Category Archives: Office 365

Change Office 365 portal language for synced users

Users cannot change the display language of the Office 365 portal themselves if they are synced users, and they’ll receive an error. If you attempt to do this as an administrator using a Powershell command to set the PreferredLanguage attribute directly like this:

set-msoluser -userprincipalname "xxx" -PreferredLanguage "en-US"

You will see this error:

set-msoluser : Unable to update parameter. Parameter name: PreferredLanguage.
At line:1 char:1
+ set-msoluser -userprincipalname xxx -preferredlanguage "en-US"
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~
+ CategoryInfo          : OperationStopped: (:) [Set-MsolUser], MicrosoftOnlineException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.Online.Administration.Automation.PropertyNotSettableException,Microsoft.Online.Administration.Automation.SetUser

You can only set the PreferredLanguage attribute on non-synced users because this property is managed by dirsync/aadsync, and thus only settable on your onpremises Active Directory. Use ADSIEdit or Powershell to change the PreferredLanguage property locally for your users and then run a sync to change the language in Office 365.

Here’s an example PS snippet that will set (bulk change) the preferredLanguage Active Directory atrribute of all your users to Dutch:

Get-AdUser -Filter * -ResultSetSize 9999 | Set-ADUser -Replace @{‘preferredLanguage’=”nl-NL”}

If you need to look up your own language code, you can do so here

Note: if the PreferredLanguage attribute is not set, language will default to English.

ADFS v2 to v3 side by side migration for Office 365

Some time ago we built a second ADFS farm at our datacenter. We knew we had to upgrade to v3 at some point, but wanted to keep our v2 farm intact so we could always do a rollback. We also wanted to use a new domain name for our brand new Windows 2012 R2 ADFS cluster, including the WAP proxies.

Setting all this up proved fairly easy, ADFS v3 was Continue reading ADFS v2 to v3 side by side migration for Office 365

O365Uploader V0.4

Due to popular request,  I’ve added an analyze function to the O365Uploader. After choosing your folder to be uploaded, a popup will ask you if you wish to see an analysis of potential issues and suggested fixes for your content. Everthing will both be written to the Powershell console in the background and a detailed log file which can be used in MS Excel.

You can download the new version here.

Other changes:

  • Added check for period in folder/file name
  • Added check for various illegal suffixes in filenames
  • Added verification prompt before upload to log all issues to a file beforehand so it can be fixed in advance
  • Added warning for 5000+ items
  • Added warning for hidden files (start with an _ )