Learn about Office 365 software requirements

Top Issues

It may take an hour to receive your first email
March 7, 2011

Immediately after you provision your company with Office 365, it may take up to an hour to receive your first e-mail in your newly created Inbox.

This is because there is a delay between when a newly created hosted organization is created and when that organization can receive mail from the Internet. This delay may last up to an hour due to replication of DNS changes. Mail received by Office 365 during this time will be returned to the sender with a non-delivery receipt (NDR). Once DNS replication is complete mail flow will be resumed automatically and no administrative actions are necessary.

Users created after this first hour will not experience this delay.

Some links may not be active immediately after you sign up for Office 365
March 7, 2011

After you sign up for Office 365, you may notice inactive links on the Home and Admin pages. This is because the service is still provisioning your account and some resources are not ready to use. When provisioning is complete, the color of these links will change to blue, and they will be able to be used. If these links are still inactive after 12 hours, contact Support.

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Administration

The Office 365 sign-in page does not appear on servers if enhanced security is enabled in Internet Explorer
March 7, 2011

All servers running Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008 have Internet Explorer enhanced security enabled by default. When a server has enhanced security enabled, the Office 365 sign-in page appears blank.

To disable enhanced security:

  • For Windows Server 2003: In Control Panel, click Add/Remove Windows Components, and then double-click Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration. In the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration dialog box, ensure that the For administrator groups check box is cleared, and that the For all other user groups check box is selected.
  • For Windows Server 2008: Start Server Manager, and in the Security Information section, click Configure IE ESC. In the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration dialog box, ensure that Off is selected under Administrators and On (Recommended) is selected under Users.

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Email, Calendar and Contacts

BlackBerry® service will not be available in Office 365
May 13, 2011

Microsoft is no longer providing a Hosted BlackBerry® service for Exchange Online. Research In Motion will be providing a cloud-enabled BlackBerry® service by the end of 2011 to enable those capabilities. Further information will be available later in the year.

There is no workaround at this time.

User profiles upgraded to Outlook 2010 won't work if reverted to Outlook 2007
March 7, 2011

Because of the changes in Outlook 2010 that allow for multiple Exchange email accounts, user profiles that were upgraded to Outlook 2010 will not work if the user removes Outlook 2010, reinstalls Office Outlook 2007, and then attempts to start Office Outlook 2007 by using the same user profile. In this scenario, the user profile will have to be removed and recreated in Windows through the Control Panel and Mail options.

For more information and for other changes related to Outlook 2010, see this TechNet article.

You must change your temporary password before accessing your Office 365 email using Outlook
March 7, 2011

Because your first connection to Office 365 must be done with your temporary password, which you are required to change, you will need to first sign in to either the Office 365 Portal or to Microsoft Outlook Web App before connecting with the desktop version of Outlook. Once you change your password, you can then connect using the desktop version of Outlook. Likewise, if your password is reset by your administrator to a new temporary password, you must also sign in to the portal or to Outlook Web App before connecting to Office 365 using your desktop version of Outlook.

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Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing

Public IM connectivity not available
July 23, 2012

Public IM connectivity—instant messaging (IM), audio, and video communication with contacts who use the Windows Live public IM service provider—is not currently available. There is no workaround at this time.

Lync 2010 cannot sign in to Lync Online
July, 2012

If the Lync 2010 desktop client does not automatically discover the Lync Online service based on the sign-in address the user provides, refer to the Help topics:

Mac Release Notes

Entourage for Mac users cannot set Out of Office messages
May 3, 2012

If a user of Microsoft Entourage 2008 for Mac, Web Services Edition is using Office 365 and tries to create an Out of Office message, they will get an error message and fail to create their Out of Office message.

This issue has been fixed in Office 2008 for Mac 12.3.0.

Mac 2011 SP1 is required for Office for Mac 2011 users to connect to SharePoint Online in Office 365
May 3, 2012

In order to connect to SharePoint Online in Office 365, users of Office for Mac 2011 will need to download and install Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 Service Pack 1 (14.1.0).

Contact card information and some other functionality unavailable in Outlook for Mac and Entourage 2008

April 11, 2012

When connecting to Office 365, the following information and features are not available for Outlook for Mac 2011 and Entourage 2008, Web Services Edition.

Unavailable contact card information:

  • Manager/report information in the Global Address List
  • Contact picture
  • “Member of” information

Other unavailable features:

  • Searching the Office 365 directory (via LDAP)
  • Encoding messages using certificates

There is no workaround for these issues at this time.

Some Outlook for Mac and Entourage for Mac users will fail to authenticate with Exchange after migration to Office 365
April 11, 2012

After users migrate to Office 365, their Exchange Account ID in Microsoft Entourage 2008 for Mac, Web Services Edition or their user name in Microsoft Outlook for Mac 2011 will change from "domain\user format" to their Office 365 email address. Therefore, some users may experience authentication failure.

To work around this, the administrator can enter the user’s email address as the user name for their on-premises Exchange server account.

Password expiration prompt doesn’t show up in Outlook for Mac and Mac Entourage 2008

April 8, 2011

When you are connecting to Office 365 using Outlook for Mac and Mac Entourage 2008, Web Services Edition, the password expiration prompt will not show up.

To work around this issue, administrators can send out a password expiration reminder in email, and users can change their passwords in Outlook Web App.

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Team Sites and Websites

Displayed local time and time zones may not be not correct in SharePoint Online
October 25, 2011

As noted in the Microsoft KB article, August 2011 Cumulative Time Zone Update for Windows, several countries have changed the way they implement Daylight Saving Time (DST), and therefore the displayed local time and time zone might be incorrect for those countries in SharePoint Online.

Updates to support these DST changes will be applied to Microsoft SharePoint Online servers over the next several months. Notices of these updates will be provided in these release notes and referenced on http://www.microsoft.com/time. Any SharePoint Online tasks, timer jobs, appointments, or other data impacted by these updates will be adjusted to use the updated time zone definitions.

Workaround: In the meantime, if the changes for your time zone are not yet available on SharePoint Online, users should temporarily change their time zone to ensure that their data displays correctly. For example, Russian users should identify their current time zone from the following table and select the associated workaround time zone.

Time zone

Current

Workaround

Russian Standard Time

(UTC +3:00) Moscow, St Petersburg, Volgograd

(UTC +04:00) Tbilisi

Ekaterinburg Standard Time

(UTC +5:00) Ekaterinburg

(UTC +06:00) Astana, Dhaka

N. Central Asia Standard Time

(UTC +6:00) Novosibirsk

(UTC +07:00) Bangkok, Hanoi, Jakarta

North Asia Standard Time

(UTC +7:00) Krasnoyarsk

(UTC +08:00) Ulaanbaatar

North Asia East Standard Time

(UTC +8:00) Irkutsk

(UTC +09:00) Seoul

Yakutsk Standard Time

(UTC +9:00) Yakutsk

(UTC +10:00) Guam, Port Moresby

Vladivostok Standard Time

(UTC +10:00) Vladivostok

(UTC +11:00) Solomon Is., New Caledonia

Magadan Standard Time

(UTC +11:00) Magadan

(UTC +12:00) Coordinated Universal Time+12

See Change your regional settings for information about how to change your SharePoint Online site time zone. If you changed your time zone as a workaround, you can change back to your preferred time zone after the DST updates have been applied.

 

Deleting and recreating your Office 365 administrator can affect permissions to SharePoint Online
August 5, 2011

If administrators or technical support resources delete and recreate any Microsoft Office 365 administrator account, they should also verify the recreated account's administrator access to SharePoint Online. If there are issues accessing SharePoint Online, or performing administrative functions, please contact Microsoft Office 365 Support.

 

Single sign-on for SharePoint Online may not work from some mobile devices
August 5, 2011

In Office 365, to access your SharePoint Online sites from a mobile device, you must first sign in on the Microsoft Online Services Sign in page using your user ID or federated corporate credentials, and your password. You will reach this page on your mobile device by browsing to the SharePoint Online website, which will redirect you to the Microsoft Online Services Sign in page.

If your phone falls into one of the following categories, the sign-in page may not work for you.

  • BlackBerry operating systems that are older than 5.0
  • Android 1.5
  • Nokia E71, N95, N8
  • iPhone

There is no workaround at this time.

 

The RSS Viewer Web Part and the XML Viewer Web Part are not supported in Office 365
March 7, 2011

When adding either the RSS Viewer Web Part or the XML Viewer Web Part to a webpage, you will see the following error message: “A Web Part or Web Form Control on this Page cannot be displayed or imported. The type is not registered as safe.”

If you had already added an RSS Viewer Web Part or an XML Viewer Web Part to a page, you will see the following behavior:

  • On Wiki pages, the Web Part will no longer be visible.
  • On Web Part Pages, the following error message will appear: “Web Part Error: A Web Part or Web Form Control on this Page cannot be displayed or imported. The type Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.RSSAggregatorWebPart, Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c could not be found or it is not registered as safe.”

No workaround is available.

 

Users may see additional authentication prompts in SharePoint Online in some scenarios
May 9, 2011

Note:  This issue may not affect all users.

Scenario 1: Users who are signed in to Microsoft SharePoint Online sites using federated user IDs will experience additional credential prompts when working between a browser window and a Microsoft Office desktop application. In addition, these users will be required to authenticate after closing and reopening the browser. There is no workaround for this issue.

Scenario 2: When using Distributed Authoring and Versioning (DAV) with some client application features, such as “Open with Explorer” in a SharePoint Online document library, users may experience additional credentials prompts. To avoid this, users must select the Keep me signed in check box during sign-in.

Users who are signed in to SharePoint Online sites using federated user IDs do not have the Keep me signed in check box, so they will need to also authenticate with an Office desktop application such as Microsoft Word. Once these users have authenticated in both an Office desktop application and the browser, features and applications that use DAV to communicate with SharePoint Online will be successful.

 

Office Web Apps do not support Google Chrome
May 9, 2011

Users who use Google Chrome with the Microsoft Office Web Apps for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote may experience unexpected errors and behaviors while viewing and editing documents. These may cause you to lose unsaved changes.

Support for Google Chrome in the Office Web Apps will come as part of a future update to Office 365.

To work around these issues, use a supported browser such as Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer.

Some methods of accepting external sharing invitations to SharePoint sites not supported on Office 365
May 9, 2011

Note:  This issue may not affect all users.

Users can accept invitations to collaborate on a Microsoft SharePoint Online site by using either their user ID from Office 365 or a Windows Live Hotmail ID.

However, the following methods of accepting collaboration invitations are not supported:

  • Accepting an invitation using a Windows Live ID that was created using a personal email address.
  • Accepting email invitations to SharePoint site collections by clicking on the link in the invitation email from a mobile device.

There is currently no workaround for these issues.

Some unsupported workflow actions are displayed in SharePoint Designer
March 11, 2011

When designing workflows in SharePoint Designer, some workflow actions that are not supported in Office 365 for professionals and small businesses are displayed. If you add an unsupported action to your workflow, an error message will appear: "Cannot insert this action. To use task process actions, the Office SharePoint Server Standard Site features must be enabled for this site by an administrator."

The following workflow actions are not supported in Office 365 for small businesses:

Start Document Set Approval Process, Capture a Version of a Document Set, Send Document Set to Repository, Set Content Approval Status of the Document Set, Start Approval Process, Start Feedback Process, Start Custom Task Process, Declare Record, Undeclare Record, Lookup Manager of a User, End Task Process, Set Content Approval Status (as author), Wait for Change in Task Process Item, Set Task Field, Rescind Task, Append Task, Delegate Task, Escalate Task, Forward Task, Insert Task, Reassign Task, Request a Change, Send Task Email.

No workaround is available. To use these SharePoint workflow actions, you must have Office 365 for enterprises.

 

Chile Daylight Saving Time will not display correctly in SharePoint Online
March 22, 2012

The Chilean government has extended Daylight Saving Time (DST) for 2012. Because the new date published by the government is different from what was defined in the previous years, SharePoint Online will not correctly interpret Chilean DST. Updates to support this change will be applied to SharePoint Online servers at a later date.

 Workaround: In the meantime, temporarily change your time zone, as shown in the following table. For information about how to change your SharePoint Online site time zone, see Change your regional settings

Time zone

Current

Workaround

Chile Standard Time

(UTC-4:00) Santiago

(UTC -04:00) Georgetown, La Paz, Manaus, San Juan

For general notices about Chile DST and DST for other countries, see the Daylight Saving Time Help and Support Center.

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Office 365 Desktop Setup

To connect to Office 365, some users may be required to configure Outlook manually
March 7, 2011

If you are having trouble connecting to your Office 365 mailbox from Outlook, see the Help topic for your version of Outlook:

Users cannot update Office 2010 SP1 Beta to connect to Office 365
March 7, 2011

Office 365 desktop setup requires a patch to Outlook that cannot be installed with Office 2010 SP1 Beta. If you have Office 2010 SP1 Beta installed, in order to connect to Office 365 you must first uninstall the beta service pack. After you have uninstalled the service pack, you can then run Office 365 desktop setup and connect your Office 2010 applications to Office 365.

In addition, if you are using Office 365 you cannot install the beta service pack for Office 2010; installing the beta service pack will interrupt connectivity with Office 365.

Users unable to connect Office 365 to pre-release versions of Office
March 7, 2011

If you are unable update your version of Microsoft Office so that it works with Office 365, check that you don't have a pre-release version of Office, such as a beta version. Office 365 does not support pre-release versions of Office; please uninstall the pre-release version of Office and install a released version, such as Office Professional Plus, instead.

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Other

Federated users of Mozilla Firefox need to apply registry setting for successful sign in to Office 365
June 6, 2011

When a user tries to sign in to the Office 365 portal on the Mozilla Firefox web browser using their federated credentials, they may be prompted repeatedly for their credentials without successfully being signed in, even when they enter the correct user name and password.

To make sign-in successful, apply the following registry setting to the user’s computer:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa]
"SuppressExtendedProtection"=dword:00000001
"LmCompatibilityLevel"=dword:00000003

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