by Steve Galloway | Dec 16, 2014
This article explains how to connect Outlook 2007 to Exchange Online email services on Office 365. Business Premium and Enterprise users should download Office 2013 App suite from the Office 365 portal. . Outlook 2007 can be connected to Exchange Online, however its architecture was not designed with any anticipation of Microsoft’s Cloud computing services in mind. Outlook 2010 was the first release of Outlook that included considerations for Office 365.
In this respect, Outlook 2007 is not an ideal solution for business users. Outlook 2007 users who do not want to purchase Outlook 2013 for desktop, or do not have access to Outlook 2013 App via their Office 365 subscriptions, should consider using Outlook Web Access (OWA). OWA is a fully specified browser-based alternative to desktop Outlook solutions, and we have experience of companies using OWA as their principle email client to save licensing costs.
Connect Outlook 2007 to Exchange Online
NOTE: Outlook 2007 supports only one Exchange connection per Outlook profile. If Outloo returns an error when you try to add a second Exchange connection to an Outlook 2007 profile, you may need to create a new profile before you can use an Exchange connection with Outlook 2007. For information, see “What else do I need to know?” later in this article.
- Open Outlook 2007. If the Outlook 2007 Startup wizard displays automatically, on the first page of the wizard, click Next. Then, on the E-mail Accounts page of the wizard, click Next again to set up an email account. If the Outlook 2007 Startup wizard does not appear, navigate to the Tools menu and click Account Settings. In the Account Settings dialog box, on the E-mail tab, click New.
- On the Auto Account Setup page, Outlook may try to automatically fill in the Your Name and E-mail Address settings based on how you are logged on to your computer. If the settings are filled in and they are correct, click Next so that Outlook can establish your settings. If the settings in the Auto Account Setup page are not filled in or are inaccurate or wrong, do the following:
- If the settings on the Auto Account Setup page aren’t filled in for you, type the correct settings based on the information that was provided to you by the person who manages your email account.
- If the name in the Your Name box is not correct, you may need to reset the options on the Auto Account Setup page before you can edit your name. To reset the options, select and then clear the check box next to Manually configure server settings or additional server types.
After you click Next on the Auto Account Setup page of the wizard, Outlook will perform an online search to find your email server settings.Outlook 2007 will display a message that asks you to allow a website to automatically set up your account. Outlook must connect to that website periodically to make sure your account is up to date. If you don’t want to see this message every time Autodiscover runs, select Don’t ask me about this website again, and then click Allow.
Outlook 2007 will continue setting up your account. You will be asked for your user name and password before Outlook 2007 can connect to your account. Make sure you enter your full email address (for example, tony@contoso.com) as your user name. You may be prompted to enter your user name and password several times before you connect.
- If Outlook is able to set up your account, you will see the following text: Your email account is successfully configured to use Microsoft Exchange. Click Finish.
- If Outlook is not able to set up your account, see “What else do I need to know?” later in this topic.
What else do I need to know?
- If your email account is the type that requires registration, you need to register it the first time you sign in to Outlook Web App. You won’t be able to connect to your email account using Outlook if you haven’t registered your account through Outlook Web App. After you sign in to your account, sign out. Then try to connect using Outlook. For more information about how to sign in to your account using Outlook Web App, see Sign in to Outlook Web App.
- If Auto Account Setup can’t successfully connect you to your account, do one or more of the following:
- Wait a few minutes and try again.
- If you need to connect to your email account immediately, use a Web browser or an email program that supports POP or IMAP to connect to your account using Outlook Web App. For information about how to connect using a Web browser, see Sign in to Outlook Web App. For information about how to connect using a POP or IMAP email program, see Use IMAP or POP email programs.
- If you know the name of the person who manages your mailbox (sometimes called an email administrator), contact them and report the error you’re getting when you try to connect with Outlook.
- Outlook 2007 supports only one Exchange email account per Outlook profile. If you try to add a second Exchange connection while Outlook is running, you may get the following error. You cannot add a Microsoft Exchange account to this profile while Outlook is running. Exit Outlook and use the Mail icon in the Control Panel to add a Microsoft Exchange account.
- If you already have an Exchange connection in your Outlook profile, you may need to delete the current profile or create a new profile before you can follow the steps in this topic. For more information about Outlook profiles, see Add or remove an email account at the Microsoft Office Online Web site.
by Steve Galloway | Dec 4, 2014
Microsoft is expanding its built-in mobile device management (MDM) features built for Office 365.
Small businesses tend to adopt a BYOD (bring your own device) policy to mobile devices when granting email and in-house business information to its employees. However, as this article explains, giving employees wider access to business IT networks poses serious data protection and security risks.
The new tools enable network administrators to selectively restrict senstitive business information so that in the event of, for instance, a temporary loss emails and Word docs can be wiped from a mobile device while leaving an end user’s personal data and apps in place.
Large businesses use applications like Microsoft Intune to automate deployments and management of large mobile device fleets. Office 365 includes provisions for basic device management in its business and enterprise Office 365 services. In early 2015, these tools are being expanded to include:
- configurable security policies on devices that connect to Office 365 to ensure that Office 365 business email and documents are synchronized only on phones and tablets that are managed by your company. For instance, whereas employees could potentially connect multiple devices including home PCs to services, Office 365 administrators can manage which devices a user can authenticate.
- configurable security policies such as device level pin lock and jailbreak detection on devices to help prevent unauthorized users from accessing corporate email and data when a device is misplaced, lost or stolen.
- remove Office 365 corporate data from authenticated devices when an employee leaves an organization, while leaving their personal data, photos and apps intact.
MDM for Office 365 is built directly into the productivity apps like Word, Excel, Outlook, etc., and mobile device policies can be managed with MDM within the Office 365 administration portal using the Office 365 user interface and wizard-based workflows. MDM generates ueful management reports detailing information about connected devices, including automated Wi-Fi, VPN and email profiles. Intune also provides bulk tools for pre-configuring large scale application delpoyment and can provide users with a self-service portal where they can enroll their own devices and install corporate apps.
by Steve Galloway | Nov 28, 2014
Shared mailboxes make it easy for a specific group of people to monitor and send email from a common account, like public email addresses (for example, info@companyname.com or contact@companyname.com). When a person in the group replies to a message sent to the shared mailbox, the email appears to be from the shared mailbox, not from the individual user.
Shared mailboxes are a great way to handle customer email queries because several people in your organization can share the responsibility of monitoring the mailbox and responding to queries. Your customer queries get quicker answers and related emails are stored in one mailbox. The mailbox delivers to users’ OWA and Outlook desktop clients. However, shared email accounts do not forward to mobile devices. The reason is that shared accounts are aimed at departmental use so that the first available person with office resources can deal with incoming mail.
A shared mailbox does not have its own user name and password. You cannot log into a shared mailbox directly using Outlook or Outlook Web App. You must first be granted permissions to the shared mailbox, and then you access it using Outlook or Outlook Web App. You don’t need to assign licenses to shared mailboxes, except when they are over their storage quota of 10 gigabytes (GB). If your shared mailbox goes over its quota of 10GB and you don’t assign it a license, after one month the shared mailbox will be locked. You can avoid having to assign the license by using archiving to avoid going over your quota.
by Steve Galloway | Nov 28, 2014
Exchange’s “Connected Account”s feature enables Exchange Online users to connect up to 5 external email accounts (like GMail, Yahoo, Live/Hotmail) to their internal email account in Exchange Online, and then use Outlook Web App to interact with all their messages in one place. Connected Accounts automatically synchronize upon sign-in to Outlook Web App; users can also manually synchronize the accounts from Outlook Web App. Administrators can enable and disable this feature for specific users or all users through the Exchange Admin Center.
by Steve Galloway | Nov 26, 2014
Exchange 2013 provides comprehensive capabilities to help organisations identify, monitor, and protect sensitive information from leaking to third parties.Microsoft provides standardised regional libraries of policies to cope with management of credit card and financial information, personal information, and a variety of other metrics to help organisations comply with data protection laws according to the countries in which users are situated.
Office 365 is the only “off the shelf” product acceptable to US Federal Government and EU Covernment purchasing departments, and Microsoft’s DLP provisioning i relied on overwhelmingly by instititions large and small to establish data protection policies with the minimum of additional cost.
In Exchange 2013 Micorosoft introduced Document Fingerprinting and Policy Tips in Outlook Web App (OWA) to enhance document control and user education. Document Fingerprinting enables you to match documents that are derived from the same template.
This can be useful for organizations that frequently use standard forms or templates, for instance a law firm that uses a standard template to draft patent applications that it files on behalf of its clients.
Policy tips are designed to notify users in your organization when they are sending sensitive information over email. Policy Tips are similar to MailTips, and you can use them in Outlook in several different ways to help users avoid sending sensitive information in email. For example, you can use Policy Tips to:
- Inform users of the presence of sensitive information and optionally block the email from being sent.
- Educate your users through a Notify Policy Tip when sensitive content is present in their emails.
- Empower your users to make case by case decisions by allowing them to override the sensitive information policy—with the option of including a business justification for the override.
by Steve Galloway | Nov 26, 2014
Delegated network administrators are certified Microsoft Cloud Partners who meet Microsoft standards for planning, deployment, and ongoing support of Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, and other Microsoft Cloud product lines. Delegated administrators are experienced engineers and consultants who are capable of managing large and small installations according to Microsoft’s benchmarks. ComStat is a Microsoft Cloud Partner and certified delegated administrator.
Delegated administrators perform tasks like liasing with Microsoft Support, setting up mailboxes, adding or removing users and groups, data migration, managing domain names and zone records, managing security policies, managing Exchange-connected mobile devices, managing transport, DLP, and other Exchange services, etc. Whereas small businesses are often faced with steep learning curves and under-utilized software, delegated administrators provide a reliable point of contact to advise business owners and implement application features that are beyond the scope of limited in-house resources.
Delegated administrators allow users to get the maximum resources from Microsoft applications.
A delegated administrator assumes the same rights as a global administrator, who is typically the owner of subscribed services. However, the owner/global administrator have the right to withdraw or reassign delegated administrator rights. Office 365 administrator rights extend to include the following privileges:
- global administration
- delegated administration
- billing administration
- password administration
- services administration
- user management administration
