u/Unlikely_Tie1172

Nearly five years after going into preview, Microsoft has made the send from alias feature for Exchange Online generally available. It’s a very useful feature that eliminates the need to use a shared mailbox to be able to send messages with different email addresses. Microsoft has closed some functionality gaps since the preview started, but sending from an alias is not the same as sending from a mailbox’s primary SMTP address. Some user training might be necessary!

https://office365itpros.com/2026/10/09/send-from-alias-finally-ga/

After saying that the Graph didn’t offer much support for group mailboxes, I was promptly countered with an article explaining how to use the Exchange Import-Export API to access folders and items in group mailboxes that wasn’t limited to just the Inbox. Well, the good news is that the approach works, as seen in a complete PowerShell script written to prove the case, but whether I would ever use this API for a purpose it was never designed for is quite another matter.

https://office365itpros.com/2026/10/07/group-mailbox-folder-items/

The File-level archiving Graph API supports any file stored in a SharePoint Online document library, including the emails sent to Teams channels and stored in folders where the email files often disappear from view, occupying valuable storage quietly and without fuss. Finding and moving the email files to Microsoft 365 Archive makes sense because it saves on storage and stops AI tools using old email to generate responses. Here’s how to archive old email files with PowerShell.

https://office365itpros.com/2026/10/06/file-level-archiving-teams/

When launched in 2015, Outlook groups were an email-based collaboration platform. Now called Microsoft 365 Groups, the few Outlook groups that host email-based discussions have a distinctive Graph API to create and manage the conversations, topics, and posts which make up their discussions. This article reviews how to use PowerShell to fetch these objects and how to create new conversations and reply to posts (using the Outlook Groups APIs, of course).

https://office365itpros.com/2026/09/30/outlook-group-graph-api/

On September 23, Microsoft Learn announced that many of its public GitHub repositories for documentation would become private. The net effect is that external contributors will no longer be able to suggest changes to documentation. Although some change requests are probably not high quality, removing the route for the technical community to engage with and improve Microsoft documentation doesn’t seem like a good idea, especially if Microsoft thinks that AI can fill the gap.

https://office365itpros.com/2026/09/28/microsoft-learn-external/

After promising essentially unlimited OneDrive for Business storage some years ago, Microsoft is now putting a hard 5 TB limit on what a user can have and forcing tenants who used Microsoft’s own process to expand to 25 TB to reduce account sizes. It’s an unfair approach, especially when viewed together with the launch of a PAYG option for OneDrive storage to allow Microsoft 365 tenants who need a little more to buy that storage.

https://office365itpros.com/2026/09/23/onedrive-storage-clampdown/

On September 16, 2026, Microsoft announced a 12-month retirement period for support of PowerShell V5.1 by the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK. Microsoft also announced V3 of the Graph SDK and said that the new version will only support PowerShell V7. The transition for most scripts should be straightforward, but attention needs to be paid when scripts use outdated .NET assemblies. Famous last words…

https://office365itpros.com/2026/09/17/microsoft-graph-powershell-sdkv3/

New Outlook is an acceptable email client. Some dislike its lack of support for different features, like COM add-ins. Then Copilot gets involved and adds options to generate morning briefing and nightly wrap-ups without any way to disable the feature for individual users or the entire tenant. Plugging Copilot in like this will please some people, but I suspect that it will harm the reputation of new Outlook, especially without settings to stop Copilot seeking to be quite so helpful.

https://office365itpros.com/2026/09/15/new-outlook-copilot/

When attempting to disable a user account in an interactive Graph session, I was told that the command failed because the accountEnabled property was invalid. The error is obviously incorrect because it’s very possible to update the property to disable or enable an account. However, different rules apply when the account is holds a privileged role, like Global Administrator. Entra imposes some reasonable blocks, even if the error messages are not good.

https://office365itpros.com/2026/09/14/strange-accountenabled-error/

While testing the new DLP capabilities to block sharing to users and domains and stop Copilot from using external email, it was noticeable how long it took before policies became active. DLP policy synchronization to workloads is reasonably work (and getting faster), but these policies have a new retrospective effect that requires workloads to process files and messages to stop them being available. It’s a new twist to the DLP story.

https://office365itpros.com/2026/09/11/dlp-policies-take-time/

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/

Continuous Access Evaluation (CAE) is supported by core Microsoft 365 workloads like Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Teams, and the reach of CAE is gradually spreading throughout the Microsoft cloud ecosystem. However, security researchers report inconsistent coverage across first-party apps and clients that take a little gloss off the promise of instant access revocation when critical events like user password changes happen.

https://office365itpros.com/2026/09/08/continuous-access-evaluation-cae/

In an attempt to ease the transition to the new Outlook, Microsoft has introduced the classic Outlook style for the new Outlook and OWA. The style essentially redoes the existing GUI for the web clients to make their appearance very close to the win32 client. After using the two clients side by side for a week, sometimes I find it difficult to know what client I’m interacting with. The question is what average users rather than IT people think of a different face for the new Outlook.

https://office365itpros.com/2026/09/07/classic-outlook-style/

Forty months ago, Microsoft launched Copilot. Looking back, the lack of guardrails at the time was staggering, and AI had a great time wandering across SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, and Exchange. Now Microsoft Copilot is a unified client and there’s a bunch of essential steps for tenants to take to keep AI processing under control and their sensitive and confidential information safe. Here’s what we know about implementing Copilot in late 2026.

https://office365itpros.com/2026/09/04/microsoft-copilot-in-2026/

A Technical Community post discusses the topic of using the Entra ID continuous access evaluation (CAE) feature to revoke access for service principals when apps become risky or potentially compromised. The Microsoft Graph Command Line Tools app is a good example of a service principal in common use, so we examine the access tokens issued for interactive Graph sessions to discover if they are CAE-enabled. Just for fun!

https://office365itpros.com/2026/09/03/cae-service-principals/

** Update to let subscribers know about new files **

The September 2026 update for the four books in the Microsoft 365 for IT Pros (2027 edition) package are available for subscribers to download. EPUB and PDF files can be downloaded. The paperback edition of the Automating Microsoft 365 with PowerShell eBook has also been updated. August was a busy month with lots happening, most of which ended up in chapter updates. We expect more interesting changes during the coming month.

https://office365itpros.com/2026/09/01/microsoft-365-for-it-pros-135/

Use PowerShell to Check for New Graph Permissions with a View to Updating Permissions Used by Apps.

After Microsoft released some new Graph permissions, thoughts turned to how to discover new permissions after they are released. Code is the best way to perform automatic checks, and this article explains how to use PowerShell to check a last known set (stored in SharePoint Online) against the current set. Any variations are reported to administrators via email.

https://office365itpros.com/2026/08/31/new-graph-permissions-check/

In a GitHub post, Microsoft says that interactive Graph sessions using the default Microsoft Graph Command Line Tools app will use the Web Account Manager (WAM) in the future. Some administrators use older versions of the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK for continued access to browser-based authentication, but this won’t be possible once Microsoft makes the server-side change to enforce WAM on an undefined future date. Teams and Exchange Online also use WAM, apparently for better security.

https://office365itpros.com/2026/08/28/interactive-graph-sessions-wam/

Why would a seemingly simple Loop workspace develop into a monster SharePoint Embedded container? That’s the question to answer when a Loop container grew to fill nearly 88 GB of SharePoint Embedded storage. The workspace had been through many hundreds of edits, but that’s an unlikely reason to spread and occupy so much storage. Loop and SharePoint Embedded are black boxes when it comes to administration, so we must wait for Microsoft to explain.

https://office365itpros.com/2026/08/27/loop-workspace-big-container/