Presence not shown or unavailable in Outlook 2010 but it's displayed in Lync 2013

Recently after upgrading one Office 365 user from Lync 2010 to Lync 2013, his Outlook 2010 was no longer displaying the "presence" indicators - the little green/red/yellow status bubbles next to people's name.
It seems there can be a variety of different causes and fixes, but in this case, the following information is what helped me out.  

First, look at this location in the registry...


[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\IM Providers] 

It should show this ...

"DefaultIMApp"="Lync"

Then, check on the following two entries...

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\IM Providers\Communicator] "ProcessId"=dword:00002458 "UpAndRunning"=dword:00000002 

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\IM Providers\Lync] "ProcessId"=dword:00002458 "UpAndRunning"=dword:00000002

The "UpAndRunning"=dword:00000002 value indicates that this particular IM service is available for use.  The system appears to be confused, thinking that both Communicator (the old name for Lync) and the current version of Lync are available.  What you need to do is to go to the entry for Communicator and change the dword value to 0.  

Now restart Outlook and see if your presence indicators are back.

Error 0x8004102A in Outlook when syncing mail using the Hotmail connector (Error 1133)

I've recently switched one of my main email accounts over to the new Outlook.com which is excellent! On my main PC, I'm running Outlook 2010 and I've installed the Hotmail Connector For Outlook to give me more Exchange-like syncing experience rather than just simple POP mail.  Now if I read or delete an email on my PC, it syncs that change back to Outlook.com which then syncs it to my phone, etc.

Anyway, this setup has been working fine for a few weeks but for the last few days, I was getting an error from Outlook every time it tried to send/receive.  It was error 0x8004102A.  It would look like this...

“Task ‘<Hotmail account>’ reported error (0x8004102A) : ‘Error with Send/Receive’.” 

This indicates an error trying to sync items between the local Outlook mailbox on your Hotmail/Live/Outlook.com .  To get some more details, lets take a look at the sync log.

In Outlook, go to the area in the lower left were you see Mail, Calendar, Contacts, etc. and click the item called "Folder List".  This shows you ALL of the folders in your mailbox, even the usually hidden system folders.  Now look in your mailbox folder structure for a folder called "Sync Issues". This should contain several Sync Logs.  Check out the most recent one and scroll down until you see some errors.

In my case, I saw an error that looked something like this...


10:50:19 Synchronizing server changes in folder 'Deleted Items'
10:50:19 Error Synchronizing Message
               Error: 1133
               Server Command: CHANGE
 10:50:19 Server Id: 18F8A5F5-50A5-11E0-A9A0-00215AD6A70A
 10:50:19 Error with Send/Receive.

Basically it was trying to change(sync) something in the Deleted Items folder but it was having a problem doing so. This is indicated by the Error: 1133.  

I tried deleting everything in the deleted items folders both in my local Outlook as well as in Outlook.com but that didn't help.  Something was corrupt in my local mailbox.

The next step was to delete my cached local mailbox (the .OST file) and let Outlook rebuild a fresh copy.

If you are running Windows 7 or Windows 8, you can just enter this path into your command line and it will take you to the proper folder or you can just browse to this location...

%localappdata%\microsoft\outlook

Here you will find a file that looks like MyEmailAccountName.OST .  Close Outlook and then delete or rename this file.  It will wipe out your local cached copy of your mailbox.  Now launch Outlook again and it will download a fresh copy of all of your folders and messages from Hotmail/Live/Outlook.com and you shouldn't have the error any longer. It worked for me!  Note : it make take several minutes to download all of your email again, depending on the size of your mailbox and the speed of your connection.

Update: Since finding this fix and publishing this post, I've had to repeat this process a few times over the past few months.  It seems to me that the issue is probably caused by something like deleting an email from my phone and then maybe deleting it again from my local Outlook program before it's had a chance to sync with the server.  So my phone has already told Outlook.com to delete the message, so it should be gone. But then the Outlook program tries to delete the same message, can't find it because its already gone, then throws up this error message.  

Add or link your SharePoint calendar to Outlook so you can view it in Outlook client using "Connect to Outlook" feature

One cool feature of a SharePoint calendar is that you can add it to your local Outlook application and view your SharePoint calendars right along side your normal personal calender.  This may work in other versions but my example is dealing specifically with Outlook 2010 and SharePoint Online (as part of Office 365).

1. Login to your SharePoint website and locate the name of the calendar you would like to add to Outlook. In my case, it's called "Team Calendar".  Click on the name to pull up that calendar.

2. Now on the SharePoint toolbar, there is a section called "Calendar Tools" with a tab called "Calendar".  Click on that tab.

3.  Next click on the button that says "Connect to Outlook".  You'll probably see one or two prompts popup that will ask that you want to confirm this action.

4.  After you've confirmed the prompts, you'll now see your calendar has been added to Outlook.  You can use the checkboxes to turn on and off various calendars, depending on how many you want to see at a time.  You can fully interact with this SharePoint calendar - add/edit/delete appointments, drag and drop between your other personal calendars, etc. 

Where to find the email signature setup window in Outlook 2010 to add a new signature

Most people are familiar with HOW to create a "signature" in Outlook but sometimes it can be hard to find WHERE to setup a signature in a new version of Outlook.

Here are the steps to help you find the signature setup window in Outlook 2010.

1.  First, click the "File" tab in the upper left corner of Outlook.

2.  Then click on "Options"

3.  Then click on "Mail" 

 4.  Finally click on the "Signatures..." buttton

Now you can start creating your email signature!

Shared team calendar appointments not syncing from Outlook to SharePoint

I've ran into this issue a couple of times with various implementations of Microsoft Office 365 (hosted Exchange, Lync, and SharePoint).  We've setup a team calendar on the SharePoint site and used the "Connect to Outlook" button to add that calendar to the users Outlook profile so that they can see their personal calendar side-by-side with the shared team calendar.

The user is happily going along adding appointments in Outlook to the shared team calendar but then they realize that nobody else is seeing these appointments on their shared calendar in Outlook.  A quick check of the actual calendar in SharePoint shows that the appointments never actually made it from Outlook to SharePoint, which explains why they aren't syncing to any other users.

I'm not sure how to permanently fix this or prevent it from happening in the first place, but the quick fix is to just close out of Outlook for a few seconds and then launch it again.  Then all of the appointments you added to the shared team calendar in Outlook should sync up to the SharePoint calendar and then all of the other users will be able to see those appointments in Outlook as well.

Update : Also, make sure that you are properly logged into Office 365 (or SharePoint Online) when you are launching Outlook.  I've seen some situations where the Office 365 login window pops up but users just click away from it, rather than clicking on their email address, re-entering their password and clicking Sign In.  In fairness, that Office 365 sign-in window doesn't make it real clear what the user needs to do. It's not obvious that the user profile picture and email address area is actually a button to click on.  If you aren't logged into Office 365, then you can still add appointments into your Team Calendar via Outlook but they won't actually publish to SharePoint until you authenticate.

Can't see meetings on Outlook 2010 calendar - missing from monthly view

I had an Outlook 2010 user the other day that said their meetings were not showing up in their calendar - even if they were the person that created the meeting request.  If they made a regular "appointment" it was fine, but a "meeting" would not show up.

We did notice that the meetings showed up if we went to daily or weekly view.  So I figured it was some sort of filter on the monthly view.  Then I noticed the "down arrow" icon underneath the "Month" button.  When you click that down arrow you see three options - Show Low Detail, Show Medium Detail, Show High Detail. In this case, it was set on Show Low Detail for whatever reason.  When I changed it to Show High Detail, all of the meetings became visible on the month view calendar.  See screenshot below...   (If this post helps you out, do me a favor and click on an ad or two to support this site! Thank you!!)

Microsoft Onenote template for wedding planning

I've been a big fan of Microsoft OneNote since day one.  It's a great place to store un-structured and semi-structured information - as opposed to very structured information like a proposal or business plan which you would create in Word.   I have a OneNote section for each of my clients were I keep info like server names, IP addresses, steps to perform certain tasks, locations of software installation folders on the network, contacts for other vendors (phone, internet, etc.), screenshots of error messages, checklists for various upgrades, etc.

But now I've just found a new use for OneNote.  Microsoft has published an excellent Wedding Template for OneNote. It has a wide variety of pages to track things like guest lists, food selections, vendor contacts (florist, catering, photographer, etc.), music list for the DJ, things to pack on the wedding day, etc.   Very well thought out.

You can download the template right here.

Here is a nice blog post that describes it in a little more detail with a few screenshots.

And since I'm running the OneNote for iPhone app, I can access this information anytime I need to.

Microsoft Office 2010 Service Pack 1 is available

Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Office 2010 has just been made available for download.  You can read more about it here.

Here is a list of some of the updates...

• Outlook fixes an issue where “Snooze Time” would not reset between appointments.
• The default behavior for PowerPoint “Use Presenter View” option changed to display the slide show on the secondary monitor.
• Integrated community content in the Access Application Part Gallery.
• Better alignment between Project Server and SharePoint Server browser support.
• Improved backup / restore functionality for SharePoint Server
• The Word Web Application extends printing support to “Edit Mode.”
• Project Professional now synchronizes scheduled tasks with SharePoint task lists.
• Internet Explorer 9 “Native” support for Office Web Applications and SharePoint
• Office Web Applications Support for Chrome
• Inserting Charts into Excel Workbooks using Excel Web Application
• Support for searching PPSX files in Search Server
• Visio Fixes scaling issues and arrowhead rendering errors with SVG export
• Proofing Tools improve spelling suggestions in Canadian English, French, Swedish and European Portuguese.
• Outlook Web Application Attachment Preview (with Exchange Online only)
• Office client suites using “Add Remove Programs” Control Panel,  building on our work from Office 2007 SP2

You can grab the 32 bit version here.   Or the 64 bit version here.