Category Archives: Microsoft

Adding a New Mailbox to Outlook

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We needed to add a new mailbox in Outlook and we asked Microsoft in late 2021 “How to add a new mailbox in Outlook”. Microsoft replied:

  1. To add another mailbox, launch “Microsoft Outlook 2016”
  2. Select the “File” tab >
  3. Select “Info tab” > “Account Settings”
  4. In “Account Settings”, select your current mailbox and click “change”
  5. Select “More Settings”
  6. Select the “Advanced” tab.
  7. Select “Add”
  8. In the “Add mailbox” field, type names, or browse for mailboxes.

What does “Microsoft Outlook 2016” have to do with this? And why go through all this? In fact it was very simple.

Yet Another Outlook Misfire

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We had spent several hours drafting a difficult four-page email document to an important executive. Then POOF! Outlook deleted it. To make things worse, Outlook sent us a message that there is a bug. Instead of sending such a message, why doesn’t Microsoft fix their bug? Apparently, they have known it since May 11. 

Microsoft Randomly Force-Feeds Ads to Windows Users

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Using Microsoft software sometimes is its own punishment. Worse, the punishment occurs randomly. We may have been working along happily enough, but suddenly the software shows a picture (with a promotional comment about one of its products, e.g. its Edge browser) and demands a password. Oh, we think, this is the new way. This way continues for a while, but then it flips back to the previous no-password/no-ad.

Transferring iPhone Photos & Videos

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In December 2020, Apple gave us many challenges when downloading photos from our iPhones to computers. Then Microsoft decided to add another level of frustration, by making it impossible to locate images that were downloaded from Apple on Windows machines. We reached out to Microsoft Support before Christmas, and we’re not surprised that the information they gave us was useless. It’s a Christmas Miracle that our card was finished in 2020!

We hope that you had an easier time transferring your photos and videos this year. However, it would be great if you could share any problems you might have had with us.

Happy New Year!

Why Does Your Car’s Battery Run Down?

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Because of CoronaVirus, many people don’t drive very frequently. And AAA is answering a lot of calls from members who are faced with a car that cannot be started because the battery is dead. And experts counsel drivers to drive 20-30 miles at highway speed periodically to top up the charge. But even in normal times, there are a lot of things that could cause your battery to lose so much charge that you can’t start it.

Broadband Infrastructure Upgrade Needed

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The need for sheltering at home has forced people to do their jobs as well as other activities (e.g., shopping) from home. And even the people living in sparsely-populated areas need the speed and volume of broadband. We were aghast not long ago when the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission Ajit Pai initially voted against upgrading to broadband. He has now changed his mind, saying “Broadband is critical in modern American life. Especially when it comes to innovation, the Internet has leveled the playing field.” Not surprisingly, the bureaucracy of the federal government is the villain.

Old Misleading Facebook Posts Replaced by New Ones about the Coronavirus

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This isn’t the first time that Facebook has been involved in important political machinations. But this time the people were deathly sick, and were being misled as to the nature of the cause of it and guided to take useless medications. Fortunately, guardian NewsGuardTech detected this misinformation and publicized it. Curiously, this situation has provided Mark Zuckerberg an opportunity to be the good guy because he took thoughtful actions early.

Microsoft Needs to Fix Outlook

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Microsoft dominates the market for productivity software, with its suite that includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. We have been using these tools for many years, and have found them to be well-crafted and free from errors … except Outlook. The following three examples have caused us considerable pain.

First is the matter of duplicate emails. We frequently receive two identical emails, sent a few minutes apart. This is better than receiving none at all, but it wastes our time, and makes a mockery of its putative “productivity” positioning.

Second is its “Quick Print” feature, which simply doesn’t work. Again, it is not the end of the world, but is inexcusable from a company with massive resources and hundreds of software engineers.

Third is its unilaterally creating of new-and-unwanted mailboxes. This caused us considerable pain, because an incoming email from an important new client was incorrectly stuck in this new mailbox that was out of sight because it was below the normal viewing range.

Microsoft Goof of the Month: NSA Discovers Major Security Flaw in Windows 10

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In our earlier days we wrote the software. We, or one or more colleagues, tested it in a variety of ways to make sure that it did what we thought it should do. As time passed the software became more complicated, and the penalties of mistakes increased, so the testing had to become more complicated. In addition, an increasing number of malevolent hackers emerged, necessitating increasingly draconian measures to key them at bay. Even then, the size and complexity of code these days make it very difficult to cover all the possibilities. Fortunately there is a government body, the US National Security Agency, that was doing its mission appropriately.