Outlook 2011: Junk Mail Protection Greyed Out

According to this Microsoft KB, people using Outlook 2011 and Exchange 2013 are unable to access the tool-bar item "Junk e-mail protection" because the item is greyed out.

However, one of our clever system admins in Warsaw discovered that if you first open Outlook Preferences and then go to Tools in the menu bar, Junk E-mail Protection magically comes back.

 

I haven't done thorough testing but it appears that using this work-around does enable client-side Junk mail filtering configuration.

Office 2011 SP2 Database Problems: Workaround from Microsoft

Microsoft is acknowledging that many customers are having problems with the Outlook database after applying SP2.  They have posted the following advice and workarounds:

http://blog.officeformac.com/office-for-mac-2011-sp2-database-upgrade-workaround/

Office 2011 14.2 update installation problems

We have received numerous reports of problems when attempting to install the Office 2011 SP2 (14.2) update remotely using Casper.  However, the update seems to deploy using ARD but you should be aware of a few peculiarities. 

Microsoft changed the format of their update package from an .mpkg to a .pkg.  While this might not sound like much of a change there are significant differences in how the two types work. .pkg files are flat packages that don't do anything more than bundle up files into an installation wrapper.  .mpkg files are much more customizable and can link to other packages.

It seems that even though the 14.2 updater is a .pkg it is not actually a flat file.  I don't know what magic Microsoft has tried to work but there seems to be many problems relating to this new composition.

While the updater runs fine from a local machine, attempting to deploy it though Casper does not work.  Even though Casper (and the Mac) report that the installation was successful, the Office version remains the same and the update does not get installed.

Installing the .pkg through ARD works, however when you launch Outlook you get the following error:

Deleting the daemon from the user's startup items and restarting fixes this problem.

If you launch Word before restarting you will probably see this error:

After a restart this error should go away.

Once you restart, launch Outlook and you will get the following message:

Before clicking "Upgrade" it is a good idea to back-up the user's Main Identity.

Once you click "Upgrade" you are committed- you must let it finish or you will get data corruption.  A 2GB profile on an i5 iMac took about 7 minutes to upgrade.

The upshot of all this is that SP2 is not a "fire and forget" update.  A good deal of intervention is required to ensure that the process goes smoothly.

Outlook 2011 Profiles Disappearing

There have been some reports that when a user launches Outlook their profile is no longer there.  It seems to have something to do with the database daemon thinking the user's database has vanished.


Here is one reported work-around:

• Keep Outlook open
• Go to Terminal
• Type, ps aux | grep Microsoft
• Look for the MS Office 2011 processes
• Note the number after the user name- this is the Process ID (PID)
• In Terminal type, sudo kill –9 [PID number]
• Do this for each of the Microsoft processes
• Re-launch Outlook