Outlook.com doesn't have automatic spell checking - need to manually run spell checker

I just found an annoyance with Outlook.com.   It doesn't seem to automatically spell check when you are typing an email.  You need to manually click "Spell Check" up on the top blue bar.  (This bar only appears when you are actually composing a message.)   Alternatively, you can push F7 to run a spell check.

Also, your browser my provide automatic spell checking.  I've been using Outlook.com in IE 9 and I've not seen any automatic spell checking so maybe I don't have that feature turned on.  I know Chrome does have automatic spell checking that works great.

Reduce Chrome browser memory usage from too many tabs with this handy extension - The Great Suspender

I read this article about a Chrome extension that can help reduce the amount of memory that your Chrome browser uses.   I typically have 20-30 tabs open at any given time.  These are usually all of my "go to" sites that I frequent throughout the day - Facebook, Twitter, deal sites, amazon, ebay, forums, etc.  As a result, Chrome can end up eating up a ton of memory and bogging down my system.

This Chrome extension called The Great Suspender can be set to automatically suspend tabs that haven't been used in a certain period of time.  I set it for 1 hour.  When the tab is suspended, it frees up the memory that was allocated to that tab.  It really does seem to work.  I have 6GB of RAM in my machine and instead of typically sitting at 70-80% of RAM usage, I'll be sitting at 40-50% with most of my tabs suspended.

The tabs are grayed out when they are suspended but you simply need to click on the tab and hit the banner at the top to reload the tab when you need it.

Give it a try!

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.  

Fix issue with too many contacts in iPhone caused by Outlook Suggested Contacts. How to disable them from syncing.

I had a client the other day that wonder why he was seeing so many unrecognized contacts on his new iPhone.  I had a quick look at it and it certainly showed many more contacts than are listed as contacts in Outlook.   I immediately thought of the "Suggested Contacts" list that Outlook automatically creates - it builds a list of other people that you've sent mail to or received mail from but haven't necessarily saved to your official contacts lists.  So I went into his Suggested Contacts list in his contacts area of Outlook and that list did appear to be the source of all of the extraneous contacts on his phone.

Luckily, starting with iOS 6, I believe, there is an easy way to prevent this Suggested Contacts list from syncing from Outlook/Exchange to your iPhone or iPad.

On your iPhone, follow these steps...

1. Open the Contacts app  (or go to Phone app and then switch to Contacts area).
2. Click the "Groups" button in the upper left corner of the screen.
3. You'll see a list of different contact groups so you want to un-check the "Suggested Contacts" group. 
4. Click "Done"!

Now it may take a few minutes for everything to sync again but this will remove all of the Suggested Contacts from the iPhone, leaving you with just your actual list of contacts from Outlook.

Check mailbox size and usage with Office 365 or Exchange online. Find users nearing their quota.

The other day I wanted to have a look at the mailbox usage for one of my Office 365 clients.  I wanted to see all 35 users and find out if anyone was close to their mailbox quotas.  There is no way to check this for all users at once using the Office 365 or Exchange Online GUI so you need to turn to PowerShell.  I had to go to 5 or 6 different sites to find all of the little details and troubleshoot some errors so I thought I'd compile all of that info into a blog post for you.

1. First of all, you need to use the regular version of PowerShell.  NOT the "Online Services Module" for PowerShell version that you would typically use for other Office 365 tasks, I guess because we are talking directly to the Exchange environment here and not the Office 365 portal itself. 
2. Make sure you run PowerShell as an administrator. (Right-click the icon and select "Run as Administrator")
3. The first time I ever tried to run these type of scripts, I got an error about running remote signed scripts or something like that. So you need to run this command the very first time you try any operations like this:  
• Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
4. Next are the 3 commands that you need to run to connect to your hosted Exchange server and start a new session:
• $LiveCred = Get-Credential (then enter your Office 365 email address and password in the box that pops up)
• $Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell/ -Credential $LiveCred -Authentication Basic –AllowRedirection
• Import-PSSession $Session
5. Next is the basic command to get a list of all users and their current mailbox size:
• get-mailbox | get-mailboxstatistics | ft displayname, totalitemsize
6. When you are finished, it's a best practice to go ahead and close your session before you exit PowerShell, so you need to run this command:
• Remove-PSSession $Session

These steps should get you connected and give you a quick look at user mailbox sizes so you can see if anyone is in danger of hitting their quota.  There are a ton of other scripts that can give you all sorts of information about the hosted Exchange environment.  I even some scripts that would actually create a local Excel spreadsheet and pipe the output to that file so you could save it or analyze it further. I'll try to post more of this type of stuff in the future.

Can't activate Windows 8 Enterprise from Technet - Error 0x800700B or 0x8007007B

I'm using an installation of Windows 8 Enterprise 64bit from TechNet. I finally got around to activating my software and I received the following error message - "Code: 0x8007007B   Description: The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect."

It turns out the issue is pretty simple. There is a default license key that is baked into the software, you just need to change that key and input your key that you got from TechNet, MSDN, etc. and then activate it with that key in place.

1. Pull up the "Run" dialog box
2. Enter "SLUI 3"  (no quotes)
3. Enter your true license key in the window that pops up
4. Hit "Activate" button and you are done!

Windows 8 is fast on an SSD drive - installation, boot time, start time, shutdown time (OCZ Vertex 4)

So I bought myself an early Christmas present. I got a great Black Friday deal on an OCZ Vertex 4 512GB SSD (solid state drive). One of the top rated SSD's at the moment.  This was going into my laptop - a 3 year old HP Pavilion DV7 - Core i7 with 8GB of RAM.

I then installed a fresh build of Windows 8 Enterprise as part of this project. I had the Windows 8 ISO file extracted to a USB stick for installation to help speed up the process.

I know SSD's are blazing fast and I know Windows 8 has a ton of performance enhancements so I was really anxious to see how the pair would perform together. I was not disappointed!

It look less than 5 minutes to install Windows 8!!   I still had some setup questions to answer - selection of my wifi network, etc but the actually installation part was already done.  Wow!

Here are some other numbers for you...

Start up time to login screen - 15 seconds
Full reboot to login screen - 25 seconds
Shutdown time - 8 seconds
Sleep - 3 seconds
Wake - 1 second!