Microsoft Teams for Mac: login fails with endless loop

I wanted to use the Microsoft Teams app on macOS to login to my personal Office 365 account, but I recently used it to login to my corporate account. That did not work out very well: Teams got into an “endless loop” asking me to sign in over and over again. It looks like Teams has some issues when switching between different accounts.

I got this solved by opening Keychain Access, and deleting the entry called Microsoft Teams Identities Cache. After that, I could sign in to Teams again with the correct account.

Snip, a free screen capture tool

If you occasionally need to take a screenshot (or a screen capture of your screen), recent versions of Windows provide you with the Windows Snipping tool. It works well for simple jobs, but a recent Microsoft Garage project called Snip takes it to the next level.

snip

It offers a number of advantages:

  • it runs in the background and is always available
  • it stores your screenshots in a “library” without having to save manually to a file
  • you can annotate your screenshot with various drawing tools. Especially useful when you are using a tablet
  • you can save your annotations in a video file and add voice-over to it (very handy for describing an issue)

 

Microsoft Surface Pro 3 hangs on black “Surface” boot screen

On several occasions, I had my Surface Pro 3 freeze up on me on the boot screen. When I would turn on the surface, it would get to the black screen with the Surface logo, but it would not get any further. No spinner, no activity, nothing.

The following procedure fixes my issue every time:

  • if the Surface is turned on, turn it off by holding the power button for at least 30 seconds
  • press and hold the volume up button and the power button simultaneously for 15 seconds, then release the buttons
  • screen will flash and the Surface will shut down (sometimes it gets stuck at the bios screen, just exit then)
  • turn the device back on. Things should be ok now.

Check the following link for more troubleshooting tips.

Function keys on a Microsoft Surface Type Cover

surface_type_coverI knew you have to press the Fn key on the Type Cover of a Surface to get to the function keys on the keyboard. But what I did not know:

  • If you want to “lock” the top row of keys to their corresponding function key: press Fn + Caps Lock. To unlock, press the same keyboard combination again.
  • Pressing Fn + Spacebar corresponds to the Print Screen button on a regular keyboard. Now that is much more convenient than pressing the Home – Volume down on the device…

More info and tips on this link.