Newsletter Archives
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New fonts and templates, but with traps
ISSUE 20.36 • 2023-09-04 MICROSOFT 365
By Peter Deegan
Whenever you start a new document by clicking “Blank” (or “New”) in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Outlook, you’re almost certainly using Microsoft’s default templates and fonts.
Microsoft has started pushing changes to those starting “blanks” for Microsoft 365 in a very special way that adds little compatibility traps for Office 2021/2019 as well as earlier versions.
You’ve probably heard about the change in default templates and the arrival of the new Aptos font family. What I’ll explain here is the true scope of those changes and how they are quite different from past Office template and font changes.
Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.36.0, 2023-09-04).
This story also appears in our public Newsletter. -
Vulnerabilities everywhere
ISSUE 20.33 • 2023-08-14 PATCH WATCH
By Susan Bradley
Another month, another series of updates for seemingly everything on the Windows platform.
But this isn’t just any month. Patch Tuesday once again coincided with the week of the annual security conference, Black Hat. The Windows-based topics range from “Hacking Bing.com (and much much more) with Azure Active Directory” to a briefing titled “Defender-Pretender: When Windows Defender Updates Become a Security Risk.”
In addition, there is a talk called “Single Instruction Multiple Data Leaks in Cutting edge CPUs aka Downfall.” Better known as CVE-2022-40982, the flaw is a transient execution side-channel issue and impacts all processors based on Intel microarchitectures from Skylake through Ice Lake. Not to be left out, Apple and Android bugs have their own talks.
Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.33.0, 2023-08-14).
This story also appears in our public Newsletter. -
Getting Outlook to behave
PATCH WATCH
By Susan Bradley
When dealing with Outlook, there are some tricks for dealing with its annoyances.
A friend of mine was setting up a new computer and loaded up her applications. One of the major ones she relies on is Outlook, for her email and calendar. When she opened Outlook to view her calendar, it had frozen and wouldn’t open. What to do?
Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.06.0, 2023-02-06).
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Tame your tech: Office
OFFICE
By Susan Bradley
We all have a love/hate relationship with Microsoft Office.
Chances are, Word is not the first word processing program you started with. It’s the one that took over and became the de facto standard, dominating the market. (If you work in an attorney’s office, it’s possible you’re still using WordPerfect, because the company did excellent marketing to that segment.)
My first — and, quite frankly, still the easiest — word-processing program was pfs:Write. Back when Lotus 1-2-3 was our go-to spreadsheet, pfs:Write was our go-to word-processing program. But, alas, today’s article won’t wax poetic about an old piece of software. Instead, we’ll once again try to tame technology that wants to do things its way, not your way.
Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.50.0, 2022-12-12).
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How to safely migrate to a Microsoft 365 mailbox
MICROSOFT 365
By Peter Deegan
There’s an official way to migrate mailboxes to Microsoft 365 mailboxes (including Outlook.com) — but there’s a better, more prudent method I’ll explain in this article.
Most of Microsoft’s advice is for medium and large organizations, but there’s a more direct option for smaller orgs, families, or individuals — and it also leaves you with an offline backup.
I’ll focus on moving a free Gmail account to Outlook.com. You can use a very similar process to move small numbers of paid Google Workspace accounts to Microsoft 365 Business, or to migrate any mailbox, such as ISP-based email.
Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.45.0, 2022-11-07).
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Thunderbird: A worthy alternative to Microsoft Outlook
SOFTWARE
By Lance Whitney
If you find the Outlook email client too cumbersome or complicated, Thunderbird is a simpler yet robust email program worth trying.
I’ve used Microsoft Outlook as my desktop email client for many years. That’s partly because I come from a corporate IT background with a company that was a Microsoft shop. And it’s partly because I subscribe to Microsoft 365, so Outlook is part of the package and integrates with the other Office apps.
But that doesn’t mean I’m a huge fan of the program.
Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.34.0, 2022-08-22).
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Why some Outlooks will stop working with Microsoft services
MICROSOFT 365
By Peter Deegan
In a few weeks, some Outlook software will stop working with Microsoft’s online services, such as Microsoft 365.
If you thought that Microsoft products would always work with Microsoft’s own services, I have bad news. There’s a cutoff point. Microsoft is stopping some versions of Outlook for Windows from connecting to Microsoft hosted mailboxes.
Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.37.0 (2021-09-27).
This story also appears in the AskWoody Free Newsletter 18.37.F (2021-09-27). -
So many Outlooks — think you know them all?
MICROSOFT 365
By Peter Deegan
If you think Outlook is one thing, you’re wrong. It’s Microsoft’s fault – the Outlook brand is beyond confusing.
Years ago, Microsoft decided it would be “easy” to call all their email products “Outlook.” The result has been a mess of confusion and difficulty for everyone, including front-line ’softies. Microsoft doesn’t help by referring to “Outlook” without being specific about which software or service it is talking about.
Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.31.0 (2021-08-16).
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Friday night news dump: Microsoft says a compromised support agent’s credentials were used to hack into Outlook.com accounts earlier this year
From Tom Warren on The Verge:
Microsoft has started notifying some Outlook.com users that a hacker was able to access accounts for months earlier this year. The software giant discovered that a support agent’s credentials were compromised for its web mail service, allowing unauthorized access to some accounts between January 1st and March 28th, 2019. Microsoft says the hackers could have viewed account email addresses, folder names, and subject lines of emails, but not the content of emails or attachments.
And of course we’re only hearing about that this morning — two weeks after the hack stopped.
There’s a reason why Microsoft has PR people embedded throughout the organization. I’m just waiting for the first virus announcement with a fancy name and custom logo.
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Which is better, Outlook or G Suite?
Preston Gralla has a detailed comparison of Outlook and Gmail-Calendar-Contacts in Computerworld.
He digs into many nooks and crannies and comes to the conclusion:
If simplicity is your goal, choose Gmail. If, on the other hand, you and your team need every bell and whistle possible, you’ll want Outlook.
Which certainly matches my expectations.
I used Outlook from the very beginning – wrote books about Outlook 97, 98, 2000, 2003, 2007 – and finally gave up on using the big O during the days of Outlook 2007. I moved to Gmail, Google Calendar and Contacts around then, and haven’t looked back. I’m a simple kind of guy, of course.
Have you used both? (I mean, really used them?) What do you think?
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Outlook 2016 bug “No results when searching All Mailboxes” fixed
Got a note last night from reader KY saying that the old “Search All Mailboxes” bug has been fixed.
Microsoft says that the latest click-to-run version of Office 365 has the fix:
ISSUE
After updating Outlook or Office to version 16.0.8827.2062, searching using the All Mailboxes option shows no results.
STATUS: FIXED
The issue is fixed in Monthly Channel Version 1712 (Build 8827.2179). To get the latest update immediately, open Outlook and choose File > Office Account > Update Options > Update Now.
I wonder if one of the non-security Office 2016 patches this month also provides the fix. (There were three patches specifically for Office 2016 this month.) Darned if I can find any documentation about it, though.
KY confirms that his fix came through Click-to-Run.
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Update on Recent Issues in Outlook for Windows
Microsoft has updated its Fixes or Workarounds for recent issues in Outlook for Windows as of June 26, 2017
Non-security patches (fixes and enhancements) for Office are normally released on the first Tuesday of the month, which will be July 4. 2017. Security updates are issued on the second Tuesday.
UPDATE: Microsoft has updated the above “Fixes and Workarounds for recent issues in Outlook for Windows” page as of July 5, 2017. New Outlook updates are available.