• Patch Lady – Office retail flipping to 365?

    Posted on September 17, 2020 at 20:56 CDT by • Comment in the Forums

    Got this in the mail the other day

    Susan –

    Since you are the undisputed Queen of Microsoft update patches, so I wanted to share my story with you. I haven’t ever run into an update like this.

    My office computer – a Dell XPS desktop running Win10 has Microsoft Office 2016 installed. This is a stand alone set up in my home office. No network, no Exchange server. Just about the simplest set up possible.

    In August, I ran the update to Office. Afterward, I opened Outlook and was amazed at the extensive design changes. New icons, fonts, spacing, and features like the search bar had been moved. Most curious was that when starting Outlook, the splash screen said Outlook 365. I noticed similar cosmetic changes in Excel and Word.

    I thought it curious but I was very busy with some projects so I adapted and moved on. This week, I was surprised to see that all the changes disappeared! My icons, fonts etc reverted to the pre-update appearance. All the prior mentions of “365” are gone.

    I did a quick google for problems related to the update and nothing I saw mentioned temporary conversion to 365 as a feature or flaw. My computer seems to run fine and I am happier with the older design but that was just a weird sequence of events. I guess Microsoft giveth and Microsoft taketh away!

    Then also received this email

    Also, just now when I went to open a Word document I noticed it says “Office 365”.  I don’t ever remember seeing that before and I definitely don’t have the online subscription.  I bought both Word and Excel as stand alone programs two years ago and now I also notice that the screens for Word and Excel look different including the appearance of the icons.  Microsoft couldn’t have just changed my programs to subscription only programs with the Win 10 update could they?  I am so annoyed because the icons look different and I have to be sure what each on is now to avoid making a mistake.

    These are two credible reports I received that retail versions of Office got an update that caused them to get 365 “branding” as well as design changes… and then in September they got their original branding back.  Okay Microsoft… what were you up to?

    Office Patches/Security
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