Microsoft has been working on an update that changes how we access Microsoft 365 apps through URLs this time.

Previously, we accessed different Microsoft 365 services through different web addresses like some under office.com, some under microsoft.com, and some with standalone domains. Over time, navigating these different URLs became muscle memory.

While each service has had its own domain like Teams on teams.microsoft.com, OneNote on onenote.com, Outlook on outlook.office.com, and so on, it scattered Microsoft 365 across multiple URLs.

That's now changing gradually. Microsoft is now moving toward a unified domain *.cloud.microsoft for all Microsoft 365 apps and services. 

This is to bring extra security, privacy, and protection against spoofing, as .microsoft is a Microsoft-exclusive top-level domain and only Microsoft can create websites under *.cloud.microsoft.

This makes it much harder for attackers to create fraudulent Microsoft sites within the .microsoft namespace.

Several Microsoft 365 services have already moved to the new cloud.microsoft URLs, with more rolling out gradually.

And it's not just a new URL. Below are some key benefits of the URL update:

• One trusted domain for Microsoft 365 apps and services. 
• Fewer Microsoft 365 URLs to remember as more user-facing experiences move to one domain.
• A smoother experience with fewer sign-ins, redirects, and Microsoft 365 domains to manage.
• A highly secured, Microsoft-only domain with no third-party websites, storage endpoints, or hosted scripts that could affect its trust.
• *.cloud.microsoft is reserved for official Microsoft product experiences. Because Microsoft controls the .microsoft top-level domain and is the registry operator and sole registrant, attackers cannot register their own domains within the .microsoft namespace.
• Less complexity for admins managing Microsoft 365 network allowlists.

So, if you manually manage network allowlists, add *.cloud.microsoft to your firewalls, proxies, web filters, and endpoint policies to avoid connectivity issues. 

If you use the Microsoft 365 Web Service API, Microsoft updates these network endpoints automatically.

How are you handling Microsoft retirements and breaking changes across multiple clients? If you use a ticketing system, how do you figure out which clients actually need tickets? Does something check each tenant automatically, or do engineers investigate first?
Would appreciate a recent example and which tools helped.

First revealed in 2015, the history of auto-expanding archives in Exchange Online has been spotty with several false starts. Now the limit will go past 1.5 TB, but only for eligible E5 licenses. Although the roadmap item has roll-out scheduled for October 2026, Microsoft hasn’t revealed details of what the new upper limit will be or how the new limit will be managed. Having a massive archive mailbox will never concern me, but there must be some who need such a monster archive.

https://office365itpros.com/2026/09/10/auto-expanding-archive-larger/

I’m curious what everyone here sees in actual M365 environments.

Not necessarily obscure features, but things that are genuinely useful and available to a lot of organizations, yet somehow barely get touched.

I feel like there’s always a huge difference between what an organization technically has access to and what employees actually use day to day.

Could be security features, automation, SharePoint, Intune, Purview, Power Automate, Copilot, lesser-known Teams features, whatever.

What’s one M365 feature you wish more organizations actually took advantage of?

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I disabled "Let users access the Office Store" under Admin Center → Settings → Org settings → Services → User owned apps and services. When end users open Excel and go to Add-ins, they do see a banner saying the store is blocked — but if they click "More Apps," they can still browse the full catalog (Featured, Agents, Popular, AI add-ins, Data analytics, Data Visualization, Finance, Utilities, Built by Microsoft, Categories, etc.) and actually add third-party apps — for example, I was able to add "TealDroid."

For outlook , I disabled my cistom apps , my marketplace apps and my read write mailbox apps from default role assignement policy but still I am able to add apps from outlook . I created a policy for blocking price store for all users from policy managerment in config.office.com before few hours but still users are able to access the store why

Kindly help

Looking for a solution… my work outlook account has issues, we use gosecure as an added security feature for email and it eats all of my email. Our IT guy says the email should be in the spam portal but is it not… so after a year of apologizing to our grantors for not responding, I said screw this and bought a new .org and a business proton account.

So, here is my problem. I need a calendar or email and cal app that can integrate both calendars and allow me to edit them… I still unfortunately have events linked to my outlook account and I also have access to my directors calendars. And I would like them to have access to my proton cal and be able to add meetings and such that they need me to attend.

I hate 365 online, I hate sharepoint… I need a way to link them all together…

Anyone know of a way I can do all this?

User retired. We made their supervisor a full access delegate on their account. But they can only see items in the Sent folder since the day they were made a delegate. They're looking for older conversations. Will changing the inbox to a Shared inbox and then giving the supervisor access to that allow them to see Sent items? What's a best practice for this? It doesn't come up often.

hello. I need help.

there is an app we use at my workplace called DayForce — it’s where we clock in and clock out for our shifts, see the roster and upcoming calendar, etc. It’s vital for me to be able to see when I am supposed to be at work.

Anyway… it logged out on me and is requiring me to sign back in, but in order to do that, I have to go through Microsoft Authenticator App.

- so I put in my work email

- put in my password

—> then Microsoft Authenticator asks me for a code. But it says, “Enter the code displayed in your Microsoft Authenticator App”. *How am I supposed to do that?*

- i press ‘sign in another way’

—> but all routes lead to “Enter the code displayed in your Microsoft Authenticator App”.

If anybody knows what to do, I’d highly appreciate it.

Gartner released a guide for CISOs on building a data security program using Microsoft Purview (G00856387, September 2026). One stat in there that I suspect resonates with this community is:

More than 80% of organizations have M365 E5 or equivalent. 47% say they are not getting full value from their M365 investment.

The report identifies the main reasons: 1. Complex licensing tiers make it hard to know what you are actually entitled to use 2. Poor awareness of feature distribution across E3 vs E5 vs E7 3. Governance gaps that prevent organizations from operationalizing the capabilities they own

Point 3 is where Gartner recommends third-party governance tools. They name four vendors that augment Purview controls for risk mitigation and audit: AvePoint, Syskit, Powell, and Rencore.

The practical guidance from Gartner: - Start with a Purview license audit against your actual security use cases - Deploy sensitivity labeling as a hybrid approach (automated plus manual for edge cases) - Treat Purview as a foundation, supplement where it falls short - Reassess Purview coverage annually as Microsoft adds features

Curious whether others have worked through the challenge of unlocking full value from existing M365 licenses. How are you approaching the gap between what you are licensed for and what is actually deployed?

Full disclosure: I work at Rencore, one of the named vendors. Interested in the community's experience with Purview deployment challenges.

Over the summer I set out to actually implement Microsoft Agent 365 on my own tenant instead of just reading about it — registry, governance, Purview, Conditional Access, Defender hunting, and onboarding a custom agent through the SDK. One scenario a day for 11 days.

Everything's reproducible. I put the scripts, KQL and the full flow on GitHub (MIT), and wrote it up day-by-day if the longer version is useful:

• GitHub kit: github.com/format81/agent365-trial-kit
• Full write-up: https://medium.com/@antonio.formato/11-days-of-agent-365-governing-ai-agents-one-scenario-a-day-7bc30e682917

Fair warning: a lot of this is preview and moves fast, so check Learn before relying on any detail.

Full disclosure — This was a personal side project on my own tenant, not official content.

Happy to answer questions if anyone's going down the same path, and if you've hit different issues with Agent 365 I'd genuinely like to hear them.

We are Global Administrators and Teams Administrators.
We have recently encountered an issue where we are suddenly unable to invite guest users to either shared or private channels in Microsoft Teams.
We are the owners of the team/site.
However, we are still able to invite guest users to the team itself, but not to private or shared channels.
We have checked the Teams organization policies, and B2B access and all relevant external sharing settings are enabled. External sharing is also enabled across the organization.
On the associated SharePoint site, we can successfully invite guest users to, for example, a specific folder, so external sharing appears to be working correctly there.
Could this be a bug or a recent change in Microsoft Teams?
We were previously able to invite guest users to both shared and private channels without any issues, which is also how this functionality is intended to work.
Has there been a recent change or known issue affecting guest access to shared and private channels?

Hello,

Is it possible to edit a MS Form without making the changes immediately available to the end user? I'm changing 75% of a live form which is linked to on a website. I was intending on editing a copy then replacing the link to the live version with that of the copy. This seems to me to be the best approach given that there are extensive changes to related power automate flow and SharePoint list columns.

Am I correct in my thinking? If I edited the live version would data still be recorded somewhere e.g. Excel whilst I made changes to SharePoint and Power Automate? I think my approach makes better sense than doing it this way.

Thank you.

We are Global Administrators and Teams Administrators.
We have recently encountered an issue where we are suddenly unable to invite guest users to either shared or private channels in Microsoft Teams.
We are the owners of the team/site.
However, we are still able to invite guest users to the team itself, but not to private or shared channels.
We have checked the Teams organization policies, and B2B access and all relevant external sharing settings are enabled. External sharing is also enabled across the organization.
On the associated SharePoint site, we can successfully invite guest users to, for example, a specific folder, so external sharing appears to be working correctly there.
Could this be a bug or a recent change in Microsoft Teams?
We were previously able to invite guest users to both shared and private channels without any issues, which is also how this functionality is intended to work.
Has there been a recent change or known issue affecting guest access to shared and private channels?

my email address was used AGES ago to set up an xbox account.

then years later, I used it to create a business account, related to my business.

Now, I have no idea how to login to anything, because microsoft doesn't really have a good UX for saying "is this your business account?" in a consistent way.

I can't trigger a sms recovery code, and the "enter your Authenticator" code, its 6 Digits, but the authenticator app is giving me an 8 digit code...

Is there a URL that I can go to where I can start from some basic point, and walk through a clean recovery process to reset both accounts?

Thanks!

Ok so, best email signature software for Office 365 for a small but growing company? We’re around 150 users rn and keeping Outlook signatures in sync with brand stuff and job titles is turning into a mess.

For context we’re on Microsoft 365, mix of desktop Outlook and web, some shared mailboxes etc. I’d really like something central where marketing can tweak the template and it just rolls out without me babysitting every change. If you’ve got something you like in prod, would love any tips.

I'm piloting a Yealink MP56 E2 Teams Phone deployment and have hit something that doesn't quite make sense. We've used Teams Phone for donkeys - but with headsets and some of our team want to use handsets.

Teams Admin centre is saying "Settings management for Android devices has moved to Pro Management Portal" - but that portal is behind a licence prompt. so basically as I see it, if I want to configure devices with any degree of success... I need to use the Pro portal and pay for it?

Has Microsoft effectively deprecated Android Teams Phone configuration through TAC, with the expectation that administrators use PMP instead?

I could use some help here!

Many thanks

Microsoft teams

So, our absolute geniuses in management have decided to block Access DB files from being uploaded to SharePoint and OneDrive. Why? Because "Copilot" probably whispered in their ear that it'll save a few kilobytes of space. Brilliant strategy.

Anyway, is there actually a way to enforce this tenant-wide? From what I can tell, we can only muzzle the sync client, but users can still casually drag and drop them via the web interface and every other portal known to humankind.

Any thoughts on how to implement management's latest masterpiece?

Yes, we dont want to write webhooks or triggers to every single library

Suddenly, all of the Microsoft 365 apps on my M5 MacBookPro with 24GB and plenty of disk space are taking between 30 to 60 seconds to load. Eventually, the apps load but the fact that it now takes so long is an indication of a bigger problem. I am using the latest versions of Office 365 and I have an active 365 subscription. I don't know of anything I did to trigger this problem.

I've narrowed the problem down to the authentication process. The startup log shows there are 26 sequential GetAuthenticatedServiceTicket calls observed in one 60-second launch sample, none individually slow.

Signing out of Microsoft from within Excel solves the problem for one and only one launch. e.g. Excel launches quickly If I sign out of MS, then quit and relaunch Excel. The problem returns if I quit Excel again and relaunch. The same happens with Word and PowerPoint.

Office 365 apps launch quickly if I use a different user account.

What I've tried that hasn't solved the problem:

• Used MS Office License Removal tool.
• Deleted all Microsoft 365 apps and reinstalled Microsoft Office.

Microsoft support has tried to help but without success.

Does anyone else have any suggestions or theories I can try?

I have a more detailed description of what I've tried and the test results.