Pissed At Work - Microsoft Office

[unixfish]

Now that the company I work for uses Office 365, I am always pissed. Well, I have been for a while, but...

We get automatic updates. Yay. We get them often. Yay. Things are up to date. Yay.

However, every update wipes out the defaults I have set. You want single line spacing in a Word document? You have to go re-set it, and save it as a default. Then update margins and save them as a default. Turn rulers back on, save them as a default.

Then a week later, we get another update, and all my defaults are gone.

I don't know if this is the company I work for or Microsoft. Probably both. I hate them both, so plenty to go around.

This is like my Wife's laptop - every time she gets a Windows 11 default, all her settings to back to Microsoft defaults. Because they know better, right? They are all knowing and know what we want to do better than we do, right? She comes to me, and I have to help reset all of her settings. Every. Freakin'. Month.

[Long strings of expletives] I hate them so much. This is why my home PC is Linux Mint and I use Libre Office. Microsoft can just [long string of expletives].

 

[Despres]

I know you are looking to vent rather than for suggestions, but have you tried saving 'themes' in office? If you create a theme, you can save all those preferences, and if your default gets wiped, just select the saved theme and then select 'make this my default theme'. Those work pretty well for me because I work with multiple entities with different styles/brand standards, so I just create a theme for each company's branding rather than manually changing things each time.

 

[Buell]

As an IT manager, I couldn't agree more.

 

[Vegetable Man]

Now that the company I work for uses Office 365, I am always pissed. Well, I have been for a while, but...

We get automatic updates. Yay. We get them often. Yay. Things are up to date. Yay.

However, every update wipes out the defaults I have set. You want single line spacing in a Word document? You have to go re-set it, and save it as a default. Then update margins and save them as a default. Turn rulers back on, save them as a default.

Then a week later, we get another update, and all my defaults are gone.

I don't know if this is the company I work for or Microsoft. Probably both. I hate them both, so plenty to go around.

This is like my Wife's laptop - every time she gets a Windows 11 default, all her settings to back to Microsoft defaults. Because they know better, right? They are all knowing and know what we want to do better than we do, right? She comes to me, and I have to help reset all of her settings. Every. Freakin'. Month.

[Long strings of expletives] I hate them so much. This is why my home PC is Linux Mint and I use Libre Office. Microsoft can just [long string of expletives].

You could set everything the way you want it and then "save as template"?

It would be nice if MS just kept your defaults, but what are the odds that they actually fix that?

 

[Toto'sDad]

From your friends at Microsoft to you.

 

[Dostradamas]

My boss keeps trying to solve people problems with software.

"If it won't do that, get a new program!"

Technology is about a 50 / 50 for me at work, in my way half the time, actually does something helpful the other half.

 

[Nogoodnamesleft]

Like when Facebook would “update” and remove your security settings?

That’s not an update. It’s an exploit.

 

[unixfish]

You could set everything the way you want it and then "save as template"?

It would be nice if MS just kept your defaults, but what are the odds that they actually fix that?

Our company deletes those. This is also a big part of my frustration.

 

[unixfish]

I forgot the big one. I like a tall window without large background outside of the page I type in. We get the default one, really wide and short. I rearrange it to be tall and less narrow. I save this to normal.dotm. It works for the day.

The next time I log on, the company overlays that file, and I start over. Everyone hates this - but we just don't get a choice.

It's like someone in management works for another company and is finding ways to slow us down and collapse our company from the inside.

 

[Nogoodnamesleft]

I’ve worked in IT since 1994. My dislike for Microsoft and an industry that had multiple opportunities to wean itself off the Microsoft bottle has no measurable limit.

 

[Despres]

Our company deletes those. This is also a big part of my frustration.

Sounds like the company and MicroSoft are in cahoots to waste your time on meaningless tasks!

 

[unixfish]

I’ve worked in IT since 1994. My dislike for Microsoft and an industry that had multiple opportunities to wean itself off the Microsoft bottle has no measurable limit.

Linux is wonderful. Linux is my friend. Linux is easy. Linux is free. You can still buy support.

Sigh. Nobody seems to get that. My company tells me "But, if something goes wrong, there is nobody to sue!"

Sure, sue Microsoft. The EULA you agreed to prevents that. Good luck with that, [expletive].

 

[Nogoodnamesleft]

Linux is wonderful. Linux is my friend. Linux is easy. Linux is free. You can still buy support.

Sigh. Nobody seems to get that. My company tells me "But, if something goes wrong, there is nobody to sue!"

Sure, sue Microsoft. The EULA you agreed to prevents that. Good luck with that, [expletive].

I agree. And I see Bitwig is available for Linux, so that will be my next DAW if I move from the iPad.

 

[buster poser]

Man, that's annoying. I admin M365 a bit for macOS & PCs and we don't have this behavior. If there's an option to force-delete local preferences on updates, I've never encountered it in the console, but I'm sure it's possible via group policy. Maybe your company is enforcing something like that for unknown reasons.

Not-so-good workaround: My guess is your web-apps won't have that behavior, but you may not like those (Word & Excel are okay, but I still prefer the apps).

Nerdy workaround: Bash to periodically copy the prefs files to /home?

 

[imwjl]

Now that the company I work for uses Office 365, I am always pissed. Well, I have been for a while, but...

We get automatic updates. Yay. We get them often. Yay. Things are up to date. Yay.

However, every update wipes out the defaults I have set. You want single line spacing in a Word document? You have to go re-set it, and save it as a default. Then update margins and save them as a default. Turn rulers back on, save them as a default.

Then a week later, we get another update, and all my defaults are gone.

I don't know if this is the company I work for or Microsoft. Probably both. I hate them both, so plenty to go around.

This is like my Wife's laptop - every time she gets a Windows 11 default, all her settings to back to Microsoft defaults. Because they know better, right? They are all knowing and know what we want to do better than we do, right? She comes to me, and I have to help reset all of her settings. Every. Freakin'. Month.

[Long strings of expletives] I hate them so much. This is why my home PC is Linux Mint and I use Libre Office. Microsoft can just [long string of expletives].

That's one or both of a "RTFM" or daft IT staff problem but you are free to be pissed off and have product biases.

Saying you have regular updates has me assume current and a cloud able or enabled licensing. You can store your preferences in the cloud. If Windows you also have options for where your profiles are stored.

You are correct that Linux is wonderful but it's highly limited or impossible as an end point for some and especially in an enterprise.

 

[Nogoodnamesleft]

You are correct that Linux is wonderful but it's highly limited or impossible as an end point for some and especially in an enterprise.

I don’t know. I remember assistants to medical directors who could whip out an AP formatted 3 column paper with formulas and graphs using WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS. Nothing intuitive or WYSIWYG about it. And I’d highly suspect they had VCRs flashing 12:00 at home.

 

[ale.istotle]

My employer is on google workspace. Count your blessings.

 

[unixfish]

That's one or both of a "RTFM" or daft IT staff problem but you are free to be pissed off and have product biases.

Saying you have regular updates has me assume current and a cloud able or enabled licensing. You can store your preferences in the cloud. If Windows you also have options for where your profiles are stored.

You are correct that Linux is wonderful but it's highly limited or impossible as an end point for some and especially in an enterprise.

Yeah, we don't have rights to anything. They lock us down so hard that nobody can get anything done. Save to the cloud? Nope. All settings are local. Install is local. And group policies overlay anything we do to "improve workflow". We fear the cloud so much as a company that it is highly discouraged.

We recently implemented OneDrive. They moved our home directories one night and did not tell anyone. All my local scripts broke. Called the service desk, and they said "you should have gotten an Email". Nope. I read and process EVERY SINGLE EMAIL I RECEIVE. Over 100 a day. My inbox is less than one page. If they notified us, I would know.

I created a file for password updates - all the steps and domain and tool updates I need to do every quarter. They keep auto-deleting it since the name has the string "password" in it. No notice, just gone. I had to rename it QuarterlyUpdates.docx so I can keep it.

 

[Nogoodnamesleft]

Yeah, we don't have rights to anything. They lock us down so hard that nobody can get anything done. Save to the cloud? Nope. All settings are local. Install is local. And group policies overlay anything we do to "improve workflow". We fear the cloud so much as a company that it is highly discouraged.

We recently implemented OneDrive. They moved our home directories one night and did not tell anyone. All my local scripts broke. Called the service desk, and they said "you should have gotten an Email". Nope. I read and process EVERY SINGLE EMAIL I RECEIVE. Over 100 a day. My inbox is less than one page. If they notified us, I would know.

I created a file for password updates - all the steps and domain and tool updates I need to do every quarter. They keep auto-deleting it since the name has the string "password" in it. No notice, just gone. I had to rename it QuarterlyUpdates.docx so I can keep it.

We have similar draconian overlords who think nothing of updates middle of the day or applying policies so restrictive even as a developer or QA person they require a petition of signatures, signed in blood, to grant temporary rights to install tools on your own workstation.

 

[unixfish]

We have similar draconian overlords who think nothing of updates middle of the day or applying policies so restrictive even as a developer or QA person they require a petition of signatures, signed in blood, to grant temporary rights to install tools on your own workstation.

You have the ability to install tools on your workstation? Wow, must be nice.