Office 365 Troubleshooting Guide
Help Desk Troubleshooting Guide
This resource is for first-level help desk agents who support Office 365. It provides easy access to help topics and KB articles that will help you quickly resolve the most common issues that we’ve found Office 365 users encounter. You’ll also find tools and resources for additional troubleshooting.
About this Guide
The most common requests are outlined in this document for quick reference. For additional topics use the online Office 365 troubleshooting resource to connect to the most relevant content for your topic.
Office 365 Troubleshooting
(http://aka.ms/o365troubleshooting)
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The troubleshooting tool provides assistance for many Office 365 topics including:
Delve
Exchange Online
Exchange Online Protection
Yammer
Identity management
User and domain management
Office 365 Planner
Office 365 Sway
Office 365 ProPlus
SharePoint Online
Skype for Business Online
Common Topics
The sections below guide you to the most common help and troubleshooting topics.
If you are an Office 365 administrator, for more information about support options see Get support for Office 365.
Sign IN
Common issues and tasks related to Office 365 sign-in are listed in the following table. If a user needs help with one of frequently mentioned scenarios listed below, click the link to display an article that provides troubleshooting or how-to steps.
CommON Issues
I’m having trouble signing in to Office 365
I’m having trouble signing in to Skype for Business
I forgot my password
I can't sign out of Office 365 web services
I see an error message "Your organization could not sign you in to this
service"
I’m having Outlook connection problems with Office 365
How do i…
How do I sign in to Outlook Web App?
How do I add company branding to my sign in page?
Office 365 Health & support
Use these resources to check the health of the Office 365 service, monitor connectivity, and review support options.
RECOMMENDED LINKS
View service health
Monitor connectivity
Support options
Office 365 Email and Calendar
Common issues and tasks related to Office 365 email and calendars are listed in the following table. If a user needs help with one of frequently mentioned scenarios listed below, click the link to display an article that provides troubleshooting or how-to steps.
Common Issues
I can’t receive email
Email isn’t flowing to expected recipients
I’m having email issues after a custom domain was added
When I try to access someone's mailbox folder, I see the error "Unable to open default folders-you do not have permissions to logon"
How Do I…
How do I set up Outlook for Office 365?
How do I set up Office 365 on my phone or tablet?
How do I move email and contacts into my new Office 365 account?
How do I connect Outlook Web App to other email accounts?
How do I forward email to another email account?
How do I use my Office 2010 desktop programs with Office 365?
How do I set up email in Outlook for Mac 2011?
How can I recover a deleted item in Outlook?
How do I manage some else’s email and calendar in Outlook?
How do I allow someone else to manage my mail and calendar in Outlook?
SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business
Common issues and tasks related to Office 365 file sharing with OneDrive for Business are listed in the following table. If a user needs help with one of frequently mentioned scenarios listed below, click the link to display an article that provides troubleshooting or how-to steps.
Common Issues
I’m having trouble with the “Open with Explorer” command
I need to recover a deleted file
I’m running into storage limits
How Do I…
How do I update my profile to help people find me?
How do I share items in OneDrive for Business?
How do I create a team site in SharePoint Online?
How do I move a document from one library to another?
How do I synchronize a library to my computer?
How do I understand permissions in SharePoint Online?
How do I add an app to my SharePoint site?
Office 365 ProPlus Desktop Programs
Common issues and tasks related to Office 365 ProPlus desktop programs are listed in the following table. If a user needs help with one of frequently mentioned scenarios listed below, click the link to display an article that provides troubleshooting or how-to steps.
Common Issues
I’m having trouble installing Office
Why is Office taking so long to install
Office 2013 or Office 365 setup stops responding
I see the activation errors for Office 365 ProPlus
I see the error "Something went wrong and we can't sign you in right now"
I can’t install Office 2013 or Office 2016 on Windows XP or Windows Vista
I can't install both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Office
How Do I…
How do I create an Outlook Data File (.pst) to save my information?
How do I import Outlook items from an Outlook Data File (.pst)?
How do I uninstall Office 2013?
SERVICE MANGEMENT TOOLKIT
These resources will keep you informed about the current service status, alert you to future changes, and enable you to keep ahead of changes.
Monitor the Service Health Dashboard for current service status Ü
Visit the Office 365 Roadmap for upcoming features and releases Ü
Visit the Office blog to review announcements and news Ü
Stay ahead of change with the Office 365 message center Ü
Keep current on the go with the Office 365 Admin app Ü
Know the Office 365 service limits with service description Ü
Advanced Office 365 Troubleshooting Tools
You can use the tools, resources, and scripts below to troubleshoot and resolve issues.
Tools for Help Desk Personnel
Tools
Description
Office 365 Guided Walkthroughs
Guided walk throughs (GWTs) are online assistants to guide you to the right solution. Two types of GWTs are available across various products. A "troubleshooter" guided walkthrough helps you diagnose and resolve issues in your environment. A "how-to" guided walkthrough contains step-by-step information to help you perform a task, such as setting up a particular aspect of your environment.
Office 365 Support and Recovery Assistant
The Office 365 Support and Recovery Assistant helps users troubleshoot and fix their account or profile related Outlook issues. The assistant performs a series of diagnostics tests to identify the root cause of issues, such as verifying users’ credentials, licenses, updates to Outlook clients, and whether Outlook servers are reachable. Depending on the test results, it can offer to automatically fix problems for users or provide instruction on recommended solutions. All the diagnostics results are saved in a log file for users to share with their Outlook admin or support engineers for further investigation. Each time you run Office 365 Support and Recovery Assistant, it automatically gets updated to its latest version, so it can troubleshoot any new Outlook problems.
Office 365 Outlook Connectivity Guided Walkthrough
A guided walkthrough that helps you resolve connectivity or performance issues when you connect your Outlook client to an Office 365 mailbox.
Office 365 Community troubleshooting tool
A do-in-yourself troubleshooter that helps you find articles and tools related to a specific problem or question.
Office configuration analyzer
A downloadable tool for Help Desk personnel that analyzes several Office programs for common configurations that may cause problems.
Tools for IT Administrators
Tools & Resources
Description
Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer (RCA)
A set of tools that test Office 365 DNS, sign-on, Exchange, and Outlook connectivity.
Microsoft Connectivity Analyzer
A downloadable client program that identifies connectivity issues between email clients and Office 365 or Exchange Server.
Microsoft Skype for Business Connectivity Analyzer
A downloadable client program that determines whether Skype for Business supports connections from clients.
Office 365 Client Performance Analyzer
You can use the Office 365 Client Performance Analyzer (OCPA) tool to identify issues that affect network performance between your company’s client PCs and Office 365
IDFix DirSync Error Remediation Tool
A tool for Active Directory administrators that performs discovery and remediation of identity objects in preparation for migration from on-premises Active Directory environment to Office 365.
Office Click-To-Run Configuration XML Editor
Also hosted in the GitHub repository is web based editor for the Click-To-Run version of the Office Deployment Tool. This page allows you to graphically generate and edit the configuration file used with Office Click-To-Run deployments. The link for this page is listed below.
New Office 365 and AD FS/DirSync Information Available
Information about new Office 365 tools: Client Access Policy Builder, Office 365 Federation Metadata Update tool, and DirSync Count Total Synchronized Objects.
Office 365 URLs and IP address ranges
Information about the IP addresses and URLs that are used by Office 365 for enterprises cloud-based services.
Useful scripts
Tools & Resources
Description
PowerShell.Office.com | PowerShell for Office 365
A collection of Windows PowerShell sample scripts can be used to automate a number of Office 365 deployment and management tasks.
Office Deployment Scripts for IT Pros
In an effort to streamline the deployment process for Office 2016 and Office 365 ProPlus, a GitHub repository has been created with a collection of scripts and other projects. The repository is meant to be a place for IT Pros to come and find solutions that will make tasks related to deploying and maintaining Office easier.
Fix Empty DisplayName Attribute for On-premises Mail-Enabled Groups
A script that verifies displayName property for mail-enabled groups.
Fix Duplicate User Principal Name for On-premises Active Directory Users
A script that enables you to export Active Directory users that have duplicate or empty user principal names so that you can correct and import them.