One of the first few updates for the Office 2013 suite seems to have altered the file blocking mechanism in Visio 2013. If you don’t have any 2013 style files yet and try to open a previous version, you will get the error below:

In default form, Office 2013 blocks the opening all document versions prior to that of 2013. One fix is to enter the Trust Center, as the error message indicates, and alter the file block settings unchecking the “open” boxes next to the versions you require. Interestingly if you compare the file block settings between Word and Visio they do not match. Visio does not inherit any of these behaviors.

The “open behavior” options at the bottom default to “do not open” and cannot be changed. This should resolve the problem but another way is to click “Trusted Locations” from the left side of the Trust Center and add the file paths where your Visios live. You’ll notice that this is empty by default as trusted locations are exempt from the security mechanisms.

Make sure to include the subfolders of whatever location you select.

Click Ok all the way out and you should be good to go now.

Two ways to solve the same problem. This mechanism didn’t work correctly when Visio 2013 launched a year ago but now appears that all is well.

Sadly in Outlook 2013, Microsoft has decided to remove the “Quick Contacts” functionality which integrated your Lync 2010 groups/ contacts into the Outlook 2010 to-do bar. While this could ultimately change at some point in the future, for now, here is a work around to bring back the same essential functionality.

So you just upgraded to Office 2013, fire up Outlook  and notice your quick contacts are gone. Don’t despair, we can fix this! First head to the View page in the ribbon and enable People in the To-Do Bar.

This will open an empty people list in your to-do bar with a lonely search box. Start by typing in the name of a person you’d like in your pseudo-quick contacts. Everyone I wanted to add were frequent contacts so appeared first in the search results. Find your desired contact, right-click and click “Add to Favorites.” You’ll notice that presence will report an unknown state at this point.

This person should now appear in your Favorites list within the to-do bar, presence still unknown. To get presence to appear there is one more step: add these people to your local contacts. From the favorites list, right-click the contact again, click the down arrow in the right lower corner,

Click “Add”…

Then click “Save” on the screen that follows.

Once the contact is saved to your local contacts list, their presence will magically appear in the list. From a functional standpoint, you are now at par with what quick contacts provided in Outlook 2010.

Repeat these steps for each contact you want to appear in your to-do bar favorites list. While not the same as having 100% of your Lync contacts auto-appearing in Outlook, at least you can still have the contacts you really care about. Or, add them all if you must!

Cheers,

Peter