Some Notes on the Machines

This article states that it applies to click-to-run 2013 and later, which certainly includes 365. Its registry entries permit automatic updates to be turned off and on, and also, for the on-PC UI item to be turned off and on too.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2753538/automatic-updating-for-office-2013-and-office-2016-click-to-run-is-not-enabled

Something very like a best practices analyzer / BPA for Office, 32-bit and 64-bit, versions 2007 and newer, both MSI and click-to-run:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36852

As of “Wave 15” of Office 365, there is enterprise-wide, a.k.a. global, automatic signature capability. It’s in Exchange -> mail flow -> rules, and it involves setting a disclaimer message, but there is extensive user-data variable substitution. A full description is here:

http://365command.com/justins-tech-tip-of-the-week-global-email-signatures-for-office-365/

There are many situations in which a recent version of Excel will report that there is not enough available memory or disk space, where there very clearly is. To knock this one out, go to File menu and Options, click Trust Center on the left, click Trust Center Settings… on the right, and then Protected View on the left. Uncheck everything in there, and OK all the way out. Close Excel and try it again. Problem eliminated.

There is a mixture of public reference statements as to whether or not Previous Versions, also called Versioning, is enabled in OneDrive for Business, which is really a second frontend for Sharepoint. Recently a new installation was studied and there was a mix of automatic activations of Versioning for different libraries and lists made, without clear logic behind. Versioning is essential as a backup method for many related uses, so it becomes essential to know how to turn it on automatically for all libraries and lists of an entire Office 365 tenant. And right now, this appears to be the only published way, a contributed script in the Office 365 Gallery:

https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/office/Enable-versioning-for-all-ae5cfb5d

In order to use it, one first installs:

• PowerShell 3.0 if you don’t have it,
• The SharePoint Online Management Shell, and
• The Sharepoint Online Client Components SDK

Then log into the Office 365 tenant as an administrator, and click Sharepoint. You’ll be looking at the page for a URL something like this:

https://partofmydomain.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/sharepoint.aspx

Now run PowerShell as administrator, take the “partofmydomain” chunk of text from your browser, and form the SharePoint admin URL. Don’t browse to it, but you’ll need it shortly:

https://partofmydomain-admin.sharepoint.com

Now you’ll need the script from the web page referenced at the top of this article, saved to a location to which you can CD in PowerShell. Get to that location in the shell, and run ‘notepad versioning.ps1’, towards the end you’ll see two path lines:

Add-Type -Path "c:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\15\ISAPI\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll"  
Add-Type -Path "c:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\15\ISAPI\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.dll"

The 15’s need to be changed to 16’s to match the current version of the Sharepoint installables above. Once you have this, run:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

in PowerShell if you haven’t already, and then:

./Versioning.ps1

It will ask you for the URL; give it the one you constructed above. Then it will ask you for admin credentials. Once it has them, it will run through every list and library, and if Versioning can be turned on, it will be.

By default, at least sometimes, Microsoft OneDrive does not have any backup mechanism in place at all. There is a Previous Versions system however which can be turned on and off:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Restore-a-previous-version-of-a-document-in-OneDrive-for-Business-159cad6d-d76e-4981-88ef-de6e96c93893?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

We now have the Office 365 Support and Recovery Assistant for client software support, and also the Microsoft Office 365 Client Performance Analyzer Office 365 Client Performance Analyzer for network performance issues.

Reportedly in February 2016, Microsoft began to automatically upgrade all Office 365 customers to version 2016. One has to search for the words “February” and “automatic” in the page below to see it:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3097292

Among many others, this can cause major problems for users of QuickBooks of all versions before 2016; all integration with Excel fails, and we can expect other problems (e.g., Outlook integration) as well. There is no easy revert procedure, we just have this:

https://community.office365.com/en-us/f/172/t/409681

There is a method to prevent the upgrade via Group Policy:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3097292

If it’s not working or not working well for you, try this:

1. In the Dashboard, Disable Office 365 integration and Azure integration. It’s two separate steps. If you disable just Office 365 integration you won’t be able to continue.
2. Set up Office 365 integration.
3. See lots of interesting information come up quite quicly, in the Office 365 tab after you restart the Dashboard, to confirm that your integration is working very nicely.
4. If it didn’t work well, open your firewall per Microsoft, and test again.

If your firewall lets you bypass data checks by FQDN, this works well; just import this into an alias and use that as the “To” for a rule called ExchangeOnline, for ports 80 and 443:

*.office.com
*.office365.com
*.office.net
*.onmicrosoft.com
*.microsoftonline.com
*.microsoft.com
*.live.com
*.windows.net
*.microsoftonline-p.com
*.microsoftonline-p.net
*.microsoftonlineimages.com
*.msecnd.net
*.msocdn.com
*.glbdns.microsoft.com
*.activedirectory.windowsazure.com
*.verisign.com
*.symcb.com
*.symcd.com
*.omniroot.com
*.geotrust.com
*.entrust.net
*.public-trust.com

The above is condensed from here. It includes only Exchange Online, there are some other items to be added for other Office 365 services including Skype etcetera.