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.

Windows 7 PC won't Sleep automatically - An audio stream is currently in use

My Windows 7 64 bit PC (A Dell XPS 420) had been working just fine with sleep mode - going to Sleep after the specified period of time, waking with no problems, even waking automatically for my Windows Home Server backups.

But recently it would not automatically go to sleep.  I did swap out some different hard drives recently but nothing that should have messed with the BIOS or Sleep settings.  So I've been troubleshoot this issue quite a bit.  I did find a nice checklist of things on this page.  I'd suggest going over those basic tasks first. However mine was a little more complicated.

First, launch a Command Prompt window using the "Run as administrator" option. (Search for "cmd", right-click and select "Run as administrator".)

Then run this command:   powercfg -requests

What this will do is tell you any programs or devices that are currently preventing the system from entering sleep mode. In my case, it reported that my audio device was causing the issue. The message was "An audio stream is currently in use."  This could be caused by something as simple as a web browse that has some Flash content in it.  See screenshot...

So now that you know what is preventing Sleep mode, you need to tell the power management system to ignore that device and go ahead and enter Sleep mode anyway.  In my case, it was my audio card called "High Definition Audio Device".  Yours will vary - it might mention Creative Labs, SoundMax, RealTek, etc. Or it might be a totally different device all together (network card, mouse, keyboard, etc.).  You'll need to specify that exact same name in the following command.

For me, the command was:   powercfg -REQUESTSOVERRIDE DRIVER "High Definition Audio Device" SYSTEM

Now that I've told the power management system to ignore any audio streams opened by that device, it goes to sleep without any problems.

(If this helps to solve your issue, why not throw me a bone and click on an ad or two? Thanks!)

Duplicate text and SMS messages on Blackberry

One of my users recently started having a problem with receiving duplicate text (or SMS) messages on his Blackberry.  This would happen to the majority of messages he received, but not all of them. And some would only have one duplicate message but others might eventually have 5 or 6 copies of the same message.  Sometimes the duplicates would show up with different dates as well.

I think something was corrupt with the text message database on his phone so I wanted to wipe out all text messages and see what happened.   So I connected his Blackberry to my laptop running the Blackberry Desktop Software and made a full backup of the phone.  Then in Blackberry Desktop I went to Device -> Delete Data and selected both "Text" and "SMS" entries just to be sure. 

After wiping out those databases, his duplicate text message problems seems to be gone. For now anyway. :)

Lync Online error "There was a problem acquiring a personal certificate required to sign in" - for Office 365

I was attempting to sign into Microsoft Lync Online the other day (part of an Office 365 implementation) and I received this error message...

"Cannot sign in to Lync. There was a problem acquiring a personal certificate required to sign in".

Of course I tried all of the typical stuff - restarting Lync, rebooting the laptop but it didn't help. No other users were reporting this issue - they could all sign in just fine - so I'm assuming it's something local to my Windows 7 64 bit laptop.

I did some research and it looks like something was corrupt with my local cached credentials.  Not sure why - i didn't change my password or anything like that.   I found this article from Microsoft...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2604176

Here are the steps from that article that worked for me...

To renew a user account certificate, follow these steps:

1. Renew the certificate in Windows Certificate Manager. To do this, follow these steps:
   1. Open Windows Certificate Manager. To do this, click Start, click Run, type certmgr.msc, and then click OK.
   2. Expand Personal, and then expand Certificates.
   3. Sort by the Issued By column, and then look for a certificate that is issued by Communications Server.
   4. Verify that the certificate is present and that it is not expired.
   5. Delete the certificate and try to sign in to Lync Online. If you cannot sign in to Lync Online, go to step 2.
2. If you are running Windows 7, remove the user’s stored credentials in Windows Credential Manager. To do this, follow these steps:
   1. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Credential Manager.
   2. Locate the set of credentials that is used to connect to Lync Online.
   3. Expand the set of credentials, and then select Remove from Vault.
   4. Try to sign in to Lync Online again, and then type your new set of credentials.

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!!)

Virtualize Windows 8: How to set up the Consumer Preview in VirtualBox | ZDNet

I'm currently downloading the new Windows 8 Consumer Preview. I want to run it as a VM using VirtualBox. I'm going to try out the guidelines from this article...

Virtually Windows 8: How to set up the Consumer Preview in VirtualBox | ZDNet:

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Blackberry not displaying emails only showing text SMS messages in Messages app

Yesterday I had a customer that said they were not able to read their emails on their Blackberry. (Not sure which model - I think it was some flavor of a Bold, running version 6.x of the OS. It's synced to a corporate BIS server.)


When I hit the "Messages" app, it only showed a few text messages and maybe voice mails.  But on the home screen, I did see the little yellow envelope, indicating that there were emails to be read. In fact, if I scrolled up on the home screen and clicked on the yellow message icon area, it pulled up a different window where it breaks down unread emails, unread texts, etc.  So I knew the emails were on there somewhere. I just figured they were being hidden or filtered from the Messages app.

Another way that I realized that things were messed up was when I went into Messages -> Blackberry button -> Options, I didn't see the normal looking screen here. It should have different sub-menus for customization which items should be displayed in Messages and many other display options.  All I saw were a few options about displaying text/sms messages.

So it was determined that my messages database was corrupt.  I used the sync cable and connected it to my laptop which was running the Blackberry Desktop software. First I made a full backup of everything.  Then I went to Device -> Delete Data...  and told it to delete "Messages".  It makes an additional backup of just the Messages database so keep note of this file name and location, you'll need it later.   After I deleted the messages database, I did a full reboot by pulling out the battery and putting it back in.

After the phone started up, I went to Messages -> Blackberry button -> Options and I could see all of the proper settings and sub-menus were back.  So then I connected back to my laptop via sync cable, went to Blackberry Desktop, went to Restore and then restored the messages database back that I had previously noted.  This brought back all of the emails.  They now showed up properly in the Messages app along with missed calls, text messages, voicemails, etc.