Thoughtsofanidlemind's Blog

  • Announcing the 2nd edition of Office 365 for Exchange Professionals

    When Paul Cunningham, Michael Van Horenbeeck, and I set out to write the best possible book covering all aspects of Exchange Online and the other parts of Office 365 that administrators should understand, we knew that the old publishing model of write-edit-print could never keep pace with the development cadence…

  • Visiting Utah Beach

    In June, I wrote about a quick visit to Omaha Beach and the WN62 strongpoint. Normandy has five D-Day beaches and I visited Utah Beach, the second landing point for U.S. forces, the following day. It’s just taken me a while to get around to writing about the visit! The…

  • Exchange Unwashed Digest July 2015

    Sorry for the delay in publishing the July 2015 digest for my Exchange Unwashed Blog on WindowsITPro.com. A small detail called vacation (hot sun, cool pools, and chilled rose wine) got the way. C’est la vie. In any case, here’s what happened during July. Exchange transport pipeline not quite so…

  • Connecting to SharePoint Online with PowerShell

    In my last post, I covered the basics of connecting to Exchange Online with PowerShell, including some optional modules to handle Azure Active Directory Rights Management and the Rights Management service. Another module you might have to load allows you to manage SharePoint Online. I don’t use this very often…

  • How I connect to Exchange Online with PowerShell

    Nearly five years ago, I wrote a post describing how to connect to Exchange 2010 with PowerShell. That post remains very popular, which indicates that lots of people still seek help to understand how to accomplish the task. Technology has moved on and while the Exchange 2010 post remains valid…

  • Second edition of “Office 365 for Exchange Professionals” due September 14

    When we began working on the “Office 365 for Exchange Professionals” eBook, we knew that this was not a once-off effort. The dynamic nature of Office 365 and the number of changes that appear I the service means that books that are just a few months old start to become…

  • Exchange Unwashed Digest – June 2015

    Sorry for the delay in publishing the June 2015 digest for my “Exchange Unwashed” blog on WindowsITPro.com. Travel and the need to crank up the organization of updates for the 2nd edition of the “Office 365 for Exchange Professionals” eBook (available in PDF and EPUB formats on ExchangeServerPro.com and for Kindle…

  • Visiting Omaha Beach (WN62 and the American Military Cemetery)

    For anyone interested in military history, a visit to Normandy provides an excuse to visit some of the World War II sites in the area. I have been visiting the area on and off since 1973 and think I have seen most of what is available to see (like St…

  • The scourge of autosignatures

    Have you ever wondered just how much valuable storage is occupied in email databases by totally useless autosignature content? You know, logos and other tasteful adornments to the bottom of email, repeated ad nausem on every message, internal and external, unregarded and unwanted by recipients. Autosignatures serve a useful purpose…

  • Managing offline access for Outlook Web App

    Offline access is one of the premier new features offered by Outlook Web App (OWA) in Exchange 2013 and Exchange Online. I have had the need to use OWA offline many times and think it is a very usable client, especially over low-speed or flaky Wi-Fi connections. Of course, Outlook’s…