Newsletter Archives

• Blocking telemetry in Office 365

  Posted on November 12, 2020 at 08:51 CST by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  From https://twitter.com/milenkowski/status/1326865844215934979

  A hint for Office 365 Telemetry: Setting the undocumented (not officially supported) regvalue HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\office\common\clienttelemetry\DisableTelemetry to 1 (DWORD) disables the Office Telemetry module. This reduces the output of telemetry data.

  He also links to his report on the impact of the Office privacy settings (the diagnostic data levels) on the output of diagnostic data by Office.

  ERNW GmbH was tasked by the German Federal Office for Information Security (orig., ger., Bundesamt fur
  Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI)) with analyzing the output of telemetry data from Microsoft
  Office and provide recommendations on how to deactivate or minimize it (see Section 1.1 and Section 1.2).

  Office Patch Lady Posts

• Microsoft at it again with pushing Office?

  Posted on November 11, 2020 at 22:06 CST by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  Channeling my inner Woody here:  Is Microsoft pushing out Office Progressive Web Apps again?  Günter Born posts that users have seen “PWAs were distributed via Windows Update under Windows 10 version 20H2 and replaced the icons of a Microsoft Office 2019 Premium Plus.”

  Have you seen this?  Post in the comments if you have.

   

   

  Office Patch Lady Posts

• A compatibility problem between Office 2010 and the Win10 version 2004 update?

  Posted on October 20, 2020 at 18:47 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Just got this report from BM:

  Just thought I would let you know that the 2004 update was a complete mess for me. It was pushed, I didn’t choose it. I run a Legion Y920-17IKB laptop with a licensed version of office 2010 (because I prefer it to 365). The update completely removed every office file I have created since October 2019. No files were saved in the update restore folder and restoring back to the previous version of windows didn’t recover the files. It also changed all the recents in those applications to files that were again, back from 2019.

  This is by far the worst update experience I’ve had, sharing it with you incase you can use it as a cautionary tale for your readers. Microsoft advice is to always back-up to the cloud. God I hate their updates so much! Just when you thought 2020 had thrown all it could at you…

  Anybody else seeing that?
  Office, Windows 10 Releases Office 2010, Win10 2004

• It’s the end of the line for Office 2010

  Posted on October 18, 2020 at 21:05 CDT by Tracey Capen • Comment in the Forums

  PATCH WATCH

  By Susan Bradley

  Microsoft is closing the book on two business workhorses: Office 2010 and Exchange 2010.

  From a productivity-app perspective, 2010 was an excellent vintage for all Windows users from individuals to small businesses to the Enterprise. Whether it was managing email, building massive spreadsheets, or creating complex documents, Office and Exchange gave us an excellent foundation. But as of October 13, Microsoft dropped all support for both platforms.

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 17.41.0 (2020-10-19).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Office, Patch Watch AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Office updates, Win7 vulnerabilities, Windows Updates

• Welcome to Google Workspace

  Posted on October 6, 2020 at 10:54 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  I’ve almost completely switched over to Google G-Suite.

  Except, as of today, it’s known as Google Workspace.

  Google just announced the name change, gussied it up with a bunch of marketing gobbledygook, and a “new user experience.”

  Except, well, it mostly looks like the old user experience. Which I like just fine, thankyouverymuch. If you want to “dynamically create and collaborate on a document with guests in a Chat room,” I wish you well. But if you just want to knock out a doc or sheet, or even a slide deck, Google’s just fine, the same as it’s always been.

  Remember, Google doesn’t snoop on your G-Suite stuff:

  The data that G Suite organizations and users put into our systems is theirs, and we do not scan it for advertisements nor sell it to third parties.

  They scan emails and files for viruses and the like, but “Google does not collect, scan or use data in G Suite Core Services for advertising purposes.” It’s all in black and white, although the official policy pages haven’t been updated with the new “Google Workspace” name.

  Office Google Workspace

• Patch Lady – just a kind reminder about Office 2010

  Posted on September 13, 2020 at 00:36 CDT by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  In the consumer patching survey, quite a few of you indicated that you still were running Office 2010.  Just a kind reminder that as of October of 2020 that platform will no longer receive security updates.  Given HOW MUCH malware, phishing and what not is coming through email, given HOW MUCH malware, phishing and what not are using macros to enter systems, given HOW MANY times Office is being patched for remote code execution attacks that you will no longer be protected for after October 13, 2020, just a kind reminder to take the time to review your options.

  Many of you do not like subscription versions of Office.  I’d be reviewing alternative platforms such as LibreOffice.  Bottom line you have one month and the final updates for Office 2010 will be released.

  Access 2010
  Dynamics GP 2010
  Excel 2010
  Excel Mobile 2010
  Exchange Server 2010 (all editions)
  FAST Search Server 2010 (all editions)
  Groove Server 2010
  Office 2010 (all editions)
  OneNote 2010
  PowerPoint 2010
  Project 2010
  Publisher 2010
  Search Server 2010
  System Center Data Protection Manager 2010
  System Center Essentials 2010
  Visio 2010 (all editions)
  Word 2010
  Windows Embedded Standard 7
  Office 2016 for Mac (all editions)
  Excel 2016 for Mac
  Outlook 2016 for Mac
  PowerPoint 2016 for Mac
  Word 2016 for Mac

  Office Patch Lady Posts

• Patch Lady – what is Excel spill?

  Posted on September 11, 2020 at 00:07 CDT by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  So today on two different spreadsheets at the office I experienced “Spill”

  It’s hard to describe Spill.

  I’m sure to someone, somewhere this works.  But in my case I was doing an @sum function and all of a sudden I got a series of entries.  In the case of a coworker she was trying to “+” something and got this #SPILL error.

  Dearest, sweetest Microsoft…. just give me a nice quiet boring Excel and stop introducing things we don’t need and in my case, in an unexpected location that I didn’t ask for and feels more like an introduced bug.  Mind you I’m on the enterprise channel so it appears that Spill is now in wide distribution in Excel.

  Bottom line if you get this Spill error, it’s not just you, and you may have to clear out some cells to get your Spreadsheet back to normal.

  Office Patch Lady Posts

• Outlook 2019 – recent update makes it impossible for an admin to uncheck “Always ask before opening this type of file”

  Posted on August 26, 2020 at 11:46 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  This in from BW:

  Until the June Outlook 2019 updates, I’ve always been able to uncheck “Always ask before opening this type of file” for various extensions by starting Outlook as administrator. It’s always been necessary after MS Office updates but at least it worked. Now it doesn’t. Remains greyed out even when running as admin. Really annoying since I know what I’m doing and don’t need the extra warning. Plus I open attachments all the time. It’s especially annoying when it’s an attachment in an email that I’ve saved and need to go back to often. Note that it also doesn’t work if you’ve, say, saved an Excel spreadsheet or Word document directly in an outlook folder, not as an attachment.

  I know there used to be registry settings for this. I no longer have those and could look them up online but given this latest change not sure even that would work.

  Anybody out there seeing the same problem? Got a solution?

  Office, Office Patches/Security June 2020 Black Tuesday
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