Outlook automapped mailbox could not be expanded

So the other day I had to grant a user permission to another users mailbox, straight forward you may think? Not so this time!

After granting the permissions as you normally would, giving it a moment and relaunching Outlook, we couldn't expand the mailbox and received the error "Cannot expand the folder".

I rechecked everything and the user had full permissions according to the 365 Admin portal.

I then decided to fire up powershell and see what it said, and to my surprise - it too said the user had full access to the other users mailbox!

Weird huh?

Yeah, I thought so too.

Not to waste having logged into Powershell I removed and added the permissions back with the commands below, checked it was set in Powershell and 365 Admin portal - all looked good so fired up Outlook again - HUZZAH! I could now open and browse the mailbox!!!

So to remove and add full permissions use the commands below:

• Remove-MailboxPermission -Identity [email address or alias of user whose mailbox needs no longer to be shared] -User [email of user that needs access revoking] -AccessRights FullAccess -InheritanceType All

• Add-MailboxPermission -Identity [email of user whose mailbox needs sharing] -User [email of user that needs access] -AccessRights FullAccess -InheritanceType All

Office 2010 not working after changing product key

So after rolling our a machine which was installed via WDS I went to change the product key on the Office 2010 installation, as per usual I navigated to Programs and Features in Control Panel, found office, clicked Change and chose the Change Product Key option, went through the wizard, rebooted and to my horror Office said it couldn't activate and closed after clicking OK.

It's the first time in years I'd come across this problem and lots of articles said to do this, that and the next thing, even on the Microsoft community forums there were a million ways to fix this and none of them worked.

One of the answers was to use this app which asks which version of Office you have installed, but upon running it it said it could find no information about the Office install - I guess this is why Office was failing to activate.

A bit more digging and I found another site with some reg files you run ... Whoa, hold your horses! Before running any program or registry mods found on the internet, I suggest first researching the app , running it in a VM to make sure its safe and scanning it with Virus Total and opening the reg files in notepad to check they're not going to do anything nasty. Always. No exceptions.

I found this blog which describes his own troubles which were different, but we needed the same end goal - to remove all traces of Office having been installed. I removed Office 2010 through Programs and Features then ran the reg files, rebooted, reinstalled Office 2010 with the correct product key - et voila it now activated and worked like a Office product should. Please do head over to his site and have a read of his post too.

Having read the comments I noticed Microsoft had put out out a Fixit to remove Office when you were unable to remove office normally, but decided as I was able to remove Office I would proceed with the reg files instead.

Here's the Fixit in case you are unable to remove office in the usual manner: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/971179

and a mirror of Office Scrubber files "just in case".

MS-DOS Mobile v1 - Microsoft's best April fools?

Today Microsoft released MS-DOS Mobile v1, along with a video on youtube which you can watch here. So being the MS fanboy I am I installed it on my Lumia 930 and had a play around with it and took a *few* screenshots.

Welcome to MS-DOS Mobile v1!

Not quite as many files as I remember being in the DOS dirctory...

Full keyboard access, fantastic! It's what I always dreamt of!

You can even use 'edit' to well ... edit the autoexec.bat and config.sys files, just like the good old days!

You can even make calls from MS-DOS Mobile v1! Admittedly it just launches the standard phone app and you can't have spaces in the number or NAME, yes you can give it a name, but the name can't have spaces in it ... I'm sure by v1.1 they'll have worked out this bug.

and yes, you even get Windows 3.1 with it, talk about a give software give away?! Do they still charge any ANYTHING any more? It even starts with the classic DAA-DIIIING! 

It was then time to explore that Game directory...

 Ah yes, nothing like managing your memory, if you were ever lucky enough to have more than 640k you'll remember that pain ... ah yes, QEMM was the way to manage your memory, dump memmaker and use QEMM - its what all the cool kids did ;-)


So what exactly is RPS.EXE ? Its Rock, Paper, Scissors of course - DUH! although the CPU only ever seemed to choose Scissors ... I'm sure by MS-DOS Mobile v1.4 they'll have this fixed.

I won't spoil any more of the surprises hidden in this gem, so go find them yourself!

Exchange 365 - give user permission to edit Distribution list

Here's a quick run down of how to enable end users to edit distribution lists, this saves you time and gives department managers greater flexibility.

Go to your company or clients Exchange Admin Centre, go to Permissions then user roles and create a RBAC by hitting the +, give it a good name and description. Under the Distribution groups section, tick the "MyDistributionGroups" option and any others you might need and save the RBAC, the default RBAC has all but the MyApps selected, remember this will replace the Default Role Assignment Policy for the user you assign your RBAC to.

Now under recipients in the Exchange Admin Centre find the user and edit them, under mailbox features change their Role Assignment policy to that which you've just created and save.

Now whilst still under recipients, click on Groups, find the group the user needs to manage and edit it, under ownership add the user to is to manage the group and save.

Now the user should be able to open Outlook, click Address book, find the group and add/remove other users.