Shock and Horror About How the New Outlook Synchronizes User Data

A Nov 9 article published by a German website expressed concern about the way that the new Outlook synchronizes user email data to Azure. There’s nothing to worry about. Outlook synchronizes email data to be able to process the data to support features that the user’s email server might not. It’s what the Outlook mobile client has done for years.

Latest AAD Connect Removes On-Premises Disabled User Accounts from Azure AD

Microsoft pushed out version 2.0.88.0 of the AAD Connect synchronization utility earlier this month. Unfortunately, the new software removes disabled on-premises user accounts from Azure AD, which means that on-premises shared mailboxes disappear for cloud users. Microsoft has released version 2.0.89.0 but maybe it’s better to go back to a version that you know works. At least until after the holidays.

Synchronizing Sensitivity Labels to Update SharePoint Online Sites

The SharePoint Online admin center displays an insight card for the number of unlabeled sites in the tenant. For some reason, many of the labels assigned to Microsoft 365 Groups and Teams had not reached SharePoint. Some PowerShell does the job to fetch the sensitivity label information from Exchange Online and update sites with the missing label information.

Microsoft Adds Service Plan to Control Offline Synchronization of Lists

OneDrive for Business

Microsoft 365 notification MC277196 informs tenants about a new service plan to control the Nucleus synchronization engine. In effect, this means you can disable offline working with Microsoft Lists. The new service plan is due to turn up in Office 365 SKUs in September 2021. Lists will get a new icon to show their synchronization status. Apart from the delayed deployment of Nucleus, it’s all good news.

Microsoft Clamps Down on PST Storage in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business

Microsoft will soon impose a limit on the number of PST versions kept by SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. PST files have no business being in cloud storage, so this is a reasonable step. People shouldn’t keep PSTs in SharePoint or OneDrive document libraries and organizations shouldn’t let them. In fact, you should block PSTs from OneDrive synchronization and make plans to eradicate these pesky files.

Better Membership Synchronization Between Azure AD and Teams

A new Graph API and the Teams AadSync process improve how Teams synchronizes group membership information with Azure AD. The older background sync process was tied to the Teams client and didn’t work so well in practice, especially when scaled up. Things look good for the new mechanism.

How to Resolve Duplicate Outlook for iOS Contacts

Outlook Mobile synchronizes contacts from Exchange Online to iOS. Sometimes errors happen and duplicate contacts result. It’s easy to resolve the problem by forcing a complete resynchronization of contacts to rebuild what’s on the iOS device.

Using Planner in Offline Mode

Microsoft Planner is able to work in offline mode when disconnected from the network. In this article, we describe what the browser client can and cannot do when it’s not connected. The thing is that Microsoft hasn’t told anyone that Planner can work offline. No blog, no documentation, and no Office 365 notification. Isn’t that strange?

OneDrive Completes Roll-Out of Differential Sync

The OneDrive development team has announced that the roll-out of differential sync is now complete. Large files can synchronize without difficulty because only the changed bits need to be transmitted to the server. This isn’t an excuse to start uploading MP4 files to OneDrive, but you can now do it more easily.

Outlook’s Hybrid Mode Can Help in Flaky Network Conditions

Outlook logo

Outlook 2013 introduced the concept of hybrid mode (sometimes called Exchange Fast Access) to allow clients configured in cached Exchange mode to fetch data direct from the server when possible. The mode works well, except when you’re connected on a poor network as the attempts to fetch data from the server might cause Outlook to hang. A registry setting gives a way to force Outlook to operate in classic cached mode and use the OST exclusively when it needs data.

Outlook Increases 500 Shared Folder Limit to 5000

Microsoft has implemented a new synchronization mechanism in Outlook ProPlus to deal more efficiently with shared folders. The new approach increases the limit from 500 to 5,000 folders and is a more elegant and precise solution. Users who manage other peoples’ mailboxes will appreciate the change after they install build 11629.20196 or later.