply All’ activity in a
It is possible to send and receive faxes without a fax machine. At least you can send a fax from your computer without a fax machine because there are online services to do that for you. We’ve noticed some press reports were overwhelmed offices have reverted to faxes because their
A simple and cheap way to keep kids amused and give them something to talk to grandparents and others during online calls. Grandma/pa starts with some trivia questions for the kids to research, sent by email. Later in the day there’s an online call when grandma/grandpa can catch up on
Be prepared for the possibility that one mailhost/email address might not work. That’s a risk at any time, not just now. Setup an emergency, backup email account. One way to prepare is having TWO email addresses with different mail hosts. If one stops, you can keep sending messages with another,
A few readers have asked if email services are slowing down. Maybe, but not significantly and not to worry about. There are some things to prepare your email for the worst. We’ve noticed that emails aren’t arriving as quickly as they usually do. An order confirmation email that would normally
It’s too easy to start using the Archive folder in Outlook. Most likely all the setup is done, so you can start using it. If not, the setup is just a few clicks. Archive is a way to set aside selected messages away from the main Inbox or other folders.
For many mailboxes it’s not possible to rename the Outlook Archive folder. But non-Microsoft mailboxes can rename Archive to anything maybe ‘Miscellaneous’, ‘Store’ or just ‘Old Stuff’. In modern Outlook with Microsoft hosted mailboxes (Outlook.com, Office 365 hosted or recent Exchange Server) the Archive folder is an in-built folder like
Move a message to the Archive folder with any of the usual ways to move an item between Outlook folders plus three dedicated special options only for the Archive folder. See Starting with Archive in Microsoft Outlook Archive in Outlook 365 and Outlook 2016/2019 for Windows Archive button Most obvious is
Outlook has three features called ‘Archive’ with the newer versions (Archive and Online Archive) much better than older ‘AutoArchive’. We’ll explain the difference, how to use Archive and why to avoid AutoArchive. Each form of Archive sets aside older messages or emails you’ve finished with. It does that in two
Criminals don’t even respect Santa and the festive season with malware infested emails pretending to be holiday schedules or the Christmas party. Is nothing sacred? Cofense Labs report that Emotet botnet is being spread via Word documents with timely emails for the end of the year. All these dangerous emails
It would be great to share draft emails between Outlook on different devices including iPhone, iPad and Android. You can start a message or reply on a smartphone and finish it later on a computer. Sharing drafts between Outlook for Windows or Mac has been possible for many years, only
Outlook for Windows is getting a new Search bar which combines many existing search and other options right on top of the title bar. It’s now available to Office 365 Insiders and will gradually roll out to other Office 365 . Outlook Search is hard to miss, it’s right on
Over time there’s been a change in the way email programs login to your mail host. It’s mostly hidden from us mere humans but important to understand. Here’s how to use oAuth and how to bypass it, if your email program doesn’t support it. Older versions of Outlook don’t know
Here’s a complete, searchable and sortable list of all the email attachments that are or soon will be blocked by various types of Microsoft Outlook. There’s confusion and inconsistencies in the Microsoft documentation and application of these new blocks. They have a list of blocked attachments for Outlook in “Office
Emails claiming to be OneNote Audio files are really a trick to steal your Microsoft login and password. They use Microsoft’s own SharePoint.com and Windows hosting to fool people. Bleeping Computer with help from ransomware hunter Michael Gillespie show examples of a phishing email which claims to be from a
Anyone with their own domain name for email needs to make sure their SPF setting is correct. These days not just recommended, it’s critical to ensuring email reaches its destination. We’re not talking about sunscreen but Sender Policy Framework which is a method of verifying that emails for a domain
The Archive button in Outlook 2016/2019 and Outlook 365 is a very different thing than previous versions. Archive is just another folder among many in the same Outlook mailbox and data store. It’s a default folder (which can’t be changed) for Office 365 hosted, Outlook.com, and Exchange accounts. For other
