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Outlook: this time, switching from Live Mail to Outlook has been fairly painless, with a couple of annoyances. Big, pointless annoyances.
1) Dear Microsoft, in every browser on the planet, "Refresh" is F5. In Live Mail (one of your own apps, if you remember - produced by "cutting down" Outlook Express back in the days when you killed it), "Send / Receive" is also F5. This is sensible, useful. CONSISTENT. So what is it in Outlook?
F9.
What so very, very useful function does F5 do that it couldn't be used? "Update a list of contact group members."
WTE?
Can I find out how to change it? No ... it looks like that's not an option at all ...
2) When you give me a list of columns I can display, and the titles are all in CamelCase, please display them as CamelCase on my display as columns INSTEAD OF SHOUTING THEM AT ME.
3) When you give me a list of columns I can display, and give it a heading "Show these columns in this order" and let me move items up and down, don't ignore that I put "Flag status" right at the top and show it at the right hand end of the display! I want that on the left for an ![Elephant | [mastadon]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/elephant.gif) ing reason!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
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Oh, and if anyone knows how to stop every single message it displays taking an extra line to display "<This item contains active content that cannot be displayed. Open the item to read its contents.>" then please let me know - I'd love the display space back ... 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
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Have you tried View ⇒ Current View ⇒ Message Preview ⇒ Off?
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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YAY! That did it! 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
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gmail, and call it a day? 
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Griff's problem is with Outlook, aka the desktop email client. It can connect to gmail, but the problem will remain the same, wherever the mail is coming from.
Surely you're not suggesting a web interface for email as an alternative, right? Especially gmail's...
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of course. I love gmail. I use it all the time and have been for years.
I also use Outlook at work exclusively and Outlook sucks.
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Google proudly announced gmail back in the day as email "re-invented"...with their own spin on it. That's what I've never gotten used to.
To say nothing of the fact that it's being run by a company whose very existence is all about profiling users. I feel rather strongly that the company showing me ads shouldn't be allowed to scrutinize my mail and determine what I discuss and with whom.
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Microsoft profiles users too; they all do.
To think one is less evil than the other, is silly.
Cheers.
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Agreed, but the important difference here is that without its profiling business, there's no Google.
In Microsoft's case, the ad business its profiling is based upon amounts to a rather small hill of beans.
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Not to keep this debate going any longer, but Google does have real, usable software too, you know that right? profiling or no profiling, they are a software company, just like Microsoft, albeit, most of their software is free to use, but it is software that works well, none the less.
BTW, I am not a Google fanboi, and I don't align with them politically and I detest a lot of their methods, but some of their software is just damn good.
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Slacker007 wrote: they are a software company, just like Microsoft, albeit, most of their software is free to use
That's exactly what most people believe. Their software is free, nobody pays for it, yet they manage to keep the company afloat.
Google's an ad company. That's what supports their free software and all their other expenses. Not the other way around.
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4: Ctrl + F. WTF??? (Unless it has been changed since 2010 version.)
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You. Are. ing. Kidding. Me. 
No, it hasn't changed. At least CTRL+N does what you expect ...
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
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Considering what Ctrl+F does, I expect Ctrl+N to do something like reboot the computer.  
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... and bought Office 2019.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry - but Live Mail / LibreOffice just wasn't cutting it any more, as show by the "two hour email" debacle recently when nothing ing worked to produce a simple formatted email, and the more I tried, the more frustrated I got.
Live Mail I can excuse: it's a free, basic product and it does free, basic stuff really well. But LibreOffice Writer faffing with formatting every time I did anything just was the final straw: I'm fed up with every update destroying my Task Bar file history, I'm fed up with UI-Breaking changes that never get reflected in the documentation. I'm fed up with "rock star programmers" who can't be assed to fix bugs, but add a feature that works for their exact need, and breaks something else. In short, I no longer believe that the OpenSource model works for large projects.
So, it's back to Office ...
First impressions aren't good. Open Word and you get an understandable messagebox:
Microsoft Word isn't your default program for viewing and editing documents.
Do you want to select the files types that Word should open? That's good - instead of grabbing everything it can sort-of cope with and annoying the heck out of me later, it wants to give the the option. "Yes".
To change your default apps, go to Settings > Apps > Default Apps .
"OK"
Nothing happens, it doesn't even try to open it for you ...
So you open StartButton ... Settings ... Apps ... Default Apps, and ... nothing there directly lists Word documents (or spreadsheets, or ...) , again.
Best I can come up with is "Choose default apps by file type" which for a "normal user" is probably pretty scary when it eventually appears, especially as MS has been hiding file extensions since Win7 and most users have probably never seen one, much less knows what they are for ... even I'm not sure about some of 'em!
That's not a good start: "You need to do this; now p*ss off and do it because I'm not going to help you, and gawd help you if you get it wrong". Is it only me that remembers a dialog with a "I can handle these, which do you want to you open automatically for you?" list being shown, so you could select the important ones?
So I decide that for the moment, it can have DOC and DOCX only, and scroll down to them.
They are both already assigned to Word.
So the whole ing message was a load of b*ll*cks and it did it without bl**dy asking! 
Microsoft, that's worse than doing nothing - because that's telling me "we're pretending to care about your system integrity, but we just screwed you over in the background and lied about it."
This experience had better get better, Microsoft, you're on thin ice allready...
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
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This has nothing to do with Word or MSOffice, but the new insane mapping of file types with their local corresponding applications.
The people at Microsoft who came up with that BS have probably never used a computer in their life - To me, this is definitely one of my top ten PITA of windows 10.
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did you buy 2019 or buy the sub? (heard they were intending to kill off the one-time buy).
actually if you have a few people using it the 5 machines sub (even if not the same physical household) is not too bad.
Edit: Oh be careful, msoffice loves to default to saving EVERYTHING on one drivel
pestilence [ pes-tl-uh ns ] noun
1. a deadly or virulent epidemic disease. especially bubonic plague.
2. something that is considered harmful, destructive, or evil.
Synonyms: pest, plague, CCP
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I bought 2019 - I'm not a fan of subscription software models.
I'm the only user - Herself has no idea how to even turn on the printer, much less create a spreadsheet.
And I'm pretty sure I'll slap Office silly to remind it that my NAS is where stuff goes very shortly ... 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
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The sub is even better than that - each of the 5 people can use Office and each can be signed on to up to 5 different devices; I've got it on my laptop, my desktop, my Surface Pro and my iPad Pro, it's installed on my wife's laptop as user #2, and I still have 3 more shares to hand out. I bought it figuring the other 3 would be my kids, but they all prefer other packages, so my dad, a brother and a sister-in-law are going to get them instead.
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I'm just trying LibreOffice, your post is not encouraging.
I consider the equation editor of LibreOffice far better thant the MS one.
Excel looks better then Calc, but no issues with the latter, for the moment.
Quote: I no longer believe that the OpenSource model works for large projects.
There's gcc, you know.
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It is good - especially for the price ... but just get used to ignoring updates, and you should be fine. Calc is excellent (Excel has always been better overall, but with niggles).
It's just the "accumulation of bruises" I've built up with LibreOffice that has driven me from it to a "paid for solution", in the same way that GIMP just isn't as good as PaintShop Pro.
I think the problem is a lack of coordination, of overall strategy - not than this is something MS is good at providing either ...
Come back AmiPro! There was nothing to forgive! (Apart from your habit of crashing when auto-saving my work, that is - that was unforgivable.)
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
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This box that I'm on now, bought as a refurb, has Libre. It's a little different than the MS Word they standardize on at the office but it works with their files (and, when so set, vise-versa).
Sure, it has a few things that annoy (and surprise). Some of the font's don't quite space right in Calc; putting 1/4 into a cell, formatted as a date, gives Jan 4 #### (current year). Works every day . . . except 3/4 . Which reformat's to the single-char 3/4. Just discovered: if I push ESC it formats properly.
On the other hand, Office Outlook keeps taking a nap whilst composing, of various lengths on most days - as it spins its little wheel - often long enough where one gives up and restarts. It does know how to format 3/4 to a date when appropriate.
Now - for the price - I'm willing to be hassled by Libre more than by Office.
As for a remote subscription - what if the Internet's down? Notepad++, I suppose.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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