Unexpected Outage Of Outlook.Com Email Services Leaves Users In Confusion

The unexpected outage of Outlook.com last week (Wednesday) caused frustration among hundreds of users. According to Microsoft experts who investigated the Outlook problems found out that the cause of the Outlook.com outage was the failure of Exchange ActiveSync (EAS). Microsoft makes use of Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) to enable smooth and uninterrupted syncing of data stored on Microsoft Exchange Server with smartphones, tablets and PCs. This facility enables users to sync all types of data ranging from emails to contacts to calendars.

In its latest blog post, Microsoft extended its apology for the unexpected outage of the email service and the inconvenience it caused for millions of users across the world. The apology that was published in its service status board reads “We want to apologize to everyone who was affected by the outage, and we appreciate the patience you have shown us as we worked through the issues.”

Outage impacts SkyDrive cloud storage

It was not just Outlook.com email users who suffered from the unexpected outage but also users of Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud storage service. Partial outage on Peoples contacts application was also reported on the same day about 10 a.m. The worst part was that the issue even affected users who tried to access the Outlook.com email account via their smartphone devices. The mobile version of Outlook.com employs EAS to enable users to access their email accounts. It is the same service that enables iPhones users also to access email services. The synchronization problem on mobile devices persisted until 4.30 on Saturday, about four days after the issue had been detected.

The technical department of Microsoft said that it was looking into the issue on wartime basis. It assured users that there will be well-founded measures to avoid similar issues happening in future. The team blamed cache service failure for the outage of the service on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

Microsoft to increase network bandwidth

Microsoft said that it had taken two remarkable steps to prevent similar issues from taking place in future. One of the remedies that it had taken already includes increasing the bandwidth for the vulnerable parts in the system. Another step is the incorporation of an unconventional procedure to handle issues pertaining to Exchange ActiveSync.

It is reassuring that Microsoft is taking up creative measures to prevent Outlook problems in future. Microsoft has been more inclusive lately in covering issues with many of its services, especially email applications.

How To Uninstall Toolbars?

Toolbars appear as a series of buttons on the browser, when you search for something on the Internet. These buttons or add-ons have specific functions and are intended to provide a user-friendly, advanced and convenient browsing experience to the users. But sometimes, these programs may try to replace your browser’s home page with the search engine that they represent. Moreover, some toolbars are also found to install malicious programs on the system. Hence, in such cases removing a toolbar becomes necessary.

Although there are several third-party toolbar remover tools available, you can use the following instructions provided by the Windows tech support to do the same.

Instructions

• In order to uninstall the toolbar program from your computer, you need to first click on the Start button followed by Control Panel, and then click on Uninstall a program.
• But if you are using Windows 8 operating system, you can simply drag your mouse pointer to the right edge of the screen. Here, you need to select the Search option from the list and then select “Control Panel“. Alternatively, you can also right-click on a bottom left corner and choose the Control Panel option from there and type in Uninstall a program.
• Now, once you see the Add/Remove Programs or the Uninstall a Program screen, you can scroll through the list of currently installed programs in your system. Here, you need to check which programs you need to uninstall. Make sure you delete the recently installed or unknown programs from your computer.
• According to Windows tech support, the most commonly found programs installed on users’ computers include: BitGuard, Delta Toolbar, DefaultTab, Search Protect by Conduit, Ask toolbar, Babylon Toolbar, Browser Protect, WebCake, Mixi.DJ toolbar etc.
• As mentioned earlier, if you are not able to uninstall the specific toolbar or program from the system manually, you can always resort to the various advanced third-party toolbar remover tools. You can also contact the Windows tech support to get more information on the removal of these unwanted programs.
• It is always recommended to uninstall all programs, which you have not installed yourself and do not know its function. This is essential especially to remove the malware programs, which can harm your computer.

These instructions can help you to successfully remove the toolbar programs in your system. For more assistance regarding the uninstallation of toolbars and unwanted programs, feel free to contact our technical support team.

Microsoft Stops The Option To Update Xbox One Offline

Microsoft has recently pulled the customer support page that offered the option to download Xbox One’s patch on a PC. The user can then update their Xbox One console through a USB device. The files and instructions to manually update the Xbox console offline was removed by Microsoft. The company says that it will work directly with the customers who need the option. Microsoft explained that the website was intended as a support tool that is aimed at helping the customers whose console is not connecting to Live due to some issues. These customers were still able to do the update with these instructions. Microsoft officials also said that they do not have any plans to put back this removed page.

These instructions were aimed at helping the Xbox One owners by allowing ways to update their gaming console without the need to connect to the Internet. Previously, Microsoft had listed a twenty-step guide that helps the users download the latest Xbox One firmware to a USB device and then use it to update the gaming console. But, Microsoft has now pulled the associated files and instructions to do this. To get the best experience, the Xbox One device will need a Day One update when the device is first switched on.

"The site was not an alternative way to take the Day One update and customers still need to connect to Xbox Live for the update,” said one of the Microsoft spokesperson to GameSpot. Microsoft had said previously that the new Xbox One console will do very little without the Day One update. Microsoft is trying to encourage the customers who might require an offline update to contact the Microsoft helpline directly. Because of the complexity of this customer support process we’ve actually removed the page and we will work with customers directly to make sure they have a smooth experience," they said.

Let us hope that this move from Microsoft will prove to be helpful to the Xbox One owners. After the initial release of the device, the sales of the console have much increased and the customers are much satisfied by the performance and efficiency of the device. If you wish to know more on the option to update the Xbox One console offline, you can contact the Microsoft helpline number. They will be able to provide you with more details on this news.

Microsoft Announces New Apps For Windows 8 And Windows Phone 8

Good news to those who complain constantly about the lack of useful apps for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8. Microsoft announced lately said that it had taken the concerns of its users seriously. The report adds that Microsoft is about to release two new apps, one for Windows 8 and the other one for Windows Phone 8. Named Office Reader and Office Lens respectively, these apps are said to be the first of its kind.

Office Reader

Microsoft reveals that Office Rader is designed to provide users with a cross format tool, which they can use to access files and contents that are different in formats. The app will receive Windows 8 support online.

Office Lens

Office Lens is designed for Windows Phone 8. The app is comes with the optical character recognition feature. This allows the users to scan an image and then covert it to the file format that they wish.

The details about these upcoming apps were first revealed during a Microsoft meeting held recently. The pre-beta version of the app is already out. However, it is circulated only among the employees at Microsoft. It was also reported that the Microsoft meeting had decided to release an update for MS Office products. These updates are named ‘Gemini’.

At the meeting, Microsoft’s Kirk Koenigsbaurer was quoted as saying "Office Reader is a new modern Windows 8-style app that supports web pages, Office documents, PDFs, ebooks, and textbooks. At first launch it includes library, sources, and recommendations sections.” The statement which is published in The Verge adds that the Office Reader will be compatible with PDF format files. As of now, there is no app which helps users with easy navigation through PDF files. Moreover, they find it relatively hard to reflow the text in PDF files on touch-based devices running on Windows 8 platform. Office Reader, hence, is hoped to rectify these limitations, providing users with better options, functionalities and compatibility.

Bing Support for Office Reader and Office Lens

Another interesting feature that Microsoft has integrated with Office Reader and Office Lens is Bing Support. This integrated service allows users to look for a particular item they chose on the document.

Let us hope the Microsoft would also provide the Windows 8 support services for both these apps once they are officially launched.

Repair Your Corrupted Emails Using Stellar Phoenix Outlook PST Repair 5

Outlook is the most popular email application that Microsoft has ever produced and it comes bundled with the Microsoft Office suite of applications. Microsoft Outlook is very user-friendly and provides various functions that can be used for a wide variety of purposes. Some of its uses include sending and receiving of email, calendar, task scheduler, etc.

Usually, the information in Outlook is stored in the form of PST files and there is a chance of these files becoming corrupted. Therefore, your emails and the data stored in it can also be corrupted. Recovering the corrupted email and corrupted PST files is a tedious process. Some can be easily recovered by using the inbuilt repair tool of Outlook. However, some needs the use of a third party repair tool.

One famous tech brand that is known for producing recovery & email repair tools is Stellar Data Recovery. Recently, they announced a new tool called as Stellar Phoenix Outlook PST Repair v5. This is an email repair tool with a brand new interface and a new scanning engine. As a result, it is more efficient and can scan 30 percent faster than before. Now, with the availability of this Outlook repair tool, a user can easily fix all the corrupted emails and restore all the data and other items like tasks, notes and calendar. The new Stellar Phoenix Outlook PST Repair 5 tool is compatible with MS Office 2013.

CEO of Stellar Data Recovery, Mr. Sunil Chandna said, “Most users around the world use MS Outlook as a primary mail client. Over a period of time with numerous mail transactions the PST file size increases & may get corrupt. This is one amongst many reasons that could lead to file corruption and therefore loss of critical data on emails. This latest version of Stellar Phoenix Outlook PST Repair handles all known corruption cases efficiently.”

Features

• It has a user-friendly interface.
• The recovered files can be saved in various formats like RTF, MSG, HTML, PDF and EML.
• Only three steps are involved in the repair process. One is Select, second is Scan and the third one is Repair. 
• It is Possible to recover the deleted emails even if they have been deleted from the Deleted Items folder.

Thus, the users need not worry in case of any corruption of emails or when any other items in Outlook stops working. With the use of Stellar Phoenix Outlook PST Repair 5, a user can fix all the issues related to corrupted PST files and emails in Outlook. For further Outlook repair tips, contact the Outlook tech support team.

Instructions For Changing The Server Port In Outlook

While configuring Outlook to setup your favourite email account in it, you may have noticed the prompt to specify your server port type (IMAP or POP3). You will select the port type based on the server details provided by your email service provider. For one or the other reasons, you may want to change the server port type after configuring your email account. Users are free to switch between the port types. However, they need to ensure that their email account is compatible with either of the port types. Hence, contact your email service provider and verify whether both these port types are compatible with your Outlook email.

Follow these Outlook help instructions to learn how to switch between IMAP and POP3 ports.

Instructions

• Launch your Microsoft Outlook application.
• Go to the menu titled Tools which you can see on the menu bar located at the upper portion of the screen.
• Choose Account Settings from the context menu that appears.
• Locate and press the tab titled Email from the Account Settings screen.
• If you have setup multiple emails accounts in your application, choose the email account for which you wish to change the port type.
• Now, go to the section titled Server Information and set the server type to POP3 if it is currently set to IMAP. Do not change any other settings in the page.
• Next, go to the section titled More Settings and make appropriate changes in the server port settings. If you are unsure of the changes to be made in these settings, contact your email service provider for help.
• On the More Settings screen, you will find another screen titled Internet Email Settings. Locate and press the tab labelled Advanced to make the changes in the port numbers of incoming and outgoing mail server. For this also, contact your email service provider for assistance. 
• Once you have made the appropriate changes in the settings, press the Save button.

You have successfully changed the server type of your email account in Microsoft Outlook. Restart your Outlook application and check if it is downloading emails. If the application is not downloading any emails, the POP3 server connection has not been achieved. Contact your email service provider to verify the activation status. If you have any other concerns regarding Microsoft Outlook, contact the Outlook help line.

Adding Your Bellsouth Email Account To Microsoft Outlook

You might be using the BellSouth account for your email correspondence, and wondering whether it is possible to connect this email account to your Microsoft Outlook mail client application. It is indeed possible to do so, if you know all the relevant details for setting up the account in Outlook.
You would be able to find the settings details on either the Outlook Express help website, or the official website of the BellSouth email network. After collecting these, you need to follow the instructions given below to the set up the BellSouth email account in Microsoft Outlook.

How to add the BellSouth account to Outlook

• On the Outlook Express toolbar menu, you would find the Set up a mail account option. This would take you to a number of other options, among which you need to choose Create a new Internet mail account. Here, you would find the Display option – you need to give here the name you want displayed on your outgoing mails.
• Then you would find the option that says I already have an email account that I would like to use. Now, enter your email address for the BellSouth account in the Email Address field and fill in the other details for setting up the account using the details you collected from the BellSouth mail network website.
• These details would include the email account type (which would be POP3), the incoming and the outgoing mail server addresses for the BellSouth email service.
• Once you have entered these details, you would be required to enter the username and password for the BellSouth email account. Only if all the above-mentioned details are entered correctly will the Outlook client be able to connect to the BellSouth mail server.
• You can use the Remember my password option in the Outlook mail client so that you do not have to enter the password every time you log in.
• This completes the email account setup process in Outlook Express, and you can exit from the account setup wizard by pressing on the Finish button.

Your BellSouth mail account is now added to the Outlook mail client. You would now receive your BellSouth account mail messages in Outlook Express. If you faced any errors while setting up the mail account, contact Outlook Express help for assistance.