October 2024 Office non-Security updates have been released

Office non-Security updates have been released Tuesday, October 1, 2024. They are not included in the DEFCON-4 approval for the September 2024 patches. Unless you have a specific need to install them, you should wait until Susan Bradley (Patch Lady) approves them and any problems have been reported.

Remember, Susan’s patching sequence and recommendations are based on a business environment that has IT support and may have time constraints on the updating process. Consumer patching should be more cautious due to limited technical and mechanical resources. The latter is the reason for the AskWoody DEFCON system.

Office 2016
Update for Microsoft Project 2016 (KB5002638)

Office 2016 reached  End of Mainstream Support on October 13, 2020. EOS for Office 2016 is October 14, 2025.

Updates are for the .msi version (perpetual). Office 365 and C2R are not included.

Security updates for all supported versions of Microsoft Office are released on the second Tuesday of the month (Patch Tuesday).

So your identity has been stolen? Again?

ON SECURITY

By Susan Bradley

Not a day goes by that I don’t receive some sort of notification that my name, address, email address, social-security number, credit card, or — well, you get the idea — has been stolen.

So what, if anything, should you do to ensure your identity is safe? Should you subscribe to a dark Web monitoring service? Sign up for credit monitoring, which is typically offered when such an event occurs?

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.40.0, 2024-09-30).
This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

Perturbed by porch pirates? Catch them by using tech.

PUBLIC DEFENDER

By Brian Livingston

With our craze for same-day deliveries, package theft has soared; it cost online shoppers $13 billion in 2023 in the United States alone, according to a Capital One Shopping report.

That’s 119 million stolen packages in the past year, the contents of which averaged $112.30 per parcel. One in seven Americans lost packages in this way, studies show.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.40.0, 2024-09-30).

The best PowerToys for working with text and files

WINDOWS 11

By Mary Branscombe

A lot of the handy little extras in Microsoft PowerToys make life easier for managing files and coaxing text into the format you want.

The clipboard for copying and pasting between applications has been around as long as Windows with few improvements. The basic clipboard manager introduced in Windows 10 (the October 2018 update) has far fewer features than third-party tools like 1Clipboard or (my favorite) ClipMate, which can strip complex formatting and special characters, change case, or combine multiple clips.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.40.0, 2024-09-30).

Redaction made easy for screen shots and PDFs

WINDOWS 11

By Peter Deegan

Both Windows and Mac have tools to remove (redact) details from screenshots and PDFs before sharing. As usual, there are some hidden traps that I’ll help you avoid.

My recent article on screenshots got a lot of forum comments, with some folks asking for more help with redaction tools. Given the slightest encouragement, I’m willing to dive in.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.40.0, 2024-09-30).

Understanding Qualcomm Snapdragon X

SILICON

By Will Fastie

Qualcomm is not accustomed to speaking directly to consumers, making technical details difficult to find.

Nevertheless, Qualcomm is now anxious to capture the hearts and minds of end users because its newest generation of processor, the Snapdragon X, is finding its way into many Copilot+ PCs.

Here are a few technical details to help you through this year’s holiday buying season.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.40.0, 2024-09-30).

Don’t forget to reboot

The other day I was trying to search for an app on my computer and the search ability wouldn’t work. Now I have already done the registry entry to disable web searching from the search box, but this was just flat out search not working at all. Rebooted and all was well.

Another person in the office had an issue the other day with a PDF software keeping a file open and not releasing it. Rebooted his PC and all was well.

Once upon a time we would often set up scripts or stored task sequences to reboot a server to ensure that there were not memory leaks. While I no longer do that, a good reboot will still clear out misbehaving software.

It clears out the memory including temporary data, reinitializes drivers and hardware devices and clears memory. So, don’t forget to reboot.

A note – my heart goes out to anyone impacted by Hurricane Helene.  Such images of destruction and lots of people needing help. It goes without saying that I’m sure scams surrounding the events will be coming into our inboxes soon. Only donate to reputable organizations.

MS-DEFCON 4: Dual-boot computers now safe to patch

By Susan Bradley

In the August updates, Microsoft introduced a bug that impacted Windows users who dual-booted into Windows and Linux.

At first it was thought the bug had not been fixed in the September updates, but upon further investigation, I learned that it had been addressed. Because it is now fixed, I find no reason to delay updates further and am therefore lowering the MS-DEFCON level to 4.

Anyone can read the full MS-DEFCON Alert (21.39.1, 2024-09-24).