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Texting to a group with Android/Windows 11 is a total FAILURE for Microsoft. The texts, especially if you include some sort of link, goes to a artificially created account (NOT your group), and never makes it to the group. I’m about 80% successful in posting messages. I wish they would have put more effort into making this work. Sad Microsoft’s standards have fallen so low…

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Charlie, rc primak

From the security people I have spoken with, the problem was not in the initial testing. The original code had information left in for testing that would have compromised their whole product (think security key, password, or the like).

When that data was discovered, they very quickly removed it and then pushed it. It was supposedly at this time it was not checked. This emergency cover-my-a$$ move by the team could be what caused this mess.

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Myst, Cybertooth, b, rbailin

Microsoft didn’t let the programmers write their documentation (as far as I can tell). They use qualified technical writers. Most of the in-program help (<F1>) I’ve seen is well written, nicely illustrated, complete, and fairly simple to follow. So, good job on that MS.

I knew how to get to the zip format for Excel, but never looked for the other formats. I must say you did a great job explaining the file storage structure. Thanks!!!

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Mary Branscombe

Not only Quicken, but QuickBooks has switched to a subscription plan. It seems that ALL of their service prices have more than TRIPLED in the last three years. I used to buy QuickBooks Desktop every three or so years. As you mentioned in your article, Will, one update would do as the improvements from year-to-year were minimal. Starting a few years back, you are now FORCED to upgrade every year. And the price of my QuickBooks went from about $250 for the new version to about $650 PER FRIGGIN’ YEAR!

On top of that, if you used their payroll services, they tripled the prices on that. Fortunately, there were plenty of competitors, and it was easy to switch away from Intuit for those services. I’m in the process of finding another accounting program so I can hang up on Intuit forever.

Anything designed by committee is going to be full of compromises. And, can anyone think of a government program that worked? Administrations change. Politicians will use this to punish enemies, as previously stated. There has to be a solution that doesn’t compromise one’s identity, is secure, and is easily implemented.

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rc primak, johnf, Cybertooth, Mr. Austin

Nice write-up on Fred. I had been a LangaList subscriber for many years, and followed Fred to this site on his first retirement. Glad you’re still writing, Fred. I’m a big fan and enjoy your columns. Hoping you have many more years of input into this site!

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Will Fastie

Bad news (sorry!) The link you gave for SyncToy on the WayBack site returns a message saying the WayBack Machine has not archived that url. I was able to search the site to find a version 2.1, but I don’t know if that was the last release…

You can EASILY fix the autocorrect for HSA/HAS. Click File, Options, Proofing. Click the Autocorrect Options… button. Type HSA in the box and delete the correction.

That’s not all Autocorrect is good for, you know… Put in three letters, like CPN and enter your cell phone number. Any time you type CPN<space>, it will replace it with your cell phone number. Very useful.

Ditto here… in fact, the only version number is the first one. All of the other three are 0’s. Could it be because I’m running MalwareBytes along with Windows Defender???

article);…

Fred, you could be behind on this item. While it was shut down for a while, the Microsoft Partner subscriptions were made available again this past year. For two years, I was not able to renew my subscription, but last April, I did so successfully. Is the partner site different than the TechNet subscription??

nothing long nor wrong… it’s a function and you have to put code to call it. i like simplicity of inline code. it’s a personal choice (and I don’t see a paul above, but both are equally suitable).

Agreed, but its far simpler code even if you have to transpose your date format that some of the other suggestions. Subtracting one from the first day of the next month makes the system do the math rather than relying on long, complicated code.

I use something like this which picks the first day of the next month and subtracts 1 from it.

wDate = ’12/13/2009′ ‘ define date

wEOM = datevalue(month(wDate)+1 & “/01/” & year(wDate)) – 1

you have to trap for period 12 because the date function does not understand period 13 and assumes you’ve started using European date convention. So add:

if month(wDate) = 12 then
wEOM = datevalue(“12/31/” & year(wDate))
else
wEOM = datevalue(month(wDate)+1 & “/01/” & year(wDate)) – 1
end if