Outlook sign in/login issue

If you are experiencing the following, with Microsoft Outlook on a Windows computer:

– Outlook is reporting it is “disconnected”

– Outlook flashes a small window and the window disappears repeatedly

– Outlook displays the behavior as seen in the video below:

 

Take the following actions:

– Quit/close/exit Outlook and all other Microsoft Office applications; Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.

– Start Word, click Account, click Sign Out, click Yes/Sign Out

– Quit/close/exit Word

– Start Outlook, click Sign in, proceed with the sign-in process

 

After doing the sign out/sign in actions above Outlook should work as expected. If it does not work as expected, please try restarting your computer.

Outlook shared calendar synchronization errors

Outlook shared calendar synchronization errors

The steps below can be done if you see multiple “synchronization errors” due to adding a shared calendar to Outlook on a Windows computer.

“Synchronization errors” found in the “Sync Issues” folder:

will indicate some wording about:

“Synchronizing server changes in folder ‘Colleague Name – Calendar’
Downloading from server ‘https://outlook.office365.com/’
Error synchronizing folder
[80070005-508-80070005-560]
You do not have sufficient permission to perform this operation on this object. See the folder contact or your system administrator”

Steps to take to attempt to resolve this issue:

1) Quit Outlook.

2) Right-click the lower-left Windows Start icon, click Run.

 

3) In the “Open:” field of the “Run” window, type:

Outlook.exe /resetnavpane

click OK.

4) Outlook will open. Let Outlook remain open for a while; 20, 30 seconds. Quit Outlook.

5) Right-click the lower-left Windows Start icon, click Run.

6) In the “Open:” field of the “Run” window, type:

Outlook.exe /cleanviews

click OK.

7) Outlook will open. The synchronization errors should clear up.

Microsoft Office Outlook default mail client error message

Microsoft Office Outlook default mail client error message

If you are using an iSchool-issued Windows laptop and continually seeing a pop-up message, with the wording “Either there is no default mail client or the current mail client cannot fulfill the messaging request. Please run Microsoft Outlook and set it as the default mail client.”, follow the steps below:


1) Quit Outlook.


2) If you are off campus, connect to the Husky OnNet VPN by following these steps:

https://itconnect.uw.edu/connect/uw-networks/about-husky-onnet/use-husky-onnet/#windows


3) Right-click the lower-left Windows icon, click Windows PowerShell (Admin), click Yes.


4) In the “PowerShell” application window that opens, type:

gpupdate /force

press “Enter” on your keyboard

after a few seconds, you should see wording indicating “Computer Policy” and “User Policy” updated successfully.


If you see wording that the “Computer Policy” and “User Policy” updated successfully, the Outlook “…no default mail client…” message should stop appearing.

Focused Inbox

Microsoft introduced “Focused Inbox” for Outlook. The idea of “Focused Inbox”, is that Outlook will “learn” to automatically sort emails into two “tabs” in your inbox: “Focused” and “Other.” “Important” emails will be sorted into the “Focused” tab of your Inbox. Less important emails will be sorted into the “Other” tab of your Inbox.

Full documentation about Focused Inbox can be found at the link below:

Microsoft Focused Inbox documentation

A previous version of this feature, named “Clutter”, should be turned off. Steps to turn off “Clutter” can be found at the link below:

Microsoft documentation for turning off “Clutter”

Using Microsoft 365 for Shared UW NetIDs

Unless there is a specific reason not to, we recommend that all Shared NetIDs use UW Microsoft 365 (Office 365) for email. Some of the reasons are HIPAA and FERPA compatibility and the ability for us (or even you) to manage who has access to the email for this account. Here is how to make that happen.

  • Contact the iSchool IT Help Desk and tell us what your Shared NetID is and that you want to change the email forwarding to UW Microsoft 365 (Office 365).
  • We will then endorse this NetID for an UW Microsoft 365 (Office 365) license.
  • We will then ask you to make us an Admin for this NetID so that we can change the UW Email Forwarding.
  • Once the email forwarding has been changed, we will grant you access to the Exchange Online Mailbox for the NetID and walk you through the process of adding this account to Outlook or accessing it via OWA.

How to Create a Rule for Outlook or OWA

Sorting email into folders automatically can be a huge time saver and can keep you focused on the messages that demand your immediate attention. You can create rules to let Outlook or OWA (Outlook Web App) sort them into the folder of your choice. Rules can sort messages based on the sender, the subject, the recipient or a combination of various characteristics. When you are creating a rule for Outlook, make sure that:

RULES

  • If you have a UW Spam Gauge rule applied, always move the Spam rule to the top of your list of rules so that it is processed first;
  • All your rules are server-side unless you are creating rules for client only actions, such as coloring your emails or otherwise personalizing your email. You can make your rules on OWA to ensure it’s server-side.

Here is an article from Microsoft about how to make rules in Outlook:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/manage-email-messages-by-using-rules-c24f5dea-9465-4df4-ad17-a50704d66c59

And one about how to make rules in OWA:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/inbox-rules-in-outlook-edea3d17-00c9-434b-b9b7-26ee8d9f5622

UNREAD MAIL

Once you have rules in place that sort your email you need the ability to find them. This is best done using the Unread Mail Search Folder:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/View-only-unread-messages-F2C8450C-9CD0-4037-A5D3-26F6946727CA

Subscribe a UW Mailman list to a UW SharePoint Announcement List

Sometimes it’s easier to send SharePoint Announcements out to a Mailman list that your users are already subscribed to rather than trying to get everyone to browse to your Announcement List and subscribe themselves or to manually subscribe everyone yourself.

Another benefit of this method is subscribers of your mailing list are already used to receiving messages from the list so this won’t be such a new thing (although the email address that posts these messages will be new).

Lastly, SharePoint will archive the announcements in a way that is easier to browse than a Mailman archive.

Here is how iSchool IT did this.

Create a Shared UW NetID

  • Ideally, you will create a new/unique NetID just for this purpose. You don’t want this email address being used for anything else and you don’t want this SharePoint/Mailman relationship to suddenly break for any reason. A dedicated NetID for each Mailman list is best.
  • You can get a Shared UW NetID here:

https://uw.service-now.com/sp?id=sc_cat_item&sys_id=61fc4ab50fc3e7006cad419ce1050e78

  • Make sure this NetID has a strong password and record it somewhere, it only has one function so you won’t need to remember it once this has been configured.

Forward UW email

Provision Office 365

If your SharePoint Announcement List is hosted on SharePoint Online, you will need to provision the Office 365 service for the Shared UW NetID. You can do that here: https://provision.uw.edu/

If you don’t provision the service, Office 365 will not recognize the account and will see it as being outside of the UW domain. Provisioning should not be required if your SharePoint List is on-premise.

Add the NetID to SharePoint

You can’t subscribe to a SharePoint Announcement List unless you have access to it, the easiest way to grant these shared accounts access to the List is to add the NetID you just provisioned directly to this list with the Read permission.

Subscribe the NetID to the Announcement List

  • Browse to your SharePoint Announcement List using using the NetID you just provisioned.
  • In the Modern view, click the ellipsis in the top nav > Alert me
  • In the Classic view, click the List tab and then Alert Me > Set alert on this list
  • We left all the defaults alone since we don’t post announcements very often but you are of course free to adjust any variable or interval as it best suits your needs.
  • Click OK to save your alert preferences.

Allow the Announcement List to post to your Mailman list

  • Browse to the administrative interface of your Mailman list with an account that is an Administrator for this list.
  • Click Privacy options > Sender filters

If your SharePoint site is on SharePoint Online (https://uwnetid.sharepoint.com/)

  • Add no-reply@sharepointonline.com to the “List of non-member addresses whose postings should be automatically accepted.” field and submit your changes.

If your SharePoint site is on premise (https://sharepoint.washington.edu/)

  • Add a_spnotification@u.washington.edu to the “List of non-member addresses whose postings should be automatically accepted.” field and submit your changes.

Qualify alias as explicit To or Cc

  • Browse to the administrative interface of your Mailman list with an account that is an Administrator for this list.
  • Click Privacy options > Recipient filters
  • Add the Shared UW NetID email address to the “Alias names (regexps) which qualify as explicit to or cc destination names for this list.” Be sure to use the exact same format (@uw.edu, @u.washington.edu, etc.) as you did when you set up the forwarding.

Done! Now every time you post a new SharePoint Announcement to your Announcement List it will be sent to your Mailman list. Feel free to test before you need it, we suggest making the subject and body of your test post an obvious test so users recognize this.

Caveats

  • If you are not creating a new shared UW NetID and instead recycling an old one and find that it is not being recognized by Office 365 even after you provision the Office 365 service for it, you might need to reset the password. UW-IT has a policy that all shared accounts (and perhaps all accounts?) that are not logged into for a year are deactivated. Resetting the password will activate it again. Once this has been done it will take a couple of hours for Office 365 to recognize it.
  • We also recommend that you add these dedicated accounts to this UW Group here (using the UW Groups web interface) to prevent them from getting deactivated in the future.
    • u_msinf_delou_<ou-name>_accountsthatdonotlogin
    • Where “ou-name” is the name of your delegated OU.