Newsletter Archives

• New fonts and templates, but with traps

  Posted on September 4, 2023 at 02:45 CDT by Peter Deegan • Comment in the Forums

  

  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.

  Microsoft 365 Aptos, Cloud Fonts, Excel, fonts, Microsoft Office, Newsletters, outlook, PowerPoint, Styles, Word

• Vulnerabilities everywhere

  Posted on August 14, 2023 at 02:45 CDT by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  

  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.

  Patch Watch Canon, CVE-2022-40982, CVE-2023-21709, HVEC, Linux, Mint, Newsletters, Office 2013, outlook, Patch Lady Posts, Ubuntu

• Getting Outlook to behave

  Posted on February 6, 2023 at 02:41 CST by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  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).

  Patch Watch Newsletters, outlook, Patch Lady Posts

• Tame your tech: Office

  Posted on December 12, 2022 at 02:42 CST by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  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).

  Office Newsletters, Office, outlook, Patch Lady Posts

• How to safely migrate to a Microsoft 365 mailbox

  Posted on November 7, 2022 at 02:43 CST by Peter Deegan • Comment in the Forums

  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).

  Microsoft 365 Gmail, Microsoft 365, Newsletters, outlook, Outlook.com

• Thunderbird: A worthy alternative to Microsoft Outlook

  Posted on August 22, 2022 at 02:44 CDT by Lance Whitney • Comment in the Forums

  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).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Software AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Mozilla, outlook, Software, Thunderbird

• Why some Outlooks will stop working with Microsoft services

  Posted on September 27, 2021 at 02:44 CDT by Peter Deegan • Comment in the Forums

  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).

  AskWoody FREE Newsletter, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Microsoft 365 AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Microsoft 365, outlook

• So many Outlooks — think you know them all?

  Posted on August 16, 2021 at 02:43 CDT by Peter Deegan • Comment in the Forums

  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).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Microsoft 365 AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Microsoft 365, Office 365, outlook

• Friday night news dump: Microsoft says a compromised support agent’s credentials were used to hack into Outlook.com accounts earlier this year

  Posted on April 13, 2019 at 11:51 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  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.

  Office News compromise, outlook

• Which is better, Outlook or G Suite?

  Posted on April 4, 2019 at 08:08 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  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?

  Office News Gmail, outlook

• Outlook 2016 bug “No results when searching All Mailboxes” fixed

  Posted on February 7, 2018 at 08:52 CST by woody • Comment in the Forums

  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.

  Uncategorized outlook, Search All Mailboxes

• Update on Recent Issues in Outlook for Windows

  Posted on June 27, 2017 at 15:25 CDT by PKCano • Comment in the Forums

  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.

  Office Patches/Security Microsoft Outlook problems, outlook
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