Enabling Trace Log in Office Communicator, Lync 2010 and Lync 2013

One thing that I’m always looking for is how to enable Trace Logs in Communicator/Lync. I created the following steps to help to enable logging. Trace logs are important in troubleshooting because most of the problems related to failure in instant messages or video/audio calls can be detected in Communicator/Lync Trace logs.

Office Communicator R2

To access the options we can click on the presence indicator and select “Options”.

Or we can select “Tools -> Options”, from the drop down menu.

In the “Options” window we select the “General” tab and finally activate logging by ticking the option “Turn on logging in Communicator”.

Lync 2010

In Lync 2010 the client changed the graphical interface but the “Options” window is similar to the one in Communicator.

Now to access options we select the gear/cog directly:

Or select the drop down menu next to the gear and then “Tools ->Options”.

The “General” tab is default in the “Options” window. To enable Trace log tick “Turn on logging in Lync” check-box.

Lync 2013

This time we’ve got another makeover in Lync client. As in Lync 2010, we can access options using the gear/cog.

And also use the drop down menu, “Tools-> Options”.

By default logging is enabled (Full level) in Lync 2013 Client. In the previous versions logging was disabled by default.

Now we can choose from 3 trace log levels.

The trace logs in Communicator/Client are really useful but, in my opinion, we should only enable them when trying to troubleshoot an issue. In normal usage we should disable the logs since it will continuously generate log files filling the hard disk with unnecessary files.