Fix Office 365 issues using the Microsoft Tool “SaRA”

Each folks has had issues with Outlook OneDrive or other Office 365 themes within the past. Microsoft has provided a while ago a replacement tool, which they need named SaRA.

In this article, I’d like to talk a bit more about this very helpful tool.

Microsoft Support & Recovery Assistant for Office 365 and may be a diagnostic tool, it helps us to repair all issues and collect data for analysing our issue.

For what we can use SaRA?

The Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant (SaRA) uses advanced diagnostics to report Close problems and Information about your Microsoft Outlook configuration. Reported problems are linked to public-facing documentation (usually a Microsoft knowledge domain article) for possible fixes. If you’re a Help desk professional, you'll review customer reports that are generated in HTML format.

Fix problems with Office 365 SaRA

When you start the wizard, first you want to check in together with your Office 365 account. SaRA then will display various troubleshooting sections. That means, that you first have to choose in which area you need help.

After general selection, the subsequent pages with further options for the matter will appear. So, you have to click through the issues until the problem can not be narrowed down.

As a part of the wizard, you'll also specify whether the matter is with the present computer, or whether you've got problems with the connection on another computer. If the matter computer is that the current computer, SaRA scans the PC, and may also display, for instance , the installed browsers. This can be used for instance , to resolve connectivity issues with Outlook Web App from Office 365.

 

SaRA actively helps with problem solving

Once you've got provided all the knowledge , SaRA may request further action, like registration or a selected selection. Then the tool tests the connection to Office 365, tries to repair the matter actively, or gives you clues on what the error could be . This allows users to repair a drag themselves, or a minimum of give administrators options to narrow down the matter .

SaRA also helps with teamwork issues, like mailbox sharing issues. Since this subject isn't very easy, users often don't come to the answer , but will receive appropriate advice from SaRA. To do this, select the choice Outlook / I’m having issue with delegate permissions or one among the opposite options. Then enter the e-mail address of the users involved. Then SaRA looks for configuration or permission issues.

Office 365 SaRA not only provides guidance on the way to fix the matter after choosing the matter but also can fix the matter itself on the PC. If you continue to need to take action yourself, Office 365 SaRA displays the individual steps also as links to assist and directions .

 

System requirements

Microsoft says that SaRA needs the following system requirements:

The following operating systems are supported:

Windows 10

Windows 8 and Windows 8.1

Windows 7

The Outlook program in any of the subsequent Office versions are often scanned:

Microsoft Office 365 (2016 or 2013, 32-bit or 64-bit)

Microsoft Office 2016 (32-bit or 64-bit; Click-to-Run or MSI Install)

Microsoft Office 2013 (32-bit or 64-bit; Click-to-Run or MSI  Install)

Microsoft Office 2010 (32-bit or 64-bit)

If you're running Windows 7 (any edition), you want to even have .NET Framework 4.5 installed. Windows 8 and later versions of Windows include a minimum of .NET Framework 4.5.

 

Installing SaRA

First of all, we need to download SaRA form the Microsoft Site, to find the right source we go to the following link: https://diagnostics.outlook.com/ and click on Download now.

 

Now we downloaded a excel file which contains the software launcher. As soon this is started, the launcher starts the download:

In the next step we get asked, if we actually want to put in this application, to continue we hit Install

Now SaRA are going to be installed, the present version contains 23.1MB

When the progress is finished, we'd like to comply with the Terms of SaRA:

In the next window the setup is completed , and that we already see a number of the choices we will choose.

By clicking on See more we get also the other options we can use to troubleshoot.

NOTE: If you're working with a Microsoft supporter on a case, we'd like to see the tiny option within the left corner down which says: i'm working with Microsoft support personnel on this issue.

 

Analysing Outlook

As I even have wrote earlier during this article we all know now, for what we will use SaRA, here during this example we'll analyse an Outlook client.

However, the way i select for this instance is that the way I work with this tool normally.

We start by choosing the option Advanced diagnostics:

In the next step we choose Outlook:

Now we need to choose the option if we are currently on the affected computer. In our example we are on the affected computer and choose the choice Yes. We also have the option to connect remotely to another computer.

Now the software is collecting the knowledge , it's important that the Outlook is running at that moment, otherwise we'll get a mistake . Collecting this information can take a while…

After a while , we'll get a result with all issues SaRA has found on the pc . The cool thing is that SaRA also shows us in the most of the cases, how can we fix the issue. If we've a glance about one among the examples, at this computer a registry key's missing.

If we follow the link in the notification message, we will get to the right TechNet article which explains us more about it and how to set the right key:

Now, if we are clicking next, we get small overview about the analyse. This we can send or not send to Microsoft.

At the very end we always have the choice to review all leads to a HTML file:

More feature

SaRA isn't just made to repair Outlook issues for Office 365 or on-premises. It has more options for troubleshooting Dynamics, OneDrive and Skype for Business issues.