Patch Lady – Office 365 prioritization

Topic

New Reply

Recently Office 365/Outlook on click to run has made a change in behavior… as noted on Office uservoice… After the release of 16.0.6741.2017, the Cl
[See the full post at: Patch Lady – Office 365 prioritization]

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

8 users thanked author for this post.

lurks about, Dayrak, flackcatcher, abbodi86, woody, Chris B, Pepsiboy, PhotM

Reply | Quote

Replies

Outrageous response by Microsoft, but I’m not surprised, given that people keep buying the products they’re complaining about. The solution is to show Microsoft who’s boss and migrate away from their products. Gripes and protests notwithstanding, Microsoft decision-makers will conclude that the products are acceptable as presented so long as customers keep shelling out money for them.

It’s high time to vote with our dollars. There are viable alternatives to Outlook and MS Office.

 

Keep Running Windows 7 Safely for Years to Come  
Make Windows 10 look and work like Windows 7

1 user thanked author for this post.

Lars220

Reply | Quote

I am not sure I really understand what they are doing here, but it just emphasises that, as a personal user, I really must move away from Office when my current licences for Office 2007 and 2010 are no longer viable. This probably applies to all personal users…. perhaps.

Chris
Win 10 Pro x64 Group A

Reply | Quote

Here’s a much better regedit:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Setup]
“DisableOffice365SimplifiedAccountCreation”=dword:00000001

Nukes the infuriating nonsense altogether and lets you create your account normally, without wasting your time with guessing.

Reply | Quote

Unbelievable. And that response…. so very old-Microsoft.

Reply | Quote

One of my customers has Office 365 Business Premium. Part of my job there is to set up new Windows 10 computers, and install Office 365 on these computers. Without the user’s email password, I can install the software, but I can’t present them a computer which is completely ready to go, because the user must go through a convoluted, non-intuitive activation process the first time they run Office 365 on that computer. There is no way that I, as an email administrator, can have everything completely ready for them.

I called Microsoft tech support, and the person I spoke with confirmed that there is no way to have everything completely ready for the user, short of getting the user’s email password and then logging in as that user.

I have written up some detailed instructions for the user. But I prefer to be standing there with the user when they run it for the first time, because it truly is a convoluted, non-intuitive process.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

Reply | Quote

I’m very familiar with that situation, but what’s required other than the user clicking “Activate Office”? (Just trying to understand the “convoluted, non-intuitive process”.)

Reply | Quote

The least amount of steps is when they go into Outlook first, because doing so will activate Outlook specifically and Office generally. If they click something else the first time in (such as Word or Excel), Outlook won’t be ready when they run it; they’ll still have to run through the steps for Outlook.

Here are the steps each user at my customer’s site has to go through in order to activate Office 365 Business Premium:
———————————-
They click on Outlook.
They enter their email address.
They enter their email address and email password.
They click “OK” acknowledging that “account setup is complete”.
They click Sign in (to set up Office).
They enter their email address (to activate Office).
They enter their email password.
They click “Accept and start Outlook”.

This is absolutely unacceptable. I, as the email administrator for my customer, should be able to get everything completely ready to go for a user at my customer site. They shouldn’t have to go through all of the hassle of going through a bunch of unintuitive steps. At the very least, the number of steps should be greatly reduced, and clear, simple instructions should be available to the user; I shouldn’t have to do Microsoft’s work for them by having to write instructions for my users.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

2 users thanked author for this post.

lurks about, Cybertooth

Reply | Quote

Thanks for the extra details. I’ve encountered the same situation numerous times. I was told I should ask users for their passwords, which I hate to do (as there are usually company rules which forbid that for both admin and user).

Reply | Quote

Susan Bradley wrote:

Recently Office 365/Outlook on click to run has made a change in behavior… as noted on Office uservoice… After the release of 16.0.6741.2017,

Recently? Wasn’t that build released 32 months ago?

Reply | Quote

That’s what is posted, but it only started impacting in the last month or so.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

Reply | Quote

“I think the extra O365 check (step 4 in KB3211279) was instituted back in September or so?”  I think that’s what recently nailed folks.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

Reply | Quote

This article seems to be a good summary of the situation (although nothing much new beyond what Susan told us):

Outlook Click-to-Run Optimizes AutoDiscover for Office 365

Reply | Quote