Unwanted folder appearing in Outlook when on Exchange and using an Android or Galaxy phone
Today I had a user call and tell me he has a new folder in his Outlook called “Unwanted”! Even though “I” often feel unwanted, it just so happened i knew what it was. The organization is on Offce365(Sux) and he has an Android phone. Well, it appears that the newer Androids have a spam filter that creates the now infamous “Unwanted” folder in your mail database on the server. You can delete it till you’re blue in the face, it comes right back. Along with the stupid “Clutter” folder that Office 365 contains. Enough with the added folders in Outlook already Micro$oft! The Junk folder works fine, and it has for years.
Here’s how to rid yourself of the unwanted, unwanted folder.
1. On the phone, open the E-Mail app
2. Hit the Menu Key > Settings > General Settings
3. Select Spam Addresses and look for any errant email addresses
4. Remove those addresses
As every phone manufacturer and service provider has the ability to change the gui in any phones they sell, your particular phone may be different. Keep poking around in the email settings until you find the junk email filter, and either turn it off, or remove whatever domains are being blocked. This may help.
Spam filters are a client-level feature of Samsung’s Email app on many Galaxy devices. To configure the settings, proceed through the following steps:
1. When email is filtered within the Email app, a Junk folder is created that syncs to the user’s Exchange mailbox.
2. The feature allows users to block email addresses as spam and allows rules to be created that can block certain messages from reaching the Inbox. To access these features in the Email app, tap the Menu key and then Settings.
3. Tap General settings.
4. Tap Spam addresses.
5. Email addresses or domains can be blocked or removed in Spam addresses. In some cases, false positives are caused by an address that is mistakenly blocked.
6. Rules for filtering is also part of the spam filter feature, and can be accessed from General Settings. If messages are being moved to the Junk folder and the address is not listed in Spam addresses, check the Rules for filtering section for any rules that may be blocking the message(s).
7. The Rules for filtering section also allows messages containing set key words in subjects to be blocked from all or certain senders. As these rules are applied at the client level, messages must first reach the device before being filtered this way.
How To: Configure Android for Office 365 Exchange Email
1. Under “Settings” choose “Accounts & Sync.”
2. Touch the “+” to add an account.
3. On the “Add an Account” page, select “Exchange ActiveSync.”
4. On the “Set up Exchange ActiveSync account” page, enter your email address and password, and select “Next”
If Autodiscover is properly setup on the server end, and you have the correct data entered in the fields, it will set itself up.
If it still won’t autoconfigure, chances are you will need to use a BACKSLASH, THEN THE FIRST PART OF YOUR EMAIL WHERE IT SAYS USERNAME!!!!!
Where this image says kinghusky@northeasrtern.edu……REPLACE THAT WITH….\K.HUSKY ONLY…NOT THE LAST PART OF YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS!
Once you hit the Exchange server…it knows what domain you are in, it needs to know your user id. That is the first part of your email address. The part in front of the @ sign only with a preceding backslash!
7. Once you get this far, you may need to accept the server certificate. If you get that far, you’re done execpt to tell Android what and how often to sync!
Microsoft has been working on Windows 10, day and night, for 3 years. Yet, they are giving it away for free. This is why. The license agreement basically states that Microsoft reserves the right to scan your entire hard disk, email, and web activity, upload that to their own or 3rd party servers, and that it’s not exclusively for law enforcement purposes. By installing Windows 10 and accepting the EULA, not only are you signing all your rights away by entering into a binding arbitration clause, you give Microsoft cart blanche to grab whatever they want from your system and do with it whatever pleases them. This is effectively Windows 10’s built in key logger.
Although Microsoft has put OPT-Out switches on many of the privacy settings, try changing them. They appear to be Window dressing and are not functional. You turn them off and reboot and guess what? They turn themselves back on! When my PC was connected ONLY to my local LAN and NOT connected to the internet, Wireshark and NMAP identified numerous attempts by Windows 10 to communicate to servers not located on my LAN. WHY? If the Windows 10 settings are real, the computer should be locked down to ONLY my LAN, but it was not. Wireshark does not lie. Wireshark was selected as a HIPAA recommended security policy for data. Why is Windows 10 attempting to talk to Microsoft—and possible other servers without MY EXPRESS PERMISSION?
Having convenience and a connected lifestyle does not have to mean we give up all semblance of privacy. It is only because companies want to fatten their bottom line and jam these violations down the consumers throat along with the new capabilities that it is like this. Our only real power as the consumer is to recognize the violation and draw a line. Purchasing their product is consent for them to continue violating us. That’s why I now have to advise all my physician and dentist clients, and basically everyone I know or do business with, to steer clear of Windows 10. IT IS NOT, AND WILL NEVER BE HIPAA COMPLIANT!!!
More news in the Windows update arena. You cannot turn Windows 10 update off, or control it in any way. At least normal humans anyway. Using Microsoft’s version of peer-to-peer (dare I call it Microsoft Torrent?) is a great way for Microsoft to offload its own update servers, to reduce bandwidth required by its servers, and to foist off the cost of the updates onto the unwitting user. Yes, that’s right. Once Windows updates itself, it then uses peer to peer networking to update all the other Windows 10 machines out there, USING YOUR BANDWIDTH!!!!! INCREDIBLE!!!! HOW DARE THEY!!!!
Here’s the topper! The EULA has links in it which you cannot access until you’ve installed Windows 10, as the links to the horrific clauses all must be pasted in a browser you cannot have UNTIL you’ve installed! If you install Windows 10, Para. 3 of the Microsoft Services Agreement, imposes on you a CODE OF CONDUCT! Should you fail to meet whatever it deems the compliance with those (undefined) standards, MSFT has a right to change/delete your data, and even ‘stop services’ In other words, bork your machine.
Consequently, it’s doggone disturbing to Forbes and Ars Technica and other magazine writers and most sane people, to see a mere software suite abrogate to itself the role of Big Brother over your own property. All your hardware, and all your software and all your information is now subject to MSFT’s approval? Not your government’s, not your own. Even what you purchased and you own, if you use its OS, grants it, not you, but Microsoft, a right even greater than any government would claim. Seriously?
Cut and paste this—> aka.ms/privacy —-into your browser to view some of MS’s privacy policies.
Worse, anyone using Win10 with whom you might correspond, now has YOUR data in THEIR machine and it can be compromised directly by MSFT without YOUR permission. So YOUR data gets PIRATED by MSFT just like a pirating program which steals from an internet stream, except that this isn’t an internet stream, but someone’s private machine. Even though you are NOT signatory to the EULA. So now you can sue anyone with whom you correspond, if your data is exposed due to them having Windows 10. YES, THAT’S RIGHT PEOPLE. It becomes an immoral act to install or use Windows 10, since you put in jeopardy the data of everyone with whom you correspond.
So now I have to ask that anyone who is using Windows 10 to NOT CORRESPOND WITH ME WHATSOEVER!
I have made a very good living off of Microsoft’s products now for almost 20 years. I cannot see how I am going to continue to do so selling any Microsoft product going forward. I just can’t put my clients and friends in this untenable position.
So…….I am going to do this. If you know me, contact me and I will install a Linux distribution I think best meets your needs on any piece of hardware I think it possible to run on. Linux is open source software, almost all of it is free, AND YOU CAN DO ANYTHING ON IT THAT YOU CAN DO ON WINDOWS! (almost)
I had a client recently call me and one of her main Excel files that was stored on the server was crashing, locking up, and generally being obnoxious. There have been many versions of Excel, starting with Office 95, thru the newest version Excel 2013. This would apply to any version of Excel. For the most part, Excel problems are caused by improperly closing the file. When a file, database, .pst or .ost email database, or generally any file isn’t closed gracefully, it causes issues. This is exaggerated when the file is stored on a server, and many times that file will be opened by more than one person. At times, at the same time. Which gives you a message that the file is already open.
If you have a file acting up, one way to remedy this is to start a new file. Chances are your not going to be able to fix the one that has become corrupt. There are some scan tools out there that attempt to repair Excel files. I haven’t had much luck with these tools, and there’s a chance when you download “Free” programs, they really aren’t free. Spyware, Malware and other nasties often piggyback on free downloads. Don’t take the chance. Start a new file.
Since many large Excel files in the enterprise have tons of accounting, formulas, object tracking, and other data in them, many times you never really know how old the files is, what the original version of Excel it was generated in, whether it started life as a .xml standard file, etc. Start a new file, cut and paste each page into the new file, cleanup any unneeded data, and you should be good to go. That is if you can get the files to open and cut and paste out of it. If not, try copying it from the server to your machine locally, if it’s not there already. You can also give “Autorecover” a shot as my friend in the picture refers to. Autorecover is a built in function in the later versions of Office that saves a copy of your file every few minutes. Chances are you have seen a tab on the left of Excel stating “Autorecover has saved a version of this file”. Just find that version of the file and see if it will open.
If Excel acts up on ANY file you open, it could be you have a problem in the Office suite. If that’s the case, go to control panel, add-remove programs, or whatever depending on your Windows version, and try a repair of Office by highlighting Office in the list, click change, and select repair. Then try your file and see if it’s fixed.
You may also have an add-in that is causing the problem. Another troubleshooting task would be to disable any add-ins in Excel from the add-in configuration page under options. If you have any macros running, try disabling them and see if that helps.
As a last resort, contact your system administrator and have them do a restore of the file from when the file was ok. You may also be able to try this yourself by right clicking on the file, and see if there is a tab called “Other versions” This is the VSS copy of the file that Windows, if correctly configured, has saved for you.
How to install Microsoft Security Essentials on Microsoft Servers
I looked for quite a while for a free server anti-virus before I found this little trick. Download MSE from the M/$ site, then open an administrative command prompt. Type the path to the mse install file, then add the switch…/disableoslimit . Voila! It no longer thorws the error “not for this operating system”.
Of course, this isn’t the strongest anti-virus out there, but it’s surely better than nothing. And since I never browse the internet or open email from my servers, it should be better than no anti-virus at all.
If your “C” drive is filling up, there is now a way to reduce the size of the pesky Winsxs (win side by side) Folder in the Windows directory. Microsoft has finally come out with a tool that will reduce the size of this folder by putting a “Windows Update” line in the disk cleanup tool.
To reclaim additional disk space on your system, follow these steps:
1.Click Start, and then in the Search Programs and Files text box, type Disk cleanup.
2.Click the Disk Cleanup icon, and run the Disk Cleanup tool to determine what files you can delete, based on your configuration.
Additional ways to conserve space on the system volume include the following:
•Move the paging file to another volume on the system.
•Disable hibernation on the system.
•Disable system restore points on client installations.
•Clean out all temporary directories and folders by using the Disk Cleanup Wizard (cleanmgr.exe).
•Uninstall unused applications or utilities from the installation.
Outlook 2013 or Office 365 activation error 0x80070005
Recently after installing Office 2013 from an Office 365 web account, thru web based Outlook, I encountered the error code (0x80070005).
We’re sorry, something went wrong and we can’t do this for you right now. Please try again later. (0x80070005).
Incredibly, trying again later didn’t help. “Was this information helpful?” Is the link under that error, and of course I did advise them that it wasn’t.
After some research, it appears Microsoft requires admin access when running their activation software, which Office generally doesn’t run under. This will generally occur on startup of any Office 2013 application after initial installation . So the pretty simple fix for this error was to run whichever Office product you first start after your installation is complete as an administrator.
Right clicking on any Office product shortcut and then clicking on the Run as Administrator command will solve this problem straightaway.
Office shortcuts can be found in Start>All Programs>Microsoft Office. You may need to create a shortcut on your desktop first by dragging and dropping a copy of the shortcut from the Microsoft Office folder in the start menu. Be sure the icon has a little “Plus” sign on it before you let go of the mouse, or you will move the icon, much to the chagrin of the other users on this machine, if any.
The Office program should start and will not show any error, and it will automatically register with Microsoft, if you have configured everything else properly. As both Office 365 and Office 2013 require you to have an email account and register Office tied to that, this must be done first.
As the holiday season approaches, cyber security becomes even more important. Good habits online and offline will help you avoid becoming a victim of malicious software that kills your computer or worse, identity theft. Your computer usage, choices of computer security protection, and credit card habits are vital to your data and personal information safety…during the high-spending holiday season and year round.
Yes, Virginia, They Will Find You
Of course, most of us think that no one is going to bother with “little old me” on the great big internet. But, in fact, hackers use automated tools to troll IP addresses across the internet. Because the tools are automated, they can expose thousands of unsecured devices in very little time. If your internet connection isn’t secure, you have invited the hackers into your life to destroy your computer or even your credit rating. When making decisions about choosing convenience over security, think twice. Some simple steps, most at no cost, will keep most of the scoundrels out of your computers and your life.
Set up an Internet Firewall
The first step is to make sure you have some type of firewall on your internet connection. Most ISPs today provide modems or routers that have basic firewalls enabled by default. You can check to make sure by doing a port scan at grc.com. If you don’t have a firewall, get one, or have a technician enable one on your home or business network.
Keep Your Virus Protection Updated
Make sure your computer’s virus protection is installed, enabled, and updated regularly. Hackers are busy people and are up to no good day and night creating new malware. So having virus protection software on your computer that has not been updated in the last week or two is not doing your computer or you any good. It is best to set a schedule in the software so that it updates automatically.
Apply Operating System Patches
Most people overlook this easy way to prevent hacking and infection of their computers. Updating your operating system regularly with patches is painless and in most cases, you can set it to update automatically. Microsoft recommends checking for updates weekly if you don’t set it to update automatically.
Keep Your Computer Clean
While keeping your computer clean and dust-free is good for it, what I am talking about is keeping its software clean. Use Malwarebytes to keep malicious websites from infecting your computer. Scans are free and informative and help you clean malware off your computer. A paid version offers protection from future malware and other features.
Backup, Just in Case
A good backup never hurts, just in case. Keep in mind that all anti-virus vendors work on the concept of being RE-active when a new virus comes out. Although they can pick up patterns, just ask anyone who was hit by the Cryptolocker ransomeware how they feel about all their documents being lost. Plus, you never know when your hard drive will fail. So build a good habit of doing regular backups. Even better, consider one of the many online backup services that do it automatically and allow you to restore a single file or your entire system from your online account.
Protect Your Personal Information
I always think twice about letting websites or my own computer or mobile device store any credit card information. Some newer services offer quick and easy ways to make payments that I would think long and hard about giving my credit card info to. It will only take one large breach and that may come to a screeching halt. Beyond your credit cards, do not save password lists or personal information like social security numbers on your computer without using password-protected documents. Try a password manager like Peguta or one of the many others that make having strong passwords for all your accounts convenient, but secure. Especially if you store passwords for fast login, ensure your computer has a Windows password. Sure, that may be an extra few seconds to get to using your computer, but it is worth it.
Security at Home and at Work
These tips will help you keep your data safe at home and work. If you work at a company large enough to have an IT department, many of the anti-virus and firewall protection mechanisms will be in place. But, if you work for a small business or own a small business, ensure that your computers and network follow all the recommended practices above. Ask your technician questions! If your business uses a cloud service such as Singlehop, you are ahead of the game as most cloud services not only put these practices into place, but also have round-the-clock monitoring.
In summary:
Be careful who you share your information with
Make sure your computers and network are secure and regularly updated
Stay alert to emails from Nigerian princes asking to deposit money for them.
Windows 10 Technical Preview Download is Available
Windows 10 preview is here and is now available as a download from Microsoft. According to sources, the final version should be out the middle of 2015. No information on pricing or upgrade paths have been announced yet, but there are rumors that it could actually be free or close to free as an upgrade to people who are unhappy for whatever reason with Windows 8 (which is most everyone I have talked to about it). Continue reading → Post ID 167
The issue of corporate security is becoming a larger threat as employees travel with their business machines and BYOD (bring your own) devices. The recent loss of a laptop with thousands of customer files including SSNs brings this issue to the forefront.
Although many steps can be applied to secure corporate data in the field, it would depend on who ends up with your CEO’s lost or stolen laptop and their skill level. For the most part, almost all devices have at least SOME type of password to enter the machines. If not, you have some serious security concerns at your business. The real problem is when you have the device in hand, even intermediate users can find the tools to defeat a simple Windows password. Microsoft has tried to limit the availability of their password reset tools, but have not been entirely successful. Just take a look at Craigslist in any city and browse how many ads there are offering to reset your Windows password for next to nothing.
Fortunately, we can address some of these issues with tools that the manufacturers have provided us. The BIOS or hard drive password is probably the most effective single tool that could provide at least some protection for your forgetful CEO that continues to leave his laptop at the local coffee shop. This can become an issue if you forget or lose the BIOS or hard drive password, as it’s next to impossible to defeat. If done correctly, this will secure the data on the hard drive, but could result an unusable device.
Next in line is securing the many BYOD devices employees bring to the table. You could of course completely ban all devices except IT department issued, but many corporate environments allow the use of at least email on BYOD as cost savings can be considerable. As most enterprises use Exchange, either in-house or in the cloud, there is a function to remotely wipe smartphones from within Exchange.
Hopefully you would never want to erase one of your employee’s phones, but you must secure your corporate data from prying eyes.
In summation, just these 2 steps in a corporate edict could end up saving your company a considerable amount of money, public reputation issues, and or legal ramifications.
