Help prevent user-error security breaches

Ran in to this nice blog post by the Office Team, a good read:

 

According to the Association of Corporate Counsel, unintentional employee error is the top cause of data breaches. And with 87 percent of IT professionals concerned about the security of cloud data, according to a Dimensional Research survey conducted for Druva, it’s easy to feel vulnerable. Preventing these unintentional errors can help keep your data protected.

The problem—simple passwords

Simple or reused passwords open the door to hackers. According to SplashData, the top five worst passwords of 2015 were:

  1. 123456
  2. password
  3. 12345678
  4. qwerty
  5. 12345

But even a great password can pose problems when used on multiple sites. Hackers know that people like to reuse passwords, so when they crack one, they test it on multiple sites, especially those that may contain higher value information.

Your solution—Educate employees on how to create a strong password. Then put a policy in place to ensure passwords meet minimum complexity requirements and require that users change them often. Also, encourage secure password-keeping practices such as using third-party services that store passwords in the cloud and secure them all with a master password.

The problem—falling for phishing

According to a Verizon Data Breach report, phishing is the second most common threat and is implicated in around a quarter of all data breaches. If a phishing message ends up in an employee’s inbox, there’s a good chance they will click the link.

Your solution—In addition to top-notch security and secure email filters, encourage users to report suspicious-looking messages—similar to reporting junk mail. Once reviewed and identified as a threat, add these messages to service-wide filters.

help-prevent-user-error-security-breaches-1

In Exchange Online, Email Safety Tips provide an additional layer of protection with a warning to the user in messages that are marked suspicious.

The problem—BYOD practices

Bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies are widely used in today’s business landscape, but employees accessing sensitive information from personal devices can open the door to security threats. According to research from the Ponemon Institute, a total of 67 percent of respondents cited employees using their devices to access company data as likely or certainly the cause of data breaches.

Your solution—Create clear BYOD policies and educate employees on how to follow these guidelines—including what’s at risk if they’re ignored. For additional layers of security, require the use of approved secure mobile apps and multi-factor authentication when accessing company information.

The problem—lost or stolen devices

Lost devices are another leading cause of data breaches. And not just employee-owned devices—even your company’s devices are at risk, leaving your organization exposed to threats if they are lost or stolen.

Your solution—Educate employees on proper device security on- and off-premises, and instruct them to report lost devices as soon as possible. Enable security policies to ensure you can remotely access, locate and wipe a device if necessary.

Keep your business and email secure

Help protect your organization’s data with the email security features you need to move your business ahead. Office 365 has built-in, always up-to-date security and compliance features for greater peace of mind.

Get the free eBook

Continually educate employees to minimize risk of common user-error breaches. Security features available with Office 365 help mitigate the risks introduced by employees. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) proactively scans emails and notifies users before they send sensitive information. Information Rights Management (IRM) allows you to control email access permissions to keep unauthorized people from printing, forwarding or copying sensitive information. Additionally, Office 365 gives you the option to use Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) to safeguard mailboxes against sophisticated attacks in real time.

Learn more

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14986 for PC

New Build 184986 released to the Fast Ring Insiders, happy upgrading!

Great news, Direct Access is up & running again in this build!

What’s new in Build 14986

Making Cortana awesomer:

  • Turn off your computer, change volume with voice commands: Being able to control your computer with just your voice is one of the top requests we get with Cortana, so we’re excited to say that we’ve added several new features to Cortana that let you do just that. Now you can shut down your PC just by asking Cortana. You can also restart, lock, or put the system to sleep, and raise and lower your system volume with just your voice. Give it a try and let us know what you think!
  • Cortana loves music: You can now use Cortana to control music playback on more of your favorite music apps (EN-US only). Starting with this build, we’ve enabled natural language compatibility for iHeartRadio and TuneIn Radio. This will work on both, above the lock screen (PC is locked) as well as below! You can try queries like…

Play <Artist/Track/Title/Genre> on <AppName>
Play Drake on iHeartRadio
Play Christmas music on iHeartRadio
Play NPR Hourly News on TuneIn
Play jazz music on TuneIn

Play <Frequency/Call Letters> on <AppName>
Play 90.3 on iHeartRadio
Play KUOW on TuneIn

While you are listening to music in one of these apps, you can also use your voice to control playback and volume. With radio stations, we often want to know what that catchy tune is that has played a million times, so we added support for “What’s Playing”. Try saying “Hey Cortana, What song is Playing?” and it will work for all apps playing music. As a bonus, we made Cortana smarter by remembering the last played music app so you don’t have to say “on Groove” over and over. All you need to do is say your desired app one time, something like “Play jazz music on iHeartRadio”; then the next time, just say “Play rock music” and it will play on iHeartRadio. Please look for the Quest and give us feedback!

1

2 3

  • Adding music recognition support to Chinese (Simplified): Cortana can now recognize music for customers in China. Simply tap the music notes icon in the top corner of Cortana’s home page, and Cortana will listen to whatever music is playing and use Netease to tell you what song it is. This works exactly like the feature does in English (United States). You can also say “Hey Cortana, what’s playing?” (except, in Chinese, of course, so you’d say 你好小娜,这是什么歌) and Cortana will start listening to the song.

4 5

  • Full screen when Idle: We’ve made major improvements to Cortana’s look when using “Hey Cortana” when your PC is unlocked and idle. When your PC is in this state, asking Cortana questions will result in a gorgeous full-screen experience that is optimized for far field viewing! Give it a try by enabling “Hey Cortana” and then wait for about 10 seconds or so without touching your PC. May we recommend asking to see if it will snow tomorrow?

6

7

  • Cortana sign-in using Azure Active Directory (AAD) identity: This capability will allow you to sign into Cortana with your work or school account instead your MSA, enabling you to use Cortana even if your organization does not support MSA. To sign in to Cortana using your work or school account, just go to Cortana’s Notebook and “About Me” and sign in. You’ll get the full Cortana experience with most of the same features. AAD join is currently only available on Windows 10 PCs.

Enterprise Cloud Printing: The new Enterprise Cloud Printers discovery UI under Settings > Devices > Printers & scanners will enable corporate users to discover corporate printers when on Azure Active Directory joined devices when the IT admin deploys and configures the backend services.

8

This feature requires the corresponding backend services to work, which are not yet available. Please continue to use existing UI to discover and install printers in the interim.

Windows Game Bar improved full-screen support: With the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, we added support for six full screen games in Game Bar. For the Windows 10 Creators Update, we’re working on adding many more. In this build, we’ve added support for 19 additional games in full-screen mode with Windows game bar. As always, just hit WIN + G to invoke Game Bar to capture a recording or screenshot.

  • ARMA 3
  • Battlefield 1
  • Civilization V
  • Dark Souls III
  • Fallout 4
  • Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
  • Mad Max
  • Mafia 2
  • NBA 2K16
  • Overwatch
  • Star Wars: The Old Republic
  • StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm
  • The Binding of Isaac
  • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
  • Terraria
  • Tom Clancy’s The Division
  • Total War: WARHAMMER
  • Warframe
  • World of Tanks

Tip: You can control this feature through the Windows Game bar settings. In the settings dialog, look for the “Show Game bar when I play full-screen games” checkbox. See Major Nelson’s post on Game bar for more info on how to adjust settings for best game performance.

Taking your Windows Ink experience to the next level: We’ve already announced and released some of the improvements that will be coming for our pen and Windows Ink users with the Creators Update, and with this build we’re excited to announce some more!

  • Resuming previous screen sketches: We’ve heard your feedback that it can be too easy to accidentally lose your Screen Sketch sketch, so we’re excited to announce that with build 14986 you can now resume previous sketches! By default, when you open Screen Sketch, it will always open to a new screenshot, but now you can click on the Resume button and it will take you back to the sketch you were working on when Screen Sketch last closed.

9

  • Updated Ink Flyout Visuals: The Windows Ink pen, pencil and highlighter flyouts now show a preview of what it would look like to ink with the currently selected color and width. This improvement will be visible in any app that uses Windows Ink with the Windows 10 Creators Update SDK. We’ve also updated the flyouts so that they’ll no longer show what appear to be duplicate color entries when in high contrast, now support using the Esc key to close the flyout, and have returned the flyout to dismissing once you tap a color or change the width (rather than staying open until you manually close it)
  • Finer control over ruler rotation: We’ve updated the Windows Ink ruler to now rotate in sub-degree increments when you’re moving it with touch, so as to make it easier to line the ruler up with two points on the screen
  • Polishing your inking experience: The cursor will no longer be shown while you’re inking – we believe this makes the experience feel even more like pen on paper.

Try it out and let us know what you think!

New Extensions in Microsoft Edge: Great news! We have new extensions to share with Windows 10 users. Please take a look at Ebates, Intel TrueKey, and Read & Write. Try them out and send feedback to the Feedback Hub or @MSEdgeDev on Twitter.

Updated Rendering Technology: We’ve changed the rendering technology used for many types of UWP app content, so please provide feedback through the Feedback Hub if you notice any new visual glitches in UWP apps. For additional context on this change, we are now widely using the same Windows.UI.Composition API that app developers have access to for XAML UWP app and shell rendering.

Narrator improvements: Making our products more accessible is a goal of ours and improving the experience when using Narrator is a big part of that. As such, this flight comes with a number of improvements, including:

  • Narrator has a new feature to give you additional information about fonts, colors, line spacing, margins and more. Press Caps Lock + F to hear this information.  Continue to press Caps Lock + F to cycle through nine categories of information. Use Shift + Caps Lock + F to move through these categories in reverse.
  • The default level for a Narrator feature called Context Awareness is now set to 2.  You will hear additional information as you move around areas such as the Start Menu, Office ribbon and more about the areas you are in. Use Alt + Caps Lock + / to cycle through the different options.  Zero means off for the feature.
  • The key to get advanced information about the item with focus has been changed to Caps Lock + 0 from Caps Lock + F in Narrator.
  • We fixed an issue from recent flights where Narrator would only say “No item in view” when placing focus on the Start menu tiles.

If you haven’t already read our plan for what to expect in 2017 with the Windows 10 Creators Update, and Office 365 – we invite you to go over it now. Lots of exciting things yet to come!

New Windows Defender dashboard: We are making it easier for you to view and control Windows 10 device security and health features available on your PC or tablet with the availability of a new dashboard coming in the Windows 10 Creators Update. Windows Insiders will get a preview of the new experience beginning today. After upgrading to this build, Insiders will have to restart their PC. After that, they can find the dashboard by searching for “Windows Defender” and clicking on the search result that says “Windows Defender/Trusted Windows Store app”. Remember, the dashboard is a work-in-progress and not fully functional just yet.

10

Registry Editor improvements: Continuing our theme of enhancing your registry experience, we’ve taken your feedback and added the familiar File Explorer keyboard navigation shortcuts to Registry Editor, so you can now easily go up (Alt+ Up arrow), backwards (Alt + Left arrow) or forwards (Alt + Right arrow) in the registry. We’ve also added a new entry point in the View menu so you can customize the font Registry Editor uses.

The USB Audio 2 Class Driver and You: Previous builds flighted to Windows Insiders have contained a Microsoft class driver for devices that support the USB Audio 2.0 standard. However, if you had a third-party driver which was specifically written for your device, Windows would use that instead. In order to get more miles on the class driver, we are temporarily changing things as of 14986 to prefer the class driver over third-party drivers – this is so we can flush out device compatibility issues and other bugs in our driver.

When you have a chance, please go through all your regular listening scenarios and see how they sound (we’ll be adding a Quest about this too!). If everything works fine for you, awesome! If you do run into a problem where our class driver does not work with your device, please let us know by filing a problem report, and then manually switching to your specific third-party driver

Some things that we are already aware of:

  1. Our class driver does not support ASIO
  2. Our class driver does not work in WASAPI exclusive mode in certain applications

For the most recent information on USB Audio in Microsoft Windows, see https://aka.ms/usbaudio.

Improved Update Experience: Windows strives to keep your device running the most secure, reliable and feature rich version of Windows available with minimum impact to you. We’ve heard your feedback, and as such, 14986 comes with two more improvements in this space:

  • Involving you more when specifying a time to update: For some of you though, receiving these updates has resulted in your device not being available for use when you needed it. For those of you that happened to fall into this category, you will be happy to see that we now have moved to involving you more in specifying when to successfully apply a pending update.  If Windows Update in unable to find a good time to restart your machine to apply the latest updates, you will now get be prompted to “restart now”, “Schedule” a time that works for you, or simply “Remind me later” which will not apply the update but offer you these options again.

Improving Windows 10 in Asia

Along with Cortana’s new music recognition support for Chinese (Simplified) that we mentioned above, we’ve also done a few more things to improve the Windows 10 experience in Asia based on feedback.

Chinese Input Method Editor (IME) Improvements: We’ve heard your feedback about the Chinese typing experience, and we’ve happy to announce that we’ve made some changes based on what you’ve told us!

  • Smart fuzzy matching for pinyin and updated Microsoft Pinyin IME candidate pane experience: As part of our effort to improve the efficiency of Chinese input, the Microsoft Pinyin IME candidate pane has been updated to make it easier to find the candidate you’re looking for. The IME now more clearly indicates fuzzy pinyin candidates, along with tips for how to change the related settings. When you’re typing, this feature will be triggered automatically when fuzzy pinyin candidates are detected and it will show them in the candidate window. We’ve also added a small icon to indicate when a particular cloud candidate is trending. In addition, since most of these trending candidates are related to hot stories, when you have that candidate highlighted, we’ve made it easier to search and learn more about it.

 1

  • New context menu for the IME mode: The IME mode indicator in the taskbar now has a context menu if you right-click it when using the Microsoft Pinyin or Wubi IME! It contains options to easily access that IME’s settings page, or show the language bar.
  • Microsoft Pinyin IME now supports importing and exporting self-learned phrases: If you enable self-learning, the Microsoft Pinyin IME can learn and store the phrases as you use it to type. With this build, these phrases can be now be exported and imported. This means that if you re-install your PC, or have multiple PCs to maintain, you can now keep the same user lexicon.

 2

  • Wubi IME has been updated to support user-defined phrases: You can add custom phrases manually, or import and export custom phrase files. In the Wubi IME settings, click the “user-defined phrase” button to enter the custom phrase page.

 3

Line Mode for Chinese (Simplified) Handwriting: With the Anniversary Update, the Chinese (Simplified) handwriting panel only supported entering text using box mode – writing a single character in each box, and then the character would disappear after the candidate had been finalized, and there was no way to edit the ink. We’re excited to announce that with 14986 that is now longer the case! Just like the Japanese handwriting panel, the Chinese (Simplified) handwriting panel now supports line mode, so you can write and edit your characters all in one continuous sentence. We’ve also added two editing gestures for users – a strikethrough to delete, and a circle to grouping.

New experience writing Chinese characters:
4

Deletion gesture:
5

Grouping gesture:
6

Japanese Input Method Editor (IME) Improvements:

  • It’s now possible to remove text prediction candidates. To do this, hover over the entry in the candidate list and an ‘X’ button will appear. Removed candidates will not be suggested next time.

7

  • Improving the Japanese IME conversion accuracy: Improving the conversion accuracy of Japanese IME is an ongoing goal of ours – with this build, we’ve enhanced our logic how we take into account previously determined context. To give an example, with the Anniversary Update, when typing “にんげんをやとう” in one shot and then converting the text, the IME would return the correct conversion. However, if you were to do the conversion in two parts (aka, type “にんげんを”, convert, and then type “やとう” and convert), the IME would return a different and potentially undesirable conversion. With the work lighting up with 14986, the IME will now return the same result in both cases. We have also improved learning behavior when user registered shortcut word (短縮語) is involved and added a new keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+.) so that you can flag particularly bad conversion errors. Conversions flagged in this way will be prioritized among all other mis-conversions when we investigate. We rely on your feedback to improve our conversion accuracy so please do report bad conversion errors when you see them!
  • Improved reliability and responsiveness: We’ve improved the responsiveness of the Japanese Input Method Editor (IME) and fixed an issue where key input might sometimes get stuck in certain environments. We also fixed an issue where the Japanese IME’s self-learning wouldn’t work in certain environments, and fixed an issue resulting in being unable to use the IME to enter text in a program that had been launched using Command Prompt’s “runas” command.

Other changes, improvements, and fixes for PC

  • We have improved the Windows Hello face which may require you to “Improve Recognition” to get recognized again. To do this – go to Settings > Accounts > Sign-in Options and under “Windows Hello” and “Face Recognition”, select “Improve Recognition” to go through the Improve Recognition wizard.
  • We updated the Taskbar’s context menu settings entry to now explicitly be called “Taskbar settings”, as that is where it pointed.
  • We fixed an issue where the Virtual Touchpad’s left and right buttons might not work on some devices. We also fixed an issue where the Virtual Touchpad wouldn’t launch if the primary monitor was non-touch, and added the Virtual Touchpad icon to the Taskbar settings where you can Turn system icons on or off.
  • We fixed the issue where apps such as Store, Photos, and People might launch on their own after your PC had been inactive for a period of time.
  • We fixed the issue where navigating to Settings > System > Battery would crash the Settings app.
  • We’ve changed the default state of the Handwriting Panel to be floating next to the text field, rather than docked at the bottom of the screen. If you prefer docked-mode, you can still select it by tapping the icon in the top right corner of the Handwriting Panel.
  • We fixed an issue where using ~ to switch languages using the Thai keyboard when typing in Office apps, such as Outlook or Word 2016, might sometimes result in a hang.
  • We’ve updated our migration logic, so that going forward from 14986 the default user’s numlock setting will now be preserved across upgrades.
  • We fixed an issue where double-clicking on an Excel document to open it from File Explorer would crash Microsoft Excel.
  • We fixed an issue where Windows Hello might get stuck “Looking for you”.
  • We fixed an issue Insiders with Surface Dial may have experienced recently where rotating the Dial could result in unexpected beeps.
  • We’re moving some things around in Storage Settings – stay tuned for future updates. For this flight, you’ll notice that the settings to change save locations has moved to its own page. We also fixed an issue where Storage Usage for the Other category might show an unexpectedly high number.
  • We fixed an issue where the PowerShell entry in File Explorer’s File menu would sometimes be unexpectedly greyed out.
  • We fixed an issue where the Clock and Calendar flyout in the taskbar wouldn’t launch when the display language was set to Chinese (Traditional) and the system was using the phonetic sorting method.
  • We’ve updated the full screen Settings search results to now use smaller icons – we feel this delivers an overall more polished feel, as well as enables more search results to display on the page at a time.
  • We fixed an issue where some notifications might draw too high or too low, and then be seen moving itself to the correct position.
  • We fixed an issue where the outline incoming notification toasts could still be seen if notification banners as a whole for that particular app had been turned off.
  • We fixed an issue Insiders may have experienced where the Favorites bar on desktop might appear empty, despite having items in the Favorites folder.
  • We fixed an issue that could result in CPU throttling when idling on certain webpages with many gifs or looping videos in Microsoft Edge.
  • We fixed an issue that could result in Alt + D sometimes not being able to set focus to the address bar in Microsoft Edge.
  • For Insiders with PCs that upgraded to builds 14926-14959, some default power settings may have been lost and not recovered on subsequent upgrades. The effect of this causes devices to potentially use more power, change the power button behavior on tablets, etc. Starting with 14986, an attempt to detect this issue and re-apply the power settings will be made during upgrade. This attempt is a temporary process to help address this issue for Insiders, and will be removed once we’re closer to the Creators Update release.
  • We’ve heard your feedback, and updated our Windows Error Reporting logic so that uploading crash data should no longer interfere with online game play, video streaming, Skype calls, or other network-intensive activity. Please keep an eye out for this if you experience any crashes and let us know how it goes.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in Microsoft Studios games like Microsoft Sudoku, Jigsaw, Minesweeper, Taptiles, and Treasure Hunt potentially freezing at the splash screen on launch.
  • We fixed an issue where, if the taskbar location was set to be on top, it was visible on the Welcome screens after upgrading.

Known issues for PC

  • Using keyboard monitor hotkeys to adjust brightness won’t work as expected. Desired brightness change could be done via the Action Center or by going to Settings > System > Display.
  • You may see a popup “Catastrophic Error” dialog when opening OneDrive folders. If you do, the workaround is to open an elevated Command Prompt or PowerShell window and enter “attrib -O <path to OneDrive failure that resulted in the error dialog>”.
  • We’re currently investigating reports that DirectAccess isn’t working for some Windows Insiders.
  • When using Microsoft Edge with Narrator, you may hear “no item in view or silence when tabbing or using other navigation commands. You can use Alt + Tab when this happens to move focus away from and back to the Edge browser and then Narrator will read as expected.
  • Hey Cortana, play <blah> on <AppName> doesn’t work immediately after installing the app. Wait 5 minutes for indexer to kick in and try again.
  • Currently, the Windows Defender dashboard is primarily aimed at providing some minimal read-only status for Antivirus/Firewall, with some very limited functionality for interacting with the app. Here are some of the known issues with the dashboard to be aware of (not a comprehensive list):
    • Doesn’t accurately roll up status of Pillars
    • Doesn’t accurately show status when a 3P AV is on the machine.
    • History is not yet available in the new app
    • Advanced/Custom scans are not yet available in the new app
    • Settings are not configurable through the new app
    • Firewall control panel not launchable from new app
    • Firewall settings are not configurable through the new app

Read more at Windows Blog

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14971 for PC

windows-10-logo

Last week Microsoft Released Build 14971 to the Fast Insider Ring, This build is running smooth! Here’s what’s changed: Native support for epub files in Edge & Paint 3D are my favorites!

What’s new in Build 14971

Read EPUB books in Microsoft Edge: The reading experience will get even better with the Windows 10 Creators Update! In addition to providing a great reading experience for PDF files – you can now read any unprotected e-book in the EPUB file format with Microsoft Edge. When you open an unprotected e-book in Microsoft Edge, you will be taken into a customizable reading experience where you can change the font and text size and choose between 3 themes: light, sepia, and dark. As you read, you can leave bookmarks. To navigate through an e-book, you can use the table of contents or seek bar at the bottom of the browser. And you can also search for words or phrases and use Cortana to define specific words.

Reading ebooks in Microsoft Edge

You can download and read unprotected e-books from places like Feedbooks, Project Gutenberg, Free eBooks (requires sign-up), ePubBooks (requires sign-up), Open Library and even our own Microsoft Press. Try out reading an e-book in Microsoft Edge and let us know what you think!

Bringing 3D to Everyone via the Paint 3D Preview app: Starting with this build and going forward, the Paint 3D Preview app is now included as part of Windows 10. Opening Paint from Start will now take you to the Paint 3D Preview app. Please try it out and let us know what you think we should improve or add next! Currently, Paint 3D Preview is only available in English (aka, regardless of your display language, the text will be in English) – support for other languages will be coming soon. Remix 3D Preview, the community counterpart to Paint 3D Preview, is expanding to Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland for Windows Insiders today! Remix 3D Preview is currently only available in English but we will continue to expand our region and language support. You can check it out at Remix3D.com and from within the Paint 3D Preview app.

PowerShell in the Shell: In an effort to bring the best command line experiences to the forefront for all power users, PowerShell is now the defacto command shell from File Explorer. It replaces Command Prompt (aka, “cmd.exe”) in the WIN + X menu, in File Explorer’s File menu, and in the context menu that appears when you shift-right-click the whitespace in File Explorer. Typing “cmd” (or “powershell”) in File Explorer’s address bar will remain a quick way to launch the command shell at that location. For those who prefer to use Command Prompt, you can opt out of the WIN + X change by opening Settings > Personalization > Taskbar, and turning “Replace Command Prompt with Windows PowerShell in the menu when I right-click the Start button or press Windows key+X” to “Off”.

Fun fact! It’s PowerShell’s 10 year anniversary this week. Hop over to Channel 9 to see some of the videos we’ve been sharing about it. If you’re looking to learn more about unleashing the “power” in PowerShell, this page is a great resource.

Improved Typing Experience with Japanese and Chinese Input Method Editors (IMEs): This build includes many improvements in this space – here are some of the highlights:

  • Improved Chinese IME reliability. In particular, we fixed an issue where the IME might crash due to an incompletely downloaded or corrupted dictionary file
  • Improved Conversion Accuracy for the Japanese IME. We also fixed various issues, in particular, when conversion was used mixed with prediction, and an UX issue when trying to change phrase segmentation.
  • Improved resource usage when typing with the Japanese IME. In particular, we fixed an issue that could result in unexpected graphic glitches after using the IME for an extended period of time.

Get Office (Beta): We’ve heard your feedback about the Get Office app, and today we’re happy to announce Get Office version 2.0 for Insiders in the Fast ring! (Well, technically, version 17.7614.2377.0). Whereas before Get Office was largely a collection of links to help you get started with Office, the new and improved app will help you explore and manage your Office experience. Easily discover and launch apps and see all your recent Office documents in one place! We still have the familiar help links, but we’ve redesigned the experience to make easier to find what you’re looking for. As you try out the new app, please log feedback – we’d love to hear your thoughts!

Get Office (Beta) app

Other changes, improvements, and fixes for PC

  • First introduced to Insiders in Build 14926, the experimental “Snooze” action on a tab in Microsoft Edge which provides you with a way to set a Cortana reminder on the website you are viewing is no longer available. Based on data we gathered and feedback we received, we decided to remove it from the product and re-evaluate the feature for a future release.
  • We’ve improved reliability when using the protractor and inking in Sketchpad.
  • We’ve updated some of our desktop wizards (including “map a network drive” and “extract from zip”) to now be proportionally sized when moved across monitors.
  • We fixed an issue where Magnifier’s keyboard shortcuts sometimes wouldn’t work on the Lock screen.
  • We fixed an issue that could result in sometimes not being able to completely remove files in the Windows.old folder using Disk Cleanup.
  • We have enabled OAuth support for Yahoo Mail accounts. This will improve sync reliability for those accounts, and provide a more secure experience in the Outlook Mail app.
  • We fixed an issue where trying to shut down the PC while certain Device Manager dialog boxes were open would result in the PC being stuck at the “Restarting…” screen.
  • We fixed an issue where, as closing multiple tabs with middle click in Microsoft Edge, the width of the tabs might change, resulting in potentially unexpectedly closing the wrong tab.
  • We fixed an issue where the copy link option when right-clicking a hyperlink in Microsoft Edge wasn’t work.
  • We fixed an issue where, if you changed the size of the Microsoft Edge window, and then closed the app by closing the final tab, the next time Microsoft Edge is launched it would once again be the default size, rather than retaining the preferred window size.
  • We fixed an issue where pinned tabs in Microsoft Edge were not being restored.
  • We’ve made a number of translation improvements, including for Chinese speakers fixing a translation error in the dialog that appears when installing multiple fonts at once, as well as one in Settings > System > Battery. If you see any other translations that aren’t as you’d expect, please log feedback – we’re listening!
  • We fixed an issue where, if you already hand a notification expanded in the Action Center, clicking the chevron to expand a second notification would result in it expanding then immediately closing.
  • We fixed an issue where preferred Start menu width might not be preserved after rebooting.

Known issues for PC

  • Navigating to Settings > System > Battery will crash the Settings app.
  • Using keyboard monitor hotkeys to adjust brightness won’t work as expected. Desired brightness change could be done via the Action Center or by going to Settings > System > Display.
  • Apps such as Store, Photos, and People may launch on their own after your PC has been inactive for a period of time. To stop these apps from launching on their own, un-maximize the app before closing it.
  • Double-clicking on an Excel document to open it from File Explorer will crash Microsoft Excel. The workaround is to open the document from within Excel.
  • Microsoft Studios games like Microsoft Sudoku, Jigsaw, Minesweeper, Taptiles, and Treasure Hunt may freeze at the splash screen on launch.
  • As we have previously announced we are working on the Windows Holographic Shell that is going to be included in the upcoming Windows 10 Creators Update. In today’s flight you will see the Windows Holographic First Run app. While you will be able to launch the app and walk through the first few screens, it won’t detect any hardware. This app and the Windows Holographic Shell is still under active development here at Microsoft and with our partners.

Outlook 2016 Safety Feature also avalable on Outlook 2003 now

office-2016_medium

Office 2013 can now block macros to help prevent infection

In response to the growing trend of macro-based threats, a new feature in Office 2016 allows an enterprise administrator to block users from running macros in Office documents that originated from the Internet.

This feature was documented back in March: New feature in Office 2016 can block macros and help prevent infection, and the predominant customer request we received was for this feature to be added to Office 2013.

We are pleased to announce that, as of September 2016, this feature is now part of Office 2013 – and it works in the same way as it does in Office 2016.

Administrators can enable this feature for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint by configuring it under the respective application’s Group Policy Administrative Templates for Office 2013.

For more information on how this feature works, and some background information on how macros can be abused for malware, see our blog from March 2016.

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14959 for Mobile and PC

windows-10-logo

Yesterday Microsoft released Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14959 for Mobile and PC to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring.

The Windows 10 Creators Update

Last week, we held an event in New York to share our aspiration to empower a new wave of creativity with the Windows 10 Creators Update and new devices such as the Surface Studio and Surface Dial. You can catch up on all the details on the things we announced at the event by checking out this blog post from Terry Myerson. As I mentioned last week, Windows is an iceberg, the features that people “see” are quite a small percent of the engineering work that we do to enable new UI to be visible. Windows Insiders running the latest builds have already been trying out the Creators Update – including last week’s build (Build 14955). The new and exciting visible features you saw shown off at the event will start rolling out in builds in the coming weeks. Features such as the Paint 3D Preview are now available for Insiders to try right now! We’re excited to get more of the new Creators Update features in the hands of Insiders in the next couple of months.

What’s new in Build 14959

Unified Update Platform: This build for Mobile is being published using our new update publishing system called Unified Update Platform (UUP). For more information on UUP – check out this blog post from Bill.

Controlling the Display Scaling of your Virtual Machines (PC):  We’ve heard your feedback that Hyper-V Virtual Machines sometimes aren’t scaled as you’d expect, so we’ve added a new Zoom option in the View menu, where you can override the default scaling and set it to 100, 125, 150 or 200 – whichever matches your preference. Along the way, we also fixed an issue where certain VMs wouldn’t display the remote desktop connection bar after entering full screen mode. We are still refining the experience so there might be some rough edges. For example, although we added zoom levels to handle high DPI more gracefully, when zooming you won’t be able to see the VM’s whole screen without scrolling.

Other improvements and fixes for PC

  • We fixed an issue for Insiders resulting in the automatic brightness setting unexpectedly being turned off after upgrading. In doing so, we’ve re-enabled automatic brightness adjust for users that have never changed their auto-brightness setting. If you have already manually configured your auto-brightness setting, then this fix will not affect you. If you would like to enable or disable automatic brightness adjustment, please go to Settings > System > Display, where you can adjust your preferences.
  • We fixed an issue Insiders on domain connected PCs may have experienced where login might fail when the computer was disconnected from its domain network.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in certain apps, such as Outlook Mail and Calendar, failing to update for some Insiders with the error code 0x800700B7.
  • We fixed an issue for Insiders with certain device models where ejecting an SD card might result in a system crash.
  • We fixed an issue where disliking one of the Spotlight lock screen images would show the new image immediately, followed by a transition animation from the previous image to the new image.
  • We fixed an issue where launching an app from another app while in Tablet mode no longer launched it side by side, and instead launched it fullscreen (for example, when launching a web link from the MSN News app).

Other improvements and fixes for Mobile

  • The data usage page in Settings via Settings > Network & wireless > Data usage has been updated with performance and UI improvements.
    Updated data settings usage
  • We fixed issues preventing Insiders from adding cards to Wallet and paying using tap to pay.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in being unexpectedly able to close Start in the task switcher.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in certain options for default calling app via Settings > System > Phone > Default apps from being unexpectedly missing.
  • We fixed an issue causing apps that play media in the background, such as Groove Music, to stop when Battery Saver turns on.
  • We fixed an issue Insiders may have experienced where the phone would get into a state where copy/paste wouldn’t work until the device had been restarted.
  • We fixed an issue where Settings might hang after unchecking “Let apps automatically use this VPN connection” in VPN Settings.

Known issues for PC

  • If you have a 3rd party antivirus product installed on your PC – your PC might not be able to complete the update to this build and roll-back to the previous build.
  • We’re aware of an issue where Internet Explorer may crash a few seconds after launch and working.

Known issues for Mobile

  • If you used the previous ‘date change’ workaround to update to Build 14951 or Build 14955: Please don’t use it any longer! The Microsoft account (MSA) ticket on your device needs to expire and then you’ll be offered today’s build. If you changed your date by 30 years… you’ll want to do a device reset.
  • You will be unable to install additional languages, keyboards, and speech packs on your phone for the next few weeks. If you have existing languages, keyboards, and speech packs installed – they will carry over when you update to new builds. You just can’t install any new ones. If you do a hard reset of your phone on these builds – you will also be unable to install additional languages, keyboards, and speech packs. You can use Windows Device Recovery Tool to go back to Windows Phone 8.1 or Windows 10 Mobile, install any languages, keyboards, and speech packs you need and then update to the latest build in the Fast ring as a workaround.

November 2016 Bug Bash begins next week!

We are moving the Bug Bash start date up to Monday, November 7th 12:01 AM PST. We wanted to give you, Windows Insiders, and our Windows Engineers the same dates for finding bugs (in the past our engineers started a day early)! We will start the Bug Bash on Build 14959 that is being released today so you can have time to get your PC’s and phones updated prior to the Bug Bash so you can start Quests as soon as they are published.  The Bug Bash will still finish at the end of the day on Sunday, November 13th (PST). Our whole team will be bug bashing with some fun events in-house and we are looking forward to seeing a lot of participation from Insiders!

 

New Session: “Windows Platform Updates” 23rd of November 2016

windows10-840x473

Next session “Windows Platform Updates”

 When: 23/11/2016

 Schedule:

            18:00 Welcome & Food

            18:30 Short Sponsor Session by Awingu

            18:45 Part 1: Windows 10 Update/Upgrade management for SMB

            19:30 Pause

            19:45 Part 2: Server 2016 for the SMB

            20:45 Networking & drinks

 Where:

EMEA Headquarters (Ghelamco Arena)

                 Awingu N.V.
Ottergemsesteenweg-Zuid 808 B44
9000  Gent
Belgium

Registrations

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14955 for Mobile and PC

windows-10-logo

Today Microsoft released Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14955 for Mobile and PC to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring

What’s new in Build 14955

Outlook Mail & Calendar Update (PC & Mobile): We have updated the Outlook Mail and Calendar apps to 17.7466.4062x.0.. This update introduces a few new things for you to check out:

  • You can now open email messages in a new window.
  • You can now use Quick Actions directly from new email notifications.
  • Get someone’s attention with @mentions. Type the @ symbol anywhere in the body of your email and start typing to pick the person you want to address.

Context Awareness in Narrator (PC): As you navigate around, you can be notified about different groups or other areas you move to, such as groups in the Office ribbon. To configure the amount of context you hear, cycle through options with ALT + Caps Lock + /. To change whether the context is read before the item with focus or after, use CTRL + Caps Lock + /. To check the context at any point. Press Caps Lock + D twice.

Other improvements and fixes for Mobile

  • We fixed the issue causing you to be unable to sign into apps such as Feedback Hub, Groove, MSN News, etc. with your Microsoft Account if you sign out or get signed out of these apps.
  • We fixed the issue that was causing some devices to appear “stuck” on the blue Windows logo screen during the boot cycle when rebooting a phone on earlier builds.
  • We fixed a bug resulting in notifications banners not appearing from Outlook Mail accounts that had been pinned as tiles to Start.
  • We fixed an issue resulting certain apps being unexpectedly missing from the Share dialog.
  • We fixed an issue where Insiders who had configured a data limit on their phone may have ended up in a state where they would receive frequent notifications about having exceeded that limit.
  • We fixed an issue where the horizontal progress dots (as displayed when using the indeterminate ProgressBar control, for those who are familiar with XAML) were incorrectly fading out at the right side.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in not being able to enter input into the Time or Place fields when creating a Reminder in Cortana.

Other improvements and fixes for PC

  • Now you can draw along the protractor and have the degree visual remain visible until you start drawing again. We’ve also updated the degree visual to be more clear – black text on a white background, as opposed to the previous black text on a red background.
  • We fixed the issue causing you to be unable to sign into apps such as Feedback Hub, Groove, MSN News, etc. with your Microsoft Account if you sign out or get signed out of these apps.
  • This build includes several fixes for precision touchpad:
    • We fixed an issue where precision touchpad was mis-classifying presses when mousing with one finger and pressing with another.
    • We fixed the issue in which “Reset touchpad” was appearing on PCs that don’t support precision touchpad (legacy touchpad).
    • We fixed the issue where the 4-Finger gesture graphic would be viewable in Settings on PCs that support only 3-contact.
    • We fixed an issue with popular graphics app Paint.NET where horizontal scrolling was broken.
  • This build includes several fixes for Narrator:
    • We have added a new key command to read the active window title of the current application. You can use Caps Lock + / for this.
    • We’ve improved Narrator’s recognition of edit boxes on the web in Scan Mode so you get the message to use space to edit more consistently when focus has moved to an edit box.
    • We’ve done work to ensure that continuous reading is interrupted appropriately if focus changes or you issue a Narrator command that should stop continuous reading. We’ve also worked to ensure that continuous reading doesn’t stop when it shouldn’t.
  • We’ve updated the Trusted Platform Module Management control panel (TPM.msc) to provide additional detail when the TPM is “Not ready for use” or “Ready for use, with reduced functionality”.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in Task Manager always opening with the default view, despite having configured it on the previous launch (for example, to “Show more details”).
  • We fixed an issue where attempting to partition a USB drive via DiskPart would fail with the error “The system cannot find the file specified”.
  • We fixed an issue where certain USB drives were failing to mount automatically or via Device Manager, despite being mountable using Disk Management.
  • We fixed an issue where Accessibility settings were failing to roam down-level to some PCs running the Windows 10 Anniversary Update – triggering a sync loop and possibly causing some performance issues on those down-level PCs. If you have encountered this issue, to get out of this state – you will need to change a setting under Settings > Ease of Access so that fix will roam down-level. Whichever setting you changed to trigger roaming can be changed back if needed.
  • We fixed an issue where Settings would crash when copying hardware properties from the Wi-Fi settings page.
  • We fixed an issue where files were no longer automatically selected after being pasted into a folder in File Explorer.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in not being able to enter input into the Time or Place fields when creating a Reminder in Cortana.
  • We’ve updated the advanced tab of the device properties window in the Sounds control panel to now allow you to select the following sample dates as the default format for devices that support it: 24 and 32 bit at 176400Hz, and 16, 24 and 32 bit at 352800 Hz.
  • USB Audio 2.0 devices are now named based on the make/model of the device, rather than using a generic name, in places across the system, for example Device Manager.
  • We fixed an issue in Microsoft Edge that prevented dragging content out of the browser to other windows
  • We fixed an issue that caused Microsoft Edge to crash when using the Share button to share web pages and PDFs to Mail.

Known issues for Mobile

  • If your device never successfully updated to Build 14951, please see this forum post. If your device did receive Build 14951, you should be able to download and update to this build just fine. THANK YOU Insiders who helped us with getting the 0% download issue fixed last week!
  • Some Insiders are receiving an 0x80242006 error trying to update to the latest builds. We are investigating – see this forum post.
  • You will be unable to install additional languages, keyboards, and speech packs on your phone for the next few weeks. If you have existing languages, keyboards, and speech packs installed – they will carry over when you update to new builds. You just can’t install any new ones. If you do a hard reset of your phone on these builds – you will also be unable to install additional languages, keyboards, and speech packs. You can use Windows Device Recovery Tool to go back to Windows Phone 8.1 or Windows 10 Mobile, install any languages, keyboards, and speech packs you need and then update to the latest build in the Fast ring as a workaround.
  • Excel Mobile will freeze after adding sheets and eventually crashes.

Known issues for PC

  • If you have a 3rd party antivirus product installed on your PC – your PC might not be able to complete the update to this build and roll-back to the previous build.
  • Insiders may experience the Windows Ink Workspace crashing when using the protractor – we’re investigating.

Upcoming Bugbash Just a reminder that we are planning to kick off our next bugbash starting on Tuesday, November 8th and finishing at the end of the day on Sunday, November 13th. I’ll have more details in the coming weeks. Looking forward to seeing a lot of participation from Insiders! If you have ideas on what Quests you will like to see for the Bug Bash, let us know!

Read more at Windows Blogs

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14951 for Mobile and PC

Microsoft release build 14951 to the Fast Ring insiders, here’s what’s new

A new bug bash week is coming up 8th to 13th of November

What’s new in Build 14951

Refining the customization experience for precision touchpad (PC): Since last week, we’ve continued working in this space, and have another set of improvements headed your way. To start with, we’ve hooked up our keyboard shortcut picker, so now if you choose that option on the Advanced gestures page, you’ll be presented a recorder so you can capture your favorite key combo –  perhaps WIN + Alt + D or WIN + F to start with? Secondly, we’ve added a Change audio and volume option to the set of basic swipe gestures you can pick from. Finally, we’ve updated the reset button to now has a progress circle and display a check mark when it is finished. We’ve also heard your feedback from the last flight, and fixed a few issues including that the reset button wasn’t clearing the settings listed on the advanced gestures page, that the 4-fingure gesture graphic was visible on devices that only supported 3-contact points, and that some of the advanced gestures options weren’t working as expected. If you have any more feedback for us, please let us know!

Windows Ink Improvements (PC): Starting with this build, pen dropdowns in Windows Ink Workspace will let you change both color and width without having to open it twice. After you make all the adjustments to your favorite pen, start drawing right away and we will dismiss the dropdown for you.

 

image: https://winblogs.azureedge.net/win/2016/10/protactor.png

protactorWe are also introducing Stencils. Windows Ink protractor tool combines functions of both protractor and compass into one – now you can draw an arc or a complete circle of an arbitrary size with little effort. A familiar two-finger pinch gesture resizes the protractor to the desired size and a degree readout follows your pen, mouse, or finger as you draw along the side of the protractor displaying arc degrees. In this preview build, ruler also got a small update – its degree readout shows a numerical value of the angle, making drawing angles even easier.

[ADDED] Inking in Photos: With version 16.1017.10000.0 of the Photos app just released for Insiders in the Fast ring, you can now harness the power of Windows Ink with your photos! Not only that, but when you save the ink, it replays what you drew, so you can share it as a still image or a video. Add funny comments or accessorize your friends – the sky’s the limit! To start inking, pick one of your favorite photos, and then tap the Draw option. You’ll now enter the familiar Windows Ink toolbar experience, where you can select a pen, pencil, and one new addition: a calligraphy pen! Once you finish inking, press the save button and the ink will dry, thus becoming part of the photo. This version of the Photos app also comes with an updated the cropping experience, and we’ve added a whole slew of new filters. Have fun, and we’d love to see what you end up inking – share your pictures with us @windowsinsider!

image: https://winblogs.azureedge.net/win/2016/10/WP_20161001_19_50_04_Pro_Ink_LI.jpg

Draw on photos with updated Photos app!Simplified, more familiar camera interface (PC & Mobile): The Camera app received a big update this week for Insiders. We’ve redesigned the Camera interface for ease and accessibility. Check out some of our new features:

  • Enjoy taking photos, videos, and panoramas with our higher-contrast capture buttons.
  • Set a photo timer right from the camera dashboard with our new toggle control.
  • Get to Settings faster! Now, launch into Settings directly from the camera UI.
  • Access your camera roll with one hand from its new spot on the screen.
  • Zoom more easily with the new zoom slider.
  • Make sure you nailed the shot, with a more noticeable capture animation.
  • Change between front- and rear-facing cameras with a more prominent button control.
  • On PC, use the spacebar as a shortcut to take pictures.

image: https://winblogs.azureedge.net/win/2016/10/camera-app-update.png

camera-app-updateYou can now experience the magic of living images on your Surface, now enabled on Surface Book, Surface Pro 4, Surface Pro 3, and Surface 3! With living images, extend your still captures with a snippet of video. These are created automatically whenever your shots feature motion—just navigate to Settings and turn on Capture living images.

And this release features a variety of performance improvements to enhance your experience. We’ve added faster shot-to-shot support, improved feedback for saving large videos to SD cards, and improved camera startup time, among other improvements.

image: https://winblogs.azureedge.net/win/2016/10/camera-app-update2.png

camera-app-update2Simplifying your developer experience (PC): We’ve done some underlying work, and now you’ll no longer have to reboot your PC after turning on Developer Mode! This means that you can start using Device Portal and Device Discovery as soon as the Windows Developer Mode package has finished installing, rather than having to reboot first.

Narrator improvements: This build includes a number of improvements to Narrator including multiple fixes to continuous reading when used in tables and on web pages, a fix for the Caps Lock + W reading experience so dialogs and other elements are read correctly again, and a fix so that reading hint text does not interrupt the reading of information by Narrator but comes after the main information is read. And Narrator now properly indicates when it is exiting.

Windows Subsystem for Linux: Today we are happy to announce two large updates to WSL!

  • Official Ubuntu 16.04 support. Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial) is installed for all new Bash on Ubuntu on Windows instances starting in build 14951.  This replaces Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty).  Existing user instances will not be upgraded automatically.  Users on the Windows Insider program can upgrade manually from 14.04 to 16.04 using the do-release-upgrade command.
  • Windows / WSL interoperability. Users can now launch Windows binaries directly from a WSL command prompt.  This is the number one request from our users on the WSL User Voice page.  Some examples include:
1
2
3
4
5
$ export PATH=$PATH:/mnt/c/Windows/System32
$ notepad.exe
$ ipconfig.exe | grep IPv4 | cut -d: -f2
$ ls -la | findstr.exe foo.txt
$ cmd.exe /c dir

More information can be found on the WSL Blog and the WSL MSDN page. Other changes and more information can be found on the WSL Release Notes page.

Other improvements and fixes for Mobile

  • Following feedback discussing French punctuation rules, we’ve updated our French keyboards (with the exception of French (Canada), for which these rules don’t apply) to now add a space both before and after when using two-part punctuation marks, such as the semi-colon, the colon, the question mark and the exclamation mark.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in the Camera shutter sounds entry missing from the Sounds Settings page via Settings > Personalization > Sounds.

Other improvements and fixes for PC

  • We fixed the issue causing PCs that are capable of Connected Standby such as the Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 to sometimes bugcheck (bluescreen) while in Connected Standby.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in Forza Horizon 3, Gears of War (and some 3rd party games) failing to install from the Store with the error code 0x80073cf9 when the system’s app install location was set to drive with native 4k Sectors (or 4k sector sized drive).
  • We fixed an issue resulting in larger Store games such as ReCore, Gears of War 4, Forza Horizon 3, Killer Instinct and Rise of the Tomb Raider possibly failing to launch.
  • We fixed an issue where the console window (which hosts Command Prompt, PowerShell, and other command-line utilities) might not snap correctly to the inside edges between two monitors with different DPI scaling.
  • We fixed an issue where all agenda items in the taskbar’s Clock and Calendar flyout were using the primary calendar’s color, rather than matching their respective calendar’s colors as selected in the Outlook Calendar app.
  • We fixed issue where the Add PIN button in Settings > Accounts > Sign-in Options was sometimes unexpectedly greyed out for domain-joined devices.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in Groove crashing if you tried to reorder the songs in a very large playlist.
  • We’ve updated our migration logic to now include custom scan code mappings. That means that going forward from this build, if you’ve used Registry Editor to remap certain keys (for example, Caps Lock key to null), that change will persist across upgrades.
  • We fixed an issue Insiders may have experienced resulting in Adobe Photoshop Express crashing after clicking on the ‘correct’ button when trying to edit a cropped image.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in .csv or .xlsx files downloaded from Microsoft Edge sometimes unexpectedly appearing to be locked for editing by “another user” when SmartScreen was enabled.
  • We fixed an issue where enabling the RemoteFX adaptor for a Virtual Machine would result in it failing to power on with the error ‘Unspecified error’ (0x80004005).

Known issues for Mobile

  • Signing into apps such as Feedback Hub, Groove, MSN News, etc. with your Microsoft Account if you sign out or get signed out of these apps will not work. If this happens to you and you cannot sign in to Feedback Hub, you can send us feedback via the forums.
  • When rebooting a phone on this build and Build 14946 from last week, the device appears to get “stuck” on the blue Windows logo screen during the boot cycle. We have identified 2 bugs causing this issue and working to check in fixes soon. However, being “stuck” is only temporary. Depending on which device you have, your phone may be in this stuck state for 20-30 minutes, but it will eventually progress to the Lock screen. There is no permanent impact from these 2 bugs, just an unexpectedly long boot time. Please don’t reset your device! It’ll take longer to reset the device than it will to wait for the boot cycle to complete.
  • Excel Mobile will freeze after adding sheets and eventually crashes.
  • Insiders who have configured a data limit on their phone may get into a state where they receive frequent notifications about having exceeded this limit. To resolve the issue, please go into Settings > Device & Network > Data Usage and remove and recreate your data limit settings.
  • UPDATE: We are investigating reports of devices getting stuck at 0% while downloading this build. For more information – head over to this forum post.

Known issues for PC

  • Signing into apps such as Feedback Hub, Groove, MSN News, etc. with your Microsoft Account if you sign out or get signed out of these apps will not work. If this happens to you and you cannot sign in to Feedback Hub, you can send us feedback via the forums.
  • You may experience a crash while using the protractor in Sketchpad – we’re working on a fix.
  • If you have a 3rd party antivirus product installed on your PC – your PC might not be able to complete the update to this build and roll-back to the previous build.

Upcoming Bugbash

Just a heads-up that we are planning to kick off our next bugbash starting on Tuesday, November 8th and finishing at the end of the day on Sunday, November 13th. I’ll have more details in the coming weeks. Looking forward to seeing a lot of participation from Insiders!
Read more at Windows Blogs

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14946 for PC and Mobile

Microsoft released Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14946 for PC and Mobile to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring, here’s what you need to know

What’s new in Build 14946

Customizing your precision touchpad experience (PC): Last week, we announced that we’d been working on refining your touchpad experience. This week, we’re taking that one step further. When you go into Settings > Devices > Touchpad, you will now find a section called “Other gestures”. In this section, you now have basic customization options for your three and four finger gestures. For taps, you can select between Cortana, Action Center, play/pause or middle mouse button, and for left/right swipes, you can select between switching apps or switching virtual desktops. Try it out and let us know what you think!

image: https://winblogs.azureedge.net/win/2016/10/touchpad-1.png

Updated Touchpad settings.However, we know that some of our Insiders prefer even more control over their experience, so for those Insiders (and power users) we have added a new Advanced Gestures Configuration page. The page can be accessed via a link at the bottom of Touchpad settings page.

image: https://winblogs.azureedge.net/win/2016/10/touchpad-2-advanced.png

Advanced Gesture Configuration settings pageThe Advanced Gestures Configuration page has more configuration options, including hooking gestures up for next/previous song, creating/deleting virtual desktops, or snapping windows. In addition to these new options, we’ve also updated the Touchpad settings to include reference diagrams to remind you of what to expect when you swipe with three or four fingers in a particular direction.

Known issues to look out for with your touchpad: since the last flight, we’ve fixed the issue resulting in touchpad scrolling being too sensitive in Windows 10 apps – appreciate everyone who shared their feedback on the subject. There’s one other known issue we’re looking into right now that click and drag with your precision touchpad might get misrecognized as right-click in this build. You’ll also notice that there’s a “custom keyboard shortcut” option in settings – that hasn’t lit up yet, but we’ll let you know when it does. Keep the feedback coming!

Separate screen time-out settings when using Continuum for Phone (Mobile): Today, we are happy to announce the availability of a top user request for Continuum for Phone. With this update, you will now be able to turn off whichever screen you are not using with Continuum – saving battery and preventing screen burn-in. If you are working on a Word document, your phone screen will sleep without any impact on your Continuum session. If you make a call, hang-up, or press the phone power button, you can keep right on working in Word with Continuum. And, if you prefer longer or shorter timeout values, you can change them independently for the phone and connected screen, using the settings found under Settings > Personalization > Lock screen. Have fun, and keep sending us great feedback on Continuum!

Updated Wi-Fi Settings page (PC and Mobile): We continue to make Settings more similar across Windows devices. We have added a new setting to the Wi-Fi settings page. When you go to Settings > Network & Internet > Wi-Fi on your PC, then turn Wi-Fi off, you can now select a time under “Turn Wi-Fi back on” to have it turn on automatically after the amount of time you choose. It’s set to Manually by default in this build.

image: https://winblogs.azureedge.net/win/2016/10/wi-fi-turn-back-on.png

Turn Wi-Fi back onWe are also continuing to move functionality from the Wi-Fi (legacy) screen to the new Wi-Fi settings screen on Mobile. After you turn off Wi-Fi, choose a time under Turn Wi-Fi back on to have it turn on automatically after the amount of time you choose. Based on what we heard from customers in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, we changed the default setting from “In 1 hour” to Manually in this build.

Option to prevent autocorrection (Mobile): On your phone, if you see that an autocorrection is going to happen (i.e. the first candidate is bolded) and it’s not what you intended, you will now see what you originally typed as the second candidate. Tapping on that candidate will prevent the autocorrection, and the system will learn your vocabulary and get smarter over time.

Option to remove a word from user dictionary (Mobile): We learn from your typing on the phone and build up a local user dictionary that adapts the keyboard prediction, autocorrection and shape writing experiences to your language style. Sometimes you may type a misspelled word and send it as is, sometimes you may tap on a red squiggled word and then tap the “+” sign by accident. Both save the unwanted word into your user dictionary, and it may appear when you type something similar in the future. Now you have a way to manually remove bad entries: tap on the word you don’t like in the text box, and you will see a candidate that is the word with a “-“ sign before it. Tapping on that candidate will remove the word completely from your user dictionary and no longer suggest it.

[ADDED] Expanding our to text prediction to more languages: This has been an exciting build for keyboard improvements, and we’re excited to announce one more – with this build, we’ve updated the following keyboards to now support text prediction: Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Slovene (also called Slovenian), Bulgarian, Albanian, Macedonian, Afrikaans, Galician, Basque, Swahili, Bangla in Bangladesh, Georgian, Azerbaijani (also called Azeri) (in Latin script), Kazakh, Armenian, Hausa (in Latin script) and Uzbek (in Latin script). If you speak any of these languages, we’d love for you to try it out and let us know how it feels (specific examples really help, if you have any). We’ll be watching the feedback closely and plan to update this work based on what we hear from you.

Important note about a change to automatic backups of your phone (Mobile): We have changed the frequency of scheduled backups for Mobile to once a week. Initiating a backup manually by clicking the “Back up now” button remains unchanged and works as expected. You can do this via Settings > Update & security > Backup and clicking the “More options” link at the bottom. As always, it’s good to do a backup of your device before updating to a new build.

 Other improvements and fixes for PC

  • Optional components such as Hyper-V and Bash should remain installed after updating to this build.
  • We have fixed the issue where signing into games that use Xbox Live would not work. You should be able to sign-in to Xbox Live in games in this build.
  • We fixed the issue causing Microsoft Edge to sometimes crash on launch, or when you type in address bar or try to open a new tab. You no longer need to run the PowerShell script.
  • We fixed the issue causing touch scrolling to be too sensitive in Windows 10 apps, such as Microsoft Edge.
  • We fixed an issue where Explorer.exe would hang when attempting to open considerably large .MOV files.
  • We fixed an issue that could result in the network icon occasionally getting into a state where a red X would display in the taskbar despite an active internet connection, until the device had been restarted.
  • We fixed an issue where if the device’s brightness was automatically adjusted after being woken from sleep, the brightness level shown in the Action Center’s Brightness Quick Action might not reflect the current brightness of the device.
  • We fixed an issue leading to Narrator not tracking focus on the Start Menu All apps list or tiles.
  • We fixed an issue potentially resulting in the “Open with…” dialog displaying with two entries for Calculator after tapping the Calculator key on a keyboard or running the Calculator app.

Other improvements and fixes for Mobile

  • We fixed the issue causing you to get into a state where text messages will fail to send.
  • When your phone is connected to your PC, long lists of captured photos will now load significantly faster in File Explorer.
  • We’ve updated Narrator’s reading order for Windows 10 apps which display an app bar on the bottom of the app, for example OneDrive, so now the contents of the page will be read before the contents of the app bar
  • We fixed an issue resulting in video thumbnails sometimes not being shown in WhatsApp – videos received from this build onwards will display a thumbnail.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in Camera app video recordings having a slight crackle to their audio in recent builds.

Known issues for PC

  • If you have 3rd party antivirus products such as Bitdefender, Kaspersky Antivirus, F-Secure Antivirus and Malwarebytes installed on your PC – your PC might not be able to complete the update to this build and roll-back to the previous build.
  • Larger Windows Store games such as ReCore, Gears of War 4, Forza Horizon 3, Killer Instinct and Rise of the Tomb Raider may fail to launch.
  • [ADDED] PCs that are capable of Connected Standby such as the Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 may bugcheck (bluescreen) while in Connected Standby.

Known issues for Mobile

  • If your phone has additional speech packs installed – this build will fail to install on your phone with an 0x80188319 error. This is why we polled Insiders about language pack usage this week. Based on the response, we decided to push forward and send the latest bits. This issue will be fixed in the next build we release. NOTE: Removing speech packs will not correct the issue. Your device will continue to try and download and install the update and fail. It is recommended you move to the Slow ring until this issue is fixed. UPDATE – this issue has been mitigated.

Getting misconfigured PCs up to date

Some Windows Insiders who have pre-release builds on their PCs are not targeted correctly for receiving updates because they have not opted into receiving Insider Preview builds by having selected a valid ring or are in some other misconfigured state. To re-target these PCs, we are making a server-side change that will put these PCs in the Slow ring so that they can receive updates. Specifically:

  • Going forward, any build from our Development Branch installed on a PC will be put into the Slow ring. This includes if you installed a Development Branch build from an ISO or later reset the device.
  • For PCs on the Windows 10 Anniversary Update that were previously opted in to receiving builds but see a “Fix me” button on the Windows Insider Program settings page because they no longer have a registered Microsoft account attached will be put in the Release Preview ring.

If you would like to adjust these settings or suspend getting Development branch build updates temporarily (7 days), you can do so by going to Settings > Update & security > Windows Insider Program. To move to the Fast ring, a Windows Insider registered Microsoft Account must be attached to the PC. For enterprises running Insider Preview builds, you can manage this via these Group Policies documented here.
Read more at Windows Blogs

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14942 for PC

Last week Microsoft Released Windows 10 Insider Build 14942 to the fast ring

What’s new in Build 14942

Hide app list on Start: We are releasing a new feature that enables you to collapse the app list in the Start menu. This has been a top feedback request from Windows Insiders. You can try it out by going to Settings > Personalization > Start and turning on “Hide app list in Start menu”.

image: https://winblogs.azureedge.net/win/2016/10/hide-app-list.png

Hide app list on StartPhotos app update: With the latest Photos app update on your PC, the Photos app on your PC is now more beautiful and easier to navigate!

image: https://winblogs.azureedge.net/win/2016/10/photos-app-update.png

New UI in Photos app update

  • Photos now has a horizontal navigation bar that makes it easier to view memories by Albums and Folders.
  • Let your photo collection shine! We’ve got a new, light viewing mode for your pics. You can always go back to the dark theme in settings.
  • When viewing photos in full screen, we’ve added new animations in and out of the Collection view, making it easier to keep track of where you are browsing.
  • See individual photos more quickly with your mouse—and now we support full screen.

Plus, the Photos app is now available on your Xbox One! Show off a slideshow of all your OneDrive photos in your living room. Simply make sure you are signed in with your Microsoft account to see all your OneDrive photos on the big screen.

Refining your precision touchpad experience: Based on the feedback we have received, we have made some adjustments to our gesture and click detection on precision touchpads. This includes enhancing detection and disambiguation of left and right clicks, making two finger taps and clicks a bit easier, reducing false positives in our two-finger tap detection and improving our pinch to zoom detection. We have also made algorithm changes in an effort to reduce inadvertent zooming when panning. If you have a precision touchpad on your device, please take the opportunity try out with this build and let us know how it feels with these changes.

Improving the PC upgrade experience: Starting with build 14926, we announced that if you uninstall one of the preinstalled apps on Windows, that state will now be preserved after upgrade. With today’s build, we’re happy to let you know that we’ve taken that work a step further: after upgrading from 14942, if an IT-Pro has de-provisioned an app from your OS image (and you haven’t reinstalled it yourself), that provisioning status will now be preserved after upgrade, and the app will not reinstall. We appreciate everyone who shared feedback with us about this – if you have any other feedback about your upgrade experience, please don’t hesitate to log it – we’re listening!

New Windows Update icon: We have introduced a new Windows Update icon to match the rest of the new iconography in Windows 10. After installing this build, you will see the new icon when Windows Update notifications appear and via Action Center. You can also manage notifications from Windows Update via Settings > System > Notifications.

image: https://winblogs.azureedge.net/win/2016/10/new_WindowsUpdate_icon_black.png

new_windowsupdate_icon_blackService hosts are split into separate processes on PCs with 3.5 GB+ of RAM: If your PC has 3.5+ GB of memory, you may notice an increased number of processes in Task Manager. While this change may look concerning at first glance, many will be excited to find out the motivation behind this change. As the number of preinstalled services grew, they began to get grouped into processes known as service hosts (svchost.exe’s) with Windows 2000. Note that the recommended RAM for PC’s for this release was 256 MB, while the minimum RAM was 64MB. Because of the dramatic increase in available memory over the years, the memory-saving advantage of service hosts has diminished. Accordingly, ungrouping services on memory-rich (3.5+ GB of RAM) PCs running Windows now offers us the opportunity to do the following:

  1. Increase reliability: When one service in a service host fails, all services in the service host fail. In other words, the service host process is terminated resulting in termination of all running services within that process. Individual service failure actions are then run. As you may have noticed in Task Manager before, service hosts can contain a lot of services:image: https://winblogs.azureedge.net/win/2016/10/services_1.pngservices_1
  2. Increase transparency: Task Manager will now give you a better view into what is going on behind the scenes. You can now see how much CPU, Memory, Disk & Network individual services are consuming.
    image: https://winblogs.azureedge.net/win/2016/10/services_2.pngservices_2
    To see the name of the service, click on the left-most arrow such that the Display name drops down. Alternatively, right-click on the header and select ‘Command Line’ to add the Command Line column. Service names will be listed in the format ‘svchost.exe -k <svchost name> -s <service name>.’
  3. Reduce servicing costs: Following reports of instability, service engineers, IT admins, and Microsoft engineers can rapidly pinpoint issues to the exact service and fix it.
  4. Increase security: Process isolation and individual permission sets for services will increase security.

Note that critical system services (services whose recovery require system restarts), as well as a couple of select service hosts, will remain grouped.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Xbox sign-ins may fail, as well, as a result of service host separation. To fix this issue:

  1. Run the following from an admin Command Prompt (or edit the registry accordingly):REG ADD HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\XblAuthManager /v SvcHostSplitDisable /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
  2. Reboot the system, so that XblAuthManager now shares a service host process with Windows Update and Background Intelligent Transfer Service.

Expanding the Active Hours default range: We’ve heard the feedback that you like the control Active Hours provides over when your PC restarts for updates, however feel that that the default 12 hour range on PC is too limited. We want to accommodate various enterprise environments and schedules including those where employees have double shifts, so starting with Build 14942, we’ve changed this range for PCs on Pro, Enterprise, or Education editions to 18 hours. This means Insiders using these editions can now set active hours up to 18 hours from the selected start time (same as Mobile). We’ve added text to the active hours dialog so users always know what the default range is when choosing their times. We’ve also added the ability for the default range to be configured via new group and MDM policies (configurable up to 18 hours). New text will be displayed on the active hours dialog to indicate when the default range is configured via the policy. PCs using Home edition will continue to have a default range of 12 hours.

image: https://winblogs.azureedge.net/win/2016/10/active-hours-change.png

Expanded Active HoursForm field navigation in Narrator: We are excited to announce that this build introduces form field navigation to Narrator. 

In Scan Mode, you can now use the following commands to jump to form fields:

  • F and Shift + F: Jump to next/previous form field
  • C and Shift + C: Jump to next/previous combo box
  • E and Shift + E: Jump to next/previous edit box
  • X and Shift + X: Jump to next/previous check box
  • R and Shift + R: Jump to next/previous radio button
  • B and Shift + B: Jump to next/previous button

Basically, the letter moves forward and Shift + letter moves in reverse.

Form Fields have been added to Narrator’s Search and Select feature which is available at any time by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Enter. Search and Select allows you to list items such as buttons, links, headings and other elements available in an app, webpage or document.

A new view is now available for form fields. The active view can be changed by pressing Caps Lock and using the up and down arrows to navigate the list of views on the keyboard, or single finger up/down flicks with touch.

[ADDED] Knowing where you are in the registry: For our power users, we have added something special in this build – Registry Editor (regedit) now has an address bar! This enables you to easily see your current registry key path, and copy it if needed. You can also paste or type in paths, and pressing enter will take you to that location. You can use Alt + D to set focus to the address bar.

image: https://winblogs.azureedge.net/win/2016/10/new_regedit_addressbar.png

Address bar in Regedit

Other improvements and fixes for PC

  • We’ve updated Narrator’s reading order for Windows 10 apps which display an app bar on the bottom of the app, for example OneDrive, so now the contents of the page will be read before the contents of the app bar.
  • We fixed an issue where running sfc /scannow in an elevated command prompt would fail at 20% with the error “could not perform the requested operation.”
  • We fixed an issue resulting in certain areas of Windows 10 app notifications not doing anything when clicked, rather than opening the corresponding app.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in Personalization > Background Settings page crashing or showing a blank context menu when right clicking one of the recent images .
  • Fixed an issue resulting in Windows Defender’s Antimalware Service Executable sometimes using an unexpectedly large amount of CPU.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in the Devices and Printers page in Control Panel loading slowly for users with certain audio devices.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in a small set of users seeing the NTFS partition of their external hard drive incorrectly showing up as RAW format.
  • Going forward from Build 14942, custom printer names will be preserved across upgrades. We’ve also addressed an issue where the printer queue name wasn’t preserved across upgrade for some printers.
  • Improved framerates when Game Bar is enabled for full screen games.

Known issues for PC

  • UPDATE: If you are having issues signing into games that use Xbox Live – see note above.
  • Check http://www.technine.be/2016/10/10/fix-for-edge-not-working-on-windows-insider-build-14942/ for a fix if Edge is not starting
  • Insiders doing web development may find themselves their local intranet server unreachable, as service host separation will leave the IIS World Wide Web Publishing Service (W3Svc) unable to start successfully. To fix this issue:
  1. Run the following from an admin cmd line (or edit the registry accordingly):
    1. REG ADD HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W3SVC /v SvcHostSplitDisable /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
    2. REG ADD HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WAS /v SvcHostSplitDisable /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
  2. Reboot the system, so that the W3Svc and WAS services share a service host process.

Read more at Windows Blog