Office on Anything About IT

Preparing my Application Guard for Office test lab

Sat, 21 Nov 2020 17:24:13 +0000

Hello everyone, today I wanted to see application guard for office in action. If you are not familiar with application guard for office, I suggest you read the following articles / documentation.

And now let me walk you through the steps to get application guard for office working in your test lab.

Deploy Windows 10 20H1 or 20H2
When running your test client in Hyper-V you have to enable nested virtualization so that we can later enable Application Guard
Next, we turn on the Microsoft Defender Application Guard. Now if your system does not meet the minimum requirements the option is greyed out as shown in the screenshot below. But luckily there is a workaround described here. Once you have added these registry keys, you will be able to enable Application Guard
Now we have to enable Microsoft Defender Application Guard in managed mode, so that it can be used for Microsoft Edge and Office. Open the Group Policy editor and navigate to: Computer Configuration \ Administrative templates \ Windows Components \ Microsoft Defender Application Guard and open the setting: Turn on Microsoft Defender Application Guard in Managed Mode and set the value to 3 If you want to enable Application Guard for Edge and Office or 2 for Office only.
Now that we have Defender Application Guard ready, let us move on to Office. The official documentation mentions Office Beta Channel Build version 2008 16.0.13212 or later, however as per this announcement it should work with the Insider current channel as well. Configure the following group policy settings for Office 365 Apps for Enterprise to enable insider releases:User Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ Microsoft Office 2016 \ miscellaneous \ Show the option for Office Insider

MTP Advanced Hunting – Public free E-Mail services

Tue, 22 Sep 2020 22:06:48 +0000

Today I received an e-mail from a customer explaining to me that at times they have false positives with e-mail Impersonation. Depending on your configuration the e-mail will end up being moved to the user’s junk folder or into quarantine. When releasing such a message and have safety tips turned on, you might see the following message at the top of the message.

Reading Tip: Protect yourself from phishing schemes and other forms of online fraud

How to deploy your jump host in Azure

Sun, 29 Mar 2020 14:49:33 +0000

Due to the current CODV 19 pandemic, governments are urging their citizens to stay at home. For many people this means finding alternative ways to continue their work from home. This article is primarily aimed at IT administrators or IT consultants who do not have an existing solution in place and who are looking for a simple but secure solution to access their IT infrastructure remotely.

When saying existing solutions, I’m referring to remote access solutions like Citrix, Windows Virtual Desktop or corporate owned and security hardened Windows 10 notebooks with a VPN client, However not all companies have such solutions in place because maybe until recently there was no need for people to work remotely. With COVD 19 this all changed overnight.

User Spam & Phish Submissions configuration in Office 365 – Part 1

Sun, 19 Jan 2020 13:54:51 +0000

Yesterday I noticed a tweet from @Pawp81 about a new feature being rolled out in Office 365 to configure user submissions. So, let’s have a look at this. When enabling the ‘Report Message’ add-in in Office 365, users can report misclassified email, whether safe or malicious, to Microsoft and its affiliates for analysis. Until now IT admins had to deploy the ‘Report Message’ add-in to their end users by configuring the centralized add-in deployment within the Microsoft 365 admin center as described here Furthermore when IT admins wanted to receive a copy of a reported message, a transport rule had to be created as described here.

Microsoft Threat Protection – Using advanced hunting to see what's going on with your mail

Wed, 15 Jan 2020 22:09:35 +0000

Last December Microsoft introduced Microsoft Threat Protection (MTP) including advanced hunting that allows us to run queries across multiple data sources i.e. Microsoft Defender ATP and Office 365 ATP. If you haven’t heard yet about MTP I recommend reading Christian Müller’s blog post Microsoft Threat Protection – unified huntingNow while the primary purpose of the unified hunting capability is to find information about indicators and entities, we can also use it to get an overview of what’s going on inside the systems that feed information into MTP i.e. Office 365. So, I created a few simple queries that summarizes various attributes from the EmailEvents table.

Retrieving Office 365 roadmap information with PowerShell

Mon, 12 Jun 2017 21:51:12 +0000

Here’s a small cmdlet I wrote today to pull the Office 365 roadmap information with PowerShell.

Office 365 Centralized Deployment service

Sat, 10 Jun 2017 14:25:04 +0000

Just recently Microsoft announced the general availability of the Office 365 centralized deployment service. I have tested it and it really makes deploying Office Add-ins super easy. The add-in configuration and deployment can be managed through the Office 365 portal or using PowerShell.

For a quick overview watch the video “How to Deploy Office Add-ins within Your Organization”.

Now since I like using PowerShell, here’s a quick example how to enable and deploy an Office Add-in.

PowerShell Script - Get-MsolRoleMemberDetails

Sun, 20 Nov 2016 23:33:08 +0000

To get a list of all users that belong to a given role, the Microsoft Azure Active Directory module has a cmdlet Get-MsolRoleMember, however to run the cmdlet you must use the RoleObjectId parameter and provide a value. The possible values for RoleObjectId can be retrieved by running the Get-MsolRole cmdlet.

To simplify this, I wrote the Get-MsolRoleMemberDetails cmdlet. As you can see from the below screenshot, the list of available roles is dynamically populated.

Office 365 PowerShell script to retrieve AccountSku license information

Mon, 25 Apr 2016 21:00:39 +0000

A small PowerShell script that lists all users that have the specified Office 365 AccountSkuid enabled on their account.

PowerShell Script to remove Office 365 Service Plans from a user

Sun, 13 Dec 2015 21:09:16 +0000

When assigning an Office 365 license to a user, by default several service plans are enabled. When assigning an Office 365 E3 license to a user, the following service plans are enabled by default:

Azure Rights Management
Office 365 Pro Plus
Skype for Business Online (Plan 2)
Office Online
SharePoint Online (Plan 2)
Exchange Online (Plan 2)

From an end user perspective the user will see the following options when logging on to Office 365.

PowerShell Script to remove Office 365 Service Plans from a user

Sun, 13 Dec 2015 20:36:06 +0000

When assigning an Office 365 license to a user, by default several service plans are enabled. When assigning an Office 365 E3 license to a user, the following service plans are enabled by default:

Azure Rights Management
Office 365 Pro Plus
Skype for Business Online (Plan 2)
Office Online
SharePoint Online (Plan 2)
Exchange Online (Plan 2)

From an end user perspective the user will see the following options when logging on to Office 365.

PowerShell Script: Retrieve all Office 365 URLs and IP Ranges

Thu, 05 Feb 2015 23:21:03 +0000

This week I took the Office 365 Performance Management course on the Microsoft Virtual Academy. If you have any plans using Office 365 I strongly recommend taking this course. One of the topics that was often highlighted is the importance of having all Office 365 URLs and IP Ranges configured on the outbound allow list. The Office 365 URLs and IP Ranges are documented here and the changes to the list are described here.

New Group Policy Settings for Office 365

Fri, 02 May 2014 17:58:18 +0000

On April 28th 2014 Microsoft finally released an fix for the Office 2013 SP1 Office customization tool as the version released with SP1 caused some issues with Lync 2013 and OneDrive for Business. But there’s more in this update.A few new Group Policy settings for Office 365 are included as well.

Important. These new Group Policy settings only apply to Office 365 (click to run installations) and not to Office 2013 MSI based installations. The reason for this is because the settings relate to the update mechanism that’s build in to the Office 365 product.

Theme Configuration Group Policy support for Office 2013

Mon, 30 Sep 2013 21:29:49 +0000

As announced on the Office IT Pro blog a few days ago, there are updated Office 2013 administrative templates and Office updates that allow an administrator to pre-configure the Office 2013 Theme.

The term pre-configure is important, because the setting only applies as long as the user has not changed the theme before themselves via the GUI. When configuring the Theme via Group Policy, User Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ Microsoft Office 2013 \ Global Options Customize \ Default UI Theme, the setting is stored under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\office\15.0\common\default ui theme

How to partially remove the SkyDrive option in Office 2013 using Group Policy

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 19:05:46 +0000

If you have tried out the Office 2013 Preview you probably noticed the SkyDrive integration within the File Open and Save dialogs in Word, Excel and other Office Applications. Personally have started using SkyDrive all the time, but I can imagine that some companies rather do not want to see their users storing sensitive data on SkyDrive. So I wondered if this option could be disabled.

Well apparently there is a Group Policy setting for this called “Show SkyDrive Sign in” located under User Configuration / Policies / Administrative Templates / Microsoft Office 2013 / Miscellaneous

How to setup KMS on Server 2012 for activating Office 2013 Preview

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 21:17:59 +0000

Hey there, it’s been a while since I wrote the last blog post, but that is because I spend 2 excellent weeks at an Italian beach with my family and enjoyed “dolce far niente”. Now and then I did read some tweets so of course got notice of the Office 2013 Preview Microsoft released earlier last week. So now that I’m back I have started reading through the various documentations and so I came across the Microsoft Office 2013 Preview Volume License Pack that Microsoft released to activate Office 2013 Preview using KMS or Active Directory based activation.

Windows recommends PowerPoint Viewer 2007 though there is a 2010 version

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:42:35 +0000

While working on my Windows 8 test client, I downloaded a PowerPoint file and because I don’t have Office installed Windows prompts me how I would like to open this file. Knowing that it will point me to the PowerPoint Viewer I choose to look for an app on the web.

But surprisingly the Windows File Association information site recommendation lists Microsoft Power Point 2007 and PowerPoint Viewer 2007.

So I start to wonder whether there might be a 2010 version as well and indeed there is one it’s just not called PowerPoint Viewer 2010 but just PowerPoint Viewer.

How to prevent pending updates from installing when shutting down Windows

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 18:03:16 +0000

The meeting should have finished since 10 minutes but they keep on talking, you look at your watch and notice that you only have a few minutes until you need to leave the office so that you catch your train. Finally the call ended and you shutdown your machine, but then you get that message “Please do not power off or unplug your machine. Installing update 1 of 5”.

Microsoft Office 2010 System End User Training Toolkit

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 21:26:13 +0000

In addition to the Office 2010 Migration Guides that are available since a while Microsoft recently published the Microsoft Office 2010 System End User Training Toolkit. The Microsoft Office 2010 End User Training Kit is a set of end-user training content for Microsoft Office 2010 and includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote. Users can either download the full Office 2003 to 2010 or 2007 to 2010 upgrade Toolkit or select a training toolkit for an individual Office Application only.

ReadTip: Resources for Windows and Office license activation with XenDesktop

Sun, 04 Sep 2011 10:59:42 +0000

Below just a few resources I have collected related to Windows and Office license activation with XenDesktop. Licensing is not an exciting topic but we have to deal with it anyway.

KMS Configuration using Citrix Provisioning Services

Citrix Managing Microsoft KMS Volume Licensing

Citrix Configuring Microsoft MAK Volume Licensing

Citrix XenDesktop 5 Support Statement for Microsoft KMS activation with Machine Creation Services (MCS)

Licensing Windows for VDI environments

What is Microsoft VDA Licensing?

Office Communicator–Do Not Disturb

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 06:15:17 +0000

Nowadays most enterprises use some sort of instant messaging solution like Jabber or Microsoft Office Communicator which now is called Microsoft Lync.

While there are many advantages in using an instant messaging client such as quickly asking someone for information instead of writing an e-mail, or check someone’s availability for a short phone call, there are also some disadvantages. First people always expect to get an immediate response, second there is a risk that people get too much sidetracked.

ToolTip: Office 2010 Resource Kit Technical Library in Compiled Help format

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 19:10:42 +0000

For those that frequently need access to the Office 2010 Resource Kit, here’s an offline version available as downloadable CHM file. Download from here

In case you can’t open the CHM file, select file properties and Unlock the file.

ReadTip: Planning guide for Microsoft Office 2010

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 19:33:56 +0000

For anyone who is somehow involved in a Office 2010 deployment planning I strongly recommend reading the Planning Guide for Microsoft Office 2010. Microsoft just released an updated version. Don’t be shocked, the document counts 458 pages, but does contain a lot of useful and interesting information.

And in case you aren’t aware already about the KMS requirements for Office 2010, read the Office 2010 KMS Server Requirements blog post, I mention this often when speaking about Windows 7, Office 2010 and KMS, and it keeps being a big surprise.

ReadTip: Microsoft Office 2010 - Under the Hood Investments for Hardware and Performance

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 19:04:57 +0000

This whitepaper highlights the broad range of hardware supported by Microsoft® Office 2010 and describes the significant improvements in performance available in Office 2010. Results from internal testing by Microsoft are included to demonstrate the measurable performance gains users can experience when performing common tasks using different Office 2010 applications. These results indicate that in some cases uses can expect performance gains of 90% or higher compared with using corresponding Office 2007 applications.

ToolTip: UbitMenu for Office 2007 and 2010

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 17:46:29 +0000

For those that do still struggle with the Office Ribbon here’s a nice add-on from Ubit Software that brings back the classic menu for Office 2007 and Office 2010.

UbitMenu for Office 2007 and 2010 is free for private use. Download UbitMenu from here

ReadTip: For IT professionals: Deployment guide for Microsoft Office 2010

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:33:09 +0000

Microsoft recently published a deployment guide for Microsoft Office 2010. The content in this book is a copy of selected content from the Office 2010 Resource Kit Technical library. Download the guide from here

ReadTip: How Microsoft IT deployed Office 2010

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 17:15:38 +0000

If you are planning deploying Office 2010 throughout an enterprise read this.

Office 2010 KMS Server Requirements

Wed, 12 May 2010 21:54:12 +0000

Although I have been working with Office 2010 for a while, I wasn’t aware of the KMS Server specific requirements until today when we were asked to load the Office 2010 KMS key into one of our customers KMS servers.

A dedicated server is not needed to run KMS for Office 2010. A KMS host is a lightweight service, and you can co-host an Office 2010 and Windows KMS host. However, only Windows Server 2003, volume editions of Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2 are supported as Office 2010 KMS hosts

What you should know about Office 2010 64-bit

Thu, 06 May 2010 20:13:00 +0000

If you are in the process of deciding whether to deploy Office 2010 32-bit or 64-bit, I recommend to read through the following content. Note that Microsoft recommends installing Office 32 Bit even on Windows 7 64 bit.

TechNet - 64-bit editions of Office 2010
Understanding 64-Bit Office
Compatibility Between the 32-bit and 64-bit Versions of Office 2010
64-bit Client Installation of Microsoft Office 2010
Office Resource Kit Blog - Office 2010 64-bit editions
4SysOps - Office 2010 – 64-bit vs. 32-bit – Part 1: Installation
Microsoft Office 2010 Technology Guarantee: FAQ

ReadTip: Deployment guide for Microsoft Office 2010

Tue, 04 May 2010 19:43:34 +0000

This book covers information about the fundamentals of Deploying Microsoft Office 2010. Get it here

Office 2010 Administrative Template files and Office Customization Tool

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 19:06:40 +0000

Microsoft published the Office 2010 Administrative Template files (ADM, ADMX/ADML) and Office Customization Tool. Get it from here

Office 2010 Resources

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:48:15 +0000

On march 4th Microsoft communicated on their Office 2010 Engineering blog that they are on Schedule with Office 2010 and will release it to manufacturing next month. For Enterprise customers Office 2010 will be available as of May 12th, consumers will get Office 2010 in June.

Microsoft Office 2010 Site

Planning, configuration, deployment and compatibility guides can be found here

Microsoft Office ONRAMP Site

Office OnRamp is the BPIO execution package that launches Office 2010 to the Enterprise business. Office OnRamp helps you drive the conversations you need to have with TDMs, ITPros and end users to renew EAs, drive Office 2010 deployment and win new EA business. OnRamp provides a complete set of orchestrated activities and marketing materials that give you the tools you need to demonstrate the value of Office 2010 in the BPIO framework and WIN!

Cannot start Microsoft Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:33:24 +0000

…….That’s the message i got yesterday when I wanted to start Outlook 2007. I solved the problem after having found the solution on MSOutlook.info Running the following command fixed the issue.

outlook.exe /resetnavpane

A complete reference of all the Microsoft Outlook 2007 command-line switches can be found here

Office 2007 Trusted location configuration

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 17:14:02 +0000

When opening an Excel file that contains macros, Microsoft Excel 2007 shows a security warning as shown in the picture below and disables the macros.

To continue using the Excel sheet and its macros, you must first enable then by clicking on the “Options…” button and selecting the “Enable this content” option. This is quite annoying if you must use that same file on a regular basis. You could of course completely disable this security warning on your entire system, but then there is a risk of opening content once that could contain unwanted code.

Microsoft Office 2010 Beta Silent Install

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 21:57:41 +0000

Being one of the lucky ones who was able to sign-up to the Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview program, I have started looking at the deployment of Microsoft Office 2010 today.

My first observation was that unfortunately the provided documentation seems to be ahead of the Office Installation sources that have been made available for download. I noticed this when making an attempt to run the setup.exe /admin command which would normally launch the Office Customization Wizard, but it wouldn’t because the necessary components that are usually located within the Admin folder aren’t available yet, in fact the whole Admin folder as such seems to be missing. OK, so no advanced customizations for now, back to basic.

Microsoft Office Labs

Sat, 23 May 2009 09:10:17 +0000

What technologies will we use in the near future, how will our work environment look like? Watch the video below or explore the Microsoft Office Labs web site and see how Microsoft thinks this is going to look like.

Microsoft Office 2010

Sat, 16 May 2009 00:12:04 +0000

Office 2010 is underway. If you’re interested to join the technical preview, register yourself on the Office 2010 website. http://www.office2010themovie.com/

As announced on TechEd, the limited technical preview program will kick of in July 2009. For more information read the Office 2010 blog.

Office 2007 Service Pack 2 – All you need to know

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:10:29 +0000

Just came across these nice blog posts about the new Office 2007 Service Pack 2:

Office 2007 Service Pack 2 Kiosk

Office 2007 Service Pack 2 Kiosk, with more staples

Classic Menu in Microsoft Word 2007

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 15:34:43 +0000

With the release of the Office 2007 suite, Microsoft made some radical changes to the UI. Gone were the menus and toolbars, replaced by the “Ribbon”

I’ve seen many users (including myself) struggling with the new user interface. It’s not that the concept of the Ribbon isn’t good, it’s rather the time it takes until you find the new location within the Ribbon to do something you have been doing for years with the old classic menu with just a few clicks.

Font Collection

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 23:31:33 +0000

Yesterday evening I was helping out my wife with creating some invitation cards for a children event that takes place during spring vacation. For the juniors there was a picture on the front side of the invitation that was okay, but we both decided that for the teen-agers we must use a different theme.

Finding the right picture wasn’t easy, so we decided to just write text, but to use a cool font. Although Office 2007 already comes with a large number of fonts, we were just looking for something different.

Don't send outlook messages without subject

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:13:36 +0000

This probably has happened to each of us, writing an e-mail, then added the recipients and then clicked the send button, and as you clicked it, you notice that you forgot to fill in the subject.

To prevent this from happening, I found the following script today that will bring up an alert when trying to send an e-mail without a subject.

To create the macro in Outlook 2003, go to Tools -> Macro -> Visual Basic Editor (this feature has to be installed). In Microsoft Office Outlook Objects -> ThisOutlookSession, then paste the following code:

Outlook add-in for Office Communicator

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 15:47:04 +0000

Those of you who work with Microsoft Outlook 2007 and Office Communicator 2007 might be interested in this one.

On the MSDN code Gallery you can find a Communicator Add In for Outlook 2007. Instead of switching between the two applications, the Add In embeds your Office Communicator contacts in Outlook 2007 as shown in the picture below.

Conference Call Rules

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:38:04 +0000

As part of my job i am joining conference calls quite frequently, although whenever i can I stay away from them as mostly they aren’t productive, especially when there is more than 5 people in a call, as mostly you have 3 people having a dialogue and the rest stays quiet anyway even after the call ends :-)

But what I find most annoying and impolite is when people join that don’t understand some basic rules for participating conference calls. Noise, speaking in the background, hungry dogs are things that should be avoided when people join a conference call.