Microsoft Office 365 & Office 2016 Information from Lisa at Call That Girl

My name is Lisa Hendrickson, owner of Call That Girl and I have been a computer tech since 1996. In the past few years, I have started to only support Microsoft Outlook and Office 365. As a tech who works in a niche field, I come across issues more often than other technicians might experience day to day. Here are a few ways you can keep up with my knowledge to help you support your clients.

I have a weekly podcast show “Call That Girl’s Office 365 Show” that you can download and listen to, www.callthatgirl.biz/office365. All of my past shows are listed here at this site, it will direct you to the www.callthatgirl.podbean.com hosting site. You can subscribe to the feeds at that site to get on your podcast catcher.

My latest show covers all of this in this memo. http://callthatgirl.podbean.com/e/call-that-girls-office-365-show-39-microsoft-office-2016-and-troubleshooting/

In the past few weeks (months actually), I have noticed a change in the Office 365/Office 2016 software. Since its release, it has caused a few problems for my clients, which I will outline here. Be warned…downgrading for me has been the easiest fix to do to get MY job done.I don’t like the easy way out, trust me…but I have spent hours upon hours working every angle and it’s been more than frustrating to say the least. I don’t mind billing my clients for the appropriate amount of time to fix an issue, but I just cannot spend 4 hours repairing Office 2016 and feel it’s only fair to bill a client for 1 hour of time. You will not keep clients if you bill them for 4 hours to fix broken software, no matter what software that is.

Below is a list of the issues I am experiencing. Downgrading immediately helps keep my tech time billable and fair.

1. You can no longer manually setup Exchange in Outlook 2016. If your client’s DNS does not have “autodiscover” setup, then you will need to set up autodiscover, or downgrade your client to Office 2013.
2. Many of my clients using Office 2013 are being asked to upgrade (automatically by the software, in a link at the top of Outlook) to Office 2016 and some are experiencing major glitches with this upgrade. I have yet to determine what is causing it, I cannot say its Windows 7, 8 or 10 at this point, but you can try to repair that installation and if that fails, downgrade back to Outlook 2013.
3. You might get other random errors such as “Outlook cannot logon” or “You are not connected to a network”…these all mean trouble. Downgrade! Trying to fix this from my experience will not help. I have done everything I can think of and if I’m not having good luck, I wish you luck.
4. A new OST will be created if Outlook 2016 is not functioning. You will see this OST file in the “Appdata” folder and it will be a size of 16,464 KB. It is similar to how Outlook has a 265K file. This OST will create itself when trying to create the profile. And if this happens, Exchange might not setup and you will need to fix that, or downgrade.
5. You cannot downgrade if the client purchased stand-alone Office 2016. You will need to get a refund and have Microsoft change your purchase.
6. How to downgrade if you have Office 365
   1. Have client login with their credentials
   2. Go to the support link, chat with the technician
   3. Tell them that you are experiencing issues with 2016 and they need to downgrade the client to 2013. So far, I have had zero resistance to this. They will talk you through how to find (it’s hidden) the 2013 downgrade. They do not use the word “downgrade” by the way, they call it “Install other versions”
   4. You will need to uninstall the 2016 version, reboot and then download again.
7. Also for those that don’t work with Office 365 or Office 2016 often, here is a simple explanation.
   1. Office 365 is a subscription based product, it only has Office 2016 as the download.
   2. Office 2016 is a standalone desktop product

For those that are reading and need help with Outlook, please contact me Lisa@callthatgirl.biz

Category: Outlook Support