How to show the chat icon for Excel desktop application? - excel

According to Microsoft Help: Enhance collaboration with Chat in Microsoft Office. I would expect to see the chat icon for Excel Desktop application, but I don't:
I am using Microsoft Office 3654 ProPlus. I have access to the chat window using this workaround:
Searching online, I found a similar problem, but for Excel online: Unable to find "chat" button when co-authoring excel online, but my issue is only with Excel Desktop application. I am able to see the chat icon with Excel online.
I was trying to add it to the Ribbon or Quick Access Toolbar, but that feature does not belong to such sections of the excel header. I am pretty sure its something easy, but I cannot find it.

According to Microsoft, they eliminated the chat button for Excel Desktop App although the Excel Office Online has this option. Now they offer to access to chat function (Join Chat Group) in the way it is explained in the question. Microsoft calls it: "a design change".
So far it happens for the following version:
version 1907(Build 11901.20218)
version 1908(Build 11929.20254) latest one
For more information, please check the response for a similar question in Microsoft Community Forum.
If you don't like it, the only option is to dislike this feature (File->Feedback) from Excel Desktop application.

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How to create links to MS Teams tabs which can be used from within MSTeams on a page

In a MSTeams channel I have a tab which has a sharepoint page added to it. If it is important the sharepoint page resides within the same sharepoint site set up automatically by MS Teams for this team.
I want to use a sharepoint Quick Links web part to provide a link to another MSTeams channel tab.
Currently I am copying the link to the tab within the MSTeam desktop app. In the sharepoint Quick Link I am then pasting the link in the "From Another Link" choice of the Quick Link link.
This works if you click on these links within the Desktop App and if you use the Web Online version, however it does not work if you use the iOS MS Teams app.
Is there another way to link to channel tabs? There is this question and answer but this only applies to the web online application.
I see on the MS UserVoice that there is still no way to change the landing page when clicking on a channel. Am I correct? Here is the link to the UserVoice
I've been researching into this a bit but I can't find a good answer - I feel like Deeplinking should support this somehow, but I haven't got a clear answer. It's possible (but I've not tested it), that you can use standard Deep Link syntax, but use the App Id and Entity Id that you'd get from the Graph Api (e.g. here).
Another possibility is just to use an app that's more geared towards this, like Quicklinks (disclosure: I work on this app).

Excel add-in interaction with other Office365 applications

I'm exploring Office 365 development and I'm trying with Excel add-ins.
One thing I'd like to was to interact with other Office applications, like Outlook, OneDrive and Word - from Excel.
For example, I'd like to send an email from an Excel table and/or insert the value of a cell in a Word document.
After searching the documentation, I couldn't find if this is possible, so I'd appreciate some help.
I'm new to Office development.
Thanks in advance!
Add-ins (Office.js) run in separate instances of browsers (controlled by the Office apps). This makes it difficult to pass messages between apps. Browser storage (cookies, localStorage and IndexedDatabase) can't consistently see each other's data/events when in separate instances. Because of this, we had to pass messages through our servers just to communicate between Excel, Word, and PowerPoint on the same device. Microsoft currently does not provide an API to communicate between add-ins in different apps.

Is it possible to develop for Office 365 (confusion due to new-to-365)

I'm not even sure if it's possible at all. Earlier, I've been designing addons to Outlook and Excel (using VSTO and VBA). Now, my company got into this Office 365 thinking and we have all our environment online, no local software at all, strictly and only web client approach.
It's got its advantages. But the downside is that out support have no clue how it works (except to tell us to click the settings and look for options, sigh). So, I wonder if it's possible to develop and somehow upload my own customizations (NB we have no servers in the cloud - everything is provided on SAS basis).
Suppose I'd like to:
mark all emails from a certain sender with yellow background in the list in Outlook, or
highlight every occurrence of the word "donkey" in the text mass in Word.
Is it doable at all?
I've googled for it but all I can see is that there's an API and that we need to runt the stuff on our own servers. Am I just confusing myself here?
First of all, if you have O365 subscription, you actually still have the ability to download all desktop version of Office. So your existing customizations should still work on Desktop version of Office.
Second,check out Office Add-in on dev.office.com. Office Add-ins extend the functionality of Office with a web app that lives within Office applications. They work similar to traditional VBA add-ons and we have a rich set of API that helps you interact with Office. This is basically a web app with JavaScript, HTML and CSS. You can build it with any tools you are familiar with and host it anywhere. It is really easy to build and let us know if you have more questions.
Thanks,
Sky
Your best bet for highlighting messages from specific senders would be to use the Outlook REST APIs to access the messages and either stamp a specific category color on the messages, or a flag to highlight the message in the list view. That approach would work across both Web, Outlook, and even Mobile (if you use flags). The new Outlook add-in model is powerful and works for Outlook on the Web, as well as Outlook on Windows, but doesn't allow you to update the colors of the list view add-ins.

Can I access office.js from SharePoint 2013 content-editor web-part like I can Ewa?

I have HTML and JavaScript that run just fine in a SharePoint 2013 content-editor web-part, from which I can access the Ewa.EwaControl object (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ee589018.aspx) to get to the various Excel Web Parts hosted on the page.
The Ewa has some limitations that I'd like to overcome by using the office.js (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/fp142185.aspx).
Also, both Ewa and office.js seem to do a similar thing, but I can't find anything on the internet that indicates which is deprecated in favor of which. With SharePoint 2016 requiring Office Online Server, and Excel Web Parts now being subsumed by Office Online Server, what does that mean with regard to the future of either office.js or Ewa? They seem to have overlapping features and it's unclear which we should invest in.
I can't speak for all teams but I work on Office.js and I can assure you at least we are actively working on Office.js. We are bringing in tons of New APIs with Office 2016 and try to reach as many platforms as we can. You can find all the released APIs and ongoing effort from out Documentation on Github. https://github.com/OfficeDev/office-js-docs
I hope that helps you make your decision.
Thanks,
Sky

How to open a new Live Meeting window programmatically

I am currently engaged in developing a add-in for MS outlook 2007. I need to open a new Live meeting(conferencing request) window programmatically. This is exactly same as the action performed when the new-> Live meeting button is clicked. Is there any possibility to fire the click event of the "Live Meeting" command bar button? Please help as I am new to office programming.
Thanks in advance.
I've found the solution for this question and learnt a lot about office programming as the project goes on. Actually we cant execute the live meeting button directly. There is no api for conferencing add in for outlook. Live meeting corresponds to the AppoinmentItem in outlook programming. So we have to use com object model to open a new AppoinmentItem and fill the body of it with appropriate details about the live meeting(actually a conference on microsoft office communications server).
We have to use the microsoft UCMA sdk to create a new confernce on OCS. Although there are many sdks available to program for ocs, ucma is the best sdk.
Refer this to create new appoinment on outlook
Study about UCMA 2.0

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