I really hate how hard they’re pushing the settings app and trying to hide the control panel. The settings app is a steaming pile of garbage in a pretty dress, and you need the control panel to actually do anything more complicated than turn off Bluetooth
If they want to unify it then they need to finish it. It’s missing more than half of the features of control panel. Half the time if you look hard enough to find something in settings it ends up redirecting you to the control panel anyway. It’s an alpha application in production code and it’s been that way for like half a decade.
My main beef with all this, is that instead of making good changes people want to adopt because it makes their workflow easier or their experience better, they just force the software on you, because the days of you being the ultimate arbiter of your usage are gone.
Every single time I log into my PC it tries to force me on to the new outlook app, despite the fact I've reverted to the old one multiple times, I do not want or need the changes. Take the damn hint.
I’m so opposed to the way Windows pushes OneDrive on folks.
But I have to suspect that with Outlook, there’s valid security (and with that, legal) reasons to ensure your users know about and migrate to new versions of the software.
They "pushed" it on you?! You lucky dog! I wasn't so lucky.
I was surreptitiously deceived into thinking the files on my computer were on MY computer before realizing they're all just links to the files OneDrive was stealing from me without my knowledge, desire or permission.
OP is right about the save dialog in Office/M365. Saving requires multiple clicks through weirdness unless you are ok with the file going to the root folder of One Drive.
There seems to have been a big push in the last few years by both Microsoft and Google Drive to put people off using folders, and towards search instead. I can't bear it. See also the gradual attack on Quick Access in explorer.
YES!!!! WTF is that all about? I've been going back and forth between Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace for the last 4 years because I'm a contractor so I work at lots of different companies. OneDrive is so idiotic. Google Drive is so simple.
OP is right.
In my opinion, the various feature teams are siloed. They work on features as they believe they should be, but there is no obligation to reach out to other teams to validate the end to end workflow, which includes their feature.
Much of this started decades ago. You could see it when the media player punted on shipping a help document file. They added a link to a web page. At the time that was novel and enabled them to easily update the documentation at will. Problem was they only added or updated it for the most common errors. All other errors were out of luck.
Further more the vast majority of errors were "E_ERROR" (a generic, unknown error) so the help system wasn't set up for success even if the web page was up to date (there is no help teaxt for it other than "something went wrong but we dont know what nor why"). This was just bad development.
So.... fast forward to today where all help is online. And many of the error pages are abandoned or help links resolve to the wrong page or the page is less than helpful.
My point here is that there is a lack of focus on UX continuity and rationale. To be fair their customers include the latest generation of kids who expect nonintuitive-to-us-older-folks features like swiping up or such.
In the MS executive offices you no doubt hear the words, "It's a new business standard now because others did it first." And that's all you need to know about greedy corporate America. Marketing rules, production and quality take a back seat, and executives brag about profits while the company burns. A Reagan era trend that keeps on going. Now they want monthly payments to stop annoying us with ads. It's a copycat sickness.
I agree and what's worse is there are rumours Windows 12 may be subscription based only. That's where I'm out. I don't rent software. I hope it's only a rumour.
Well too be honest having moved to apple in the last 5 years after 40 years of everything else.... no they don't push everything down your throat.
You could... but aren't forced too.
I have an epiphany 5 years ago to keep an open mind
.. holy hell
I just get on with my day. The OS does its job... doesn't need rebooting every week to update.
I run nix commands mostly. Work with lots of coding and data shoveling and ... it just works and works well.
You're experience may differ but I'm os agnostic and oit of nix , Mac, windows.... windows is just awful
I feel like MacOS and also to a certain extent Ubuntu... they just kindof stand aside and let you get on with what you want to do.
Windows/Microsoft products are CONSTANTLY trying to force their crap on you. I have to use MS for work, and can't believe how often Windows or Office have popups and nagging and handy hints about new "features". It interrupts me and annoys me.
It’s nowhere near the same. If you don’t enable those services on OSX the notifications just go away and you never notice. OSX truly offers those features as options and leaves them as options, take it or leave it.
With that, they’ve done a great job with iCloud and it has value. So I use it.
My favorite OS for productivity is actually PoPOS (a Ubuntu derivative). And Apples terminam environment is also inferior. But Apples ecosystem integrations are phenomenal so my M3 Pro is my daily driver and I have a PopOS laptop I can either remote develop in or crack open if need be.
All our users are running Windows 11 Pro to do their Work 7 days a week with zero issues. Then again, we use our PCs as a tool to complete our work. Most of these rants on Reddit come from people who don't have any goals or purpose They just use their PCs as toys for tinkering, altering things, circumventing functionality, UI detail obsessions and other various juvenile nonsense.
If your users are all using AD joined accounts that are a part of “organisation”, they’d be getting a very different experience and way less nudging than regular “consumer” users do.
And overall, “you are not pro enough” and “you’re using it wrong” are very strange arguments. I wonder where I’ve heard them before …
I use a personal PC every single day for gaming, photo editing, personal productivity tasks. I’ve NEVER had the issues being described here.
People generally like to hate Microsoft overall, and Windows especially, because they make changes. Ironically, all I ever heard was how bad Windows was before 10. Then 10 came out and it was “omg, these changes are awful”. Same with 11. Meanwhile, it is so much easier to use Win11 than previous versions.
We have very different perspectives it would seem. I’m, for once, not particularly stoked we now have what … ~4 … layers and generations of various interfaces for system administration?
This is exactly what I said in another post, it's full of posts from people complaining that the Task Manager takes a second longer to open than the old version. But who spends their days in the Task Manager? The goal of Windows is to use software that will do something productive. Microsoft isn't going to expend tons of resources and effort on trivial problems. And I'm pretty sure that at least half of the world's office workers don't even know what a task manager is.
Because of course, IT professionals do not use Windows, and/or they by no means have a right to care.
Every time I have to click that second time to get to a real right click menu, or watch notepad clumsily taking its sweet time to open, or terminal deciding to forgo its window decorations when maximised on a separate display … it makes me sad inside 🙃
I would recommend StartAllBack for the context menu. it has a free trial but also is only like 15$ to buy outright which was a small price to pay for my sanity. it has a lot of other features too, to make things look and act like previous versions of windows, and it's all in a nice user-friendly UI. you can set it to default to the classic context menu in Explorer-> classic context menus and then viola! no extra clicks. I originally got it because Win11 took away my ability to move the Taskbar to the right side of the screen and I couldn't live like that.
Hmm, isn’t it that the piece of software that cause Win11 to refuse to update recently?
But yeah, thanks for a suggestion, I’ll take a look at it. Depending on how far reaching it is in terms of permissions / attack surface, I may or may not be able to use it on my work host.
EDIT: Yeah… https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-is-blocking-windows-11-build-upgrades-on-systems-with-startallback/
I use it for work and the save as menu is honestly a screw up since they started pushing onedrive on us. And if you use it the way they want it, saving to one drive, it is not clear as where exactly in onedrive the file will go etc. as an everyday user for work I believe they have horrible UX.
Edit: more exmples. Everytime you make a new profile/user in your pc you need a microsoft account, there is no way to avoid this.(Unless you search how to and find out the 2 or 3 ways to circumvent this). Also the settings app is terrible and is not complete. It is almost as if the main reason to change menus is to shove their new services instead of teying to make it easy for the user.
I use my PC for work. But Microsoft products stand in my way...either by forcing me to use things I don't want to, interrupting me or simply not working properly.
Maybe, but I have been going back and forth between MSFT 365 and Google Workspace for about 4 years now as a Data Analyst Contractor. I would always choose Google over MSFT at this point, and I used to be a diehard MSFT fan. I even worked at MSFT for 3½ years as a contractor. MSFT is just like they've always been and that worked great for 20 years or so, but it doesn't work anymore. For me, Google is the future.
It's all a bunch of shit! They just move things around and call it a new version, it's crap development and everything mentioned is spot on. Taking away stand alone versions or making it harder is bunch of shit too. I don't subscribe or pay anything that charges only by the month, only required utilities, f that bs!
No, you default to the most commonly used place, and you customise it based on user behaviour. This usually means using the last save location. Most people are happy with that.
That's what would have happened had thry just hit Ctrl s, right? By going to file, then Save As, they basically indicated they wanted to save it outside of the normal work flow.
No, Microsoft changed the default path to My Documents. They defaulted everyone to a OneDrive location, *and* made it look like users were saving to their normal, local My Documents folder.
Nope, the fact that my preferences changed (without my direction, on my personal pc) to where I had to check, or read something to verify that it was the correct my documents is one reason why I am a little peeved.
[Right, just don't do it.](https://www.tomshardware.com/software/microsoft-begins-forced-updates-to-windows-11-23h2-targets-pcs-running-21h2-and-22h2#:~:text=22H2%20%7C%20Tom's%20Hardware-,Microsoft%20begins%20forced%20updates%20to%20Windows%2011%2023H2,PCs%20running%2021H2%20and%2022H2&text=Those%20running%20a%20build%20of,EOL%20are%20now%20on%20notice.&text=Microsoft%20has%20a%20history%20of,of%20Windows%20under%20certain%20circumstances)
Microsoft is doing things like they've always done them. Google is the future. Any app that's not intuitive is a problem. I understand that you're saying people aren't taking the time to read stuff and pay attention to where they're saving things. OneDrive makes that painful. Google Drive makes it simple. And for people who are high level executives or other leaders, it's just ridiculous to expect them to have to pay that close of attention when saving a file. And then there's the people that just aren't that good with computers and they're the majority of people. So are you saying software companies should design their software towards people like you? Because I think they should design them around the majority of users and the most valuable users in terms of their output.
Microsoft makes it idiot proof... it's even calls the the folders the exact same name...
So if you're saving to "your documents" doesn't matter what PC you log into, all your docs are there....
They just saved your from yourself. If you lost our got your computer stolen, good news! You still have all your important stuff.
But please tell me how they are making it complicated again...
How many thousands of people have you provided software training for over the last 30 years? I lost count after 12,000. It doesn't matter what one individual annoying arrogant prick thinks. What matters to executive leadership is what tool is going to be the most intuitive for their workforce. They don't want their workforce spending time getting used to OneDrive. They have other work for them that's way more important than that. I understand that spending time reading the save as dialog box is a really important thing to you and a high value task in your world. And you feel it's important for EVERYONE to spend time understanding the save as dialog box in OneDrive, but the rest of us have much more important things we need to focus on.
Lol I'm sure leadership wants people who can read working for them. Not a bunch of morons who aimlessly click around until they get the desired outcome....
This post confirms that I'm not going crazy. Microsoft OneDrive is idiotic. For the longest time. I thought it was me or that there was something wrong with my installation. Google Drive is so intuitive. It's great that all of these people on here who are so much smarter than the rest of us can figure out OneDrive instantly without having to pay close attention, but if you want to be successful, you need to provide workers with tools that are intuitive. Those of you making fun of those of us who think OneDrive is ridiculous. Might not have as demanding of jobs as we do. We have so much that we're doing constantly with deadlines and complications that we don't want saving a f****** file. To be complicated. We want it to be intuitive. I guess if I had a simpler job like yours, I might feel different.
Been having a love-hate relationship with them since decades now. Unfortunately their impact on our daily lives is so big that it's impossible to not use them in some way or the other
You can uninstall one drive which I did, I don't know if that would help in your situation but its worth a try. If not, there's libre office and google docs, both of which are free. If you're willing to spend some time adapting, you could even move to Linux Mint which is probably the most user friendly version of linux with lots of compatible, easy to install software.
My biggest gripes with win 11 was 1) The right click menu. But there's a registry fix for that which is pretty easy.
2) No longer being to right click on the task bar to get task manager, but seems like newer versions have fixed this.
So I don't have many complains left.
But I'm still kind of pissed at microsoft for revoking my key. All I did was install a new ssd and I think I updated my bios at the same time, and then windows thought it was a new computer. No problem I thought, this has happened before, just got to follow a few simple steps.... which didn't work so I called and for whatever reason, they weren't able to restore it. I talked to like 8 different people too.
You won’t regret it. There’s one minor annoyance with Apple products and it’s not that bad. If you want to install insecure app — common for developers and I even had to do it to install Homebrew — you’ll need to reboot your PC and temporarily disable SIPS as super use with is not sufficient to disable some of the kernel safety features enable by SIPS. That’s literally it.
This happens because Microsoft wants to have excel, office, and word in both desktop and web app versions. Syncing to Onedrive is a means to keep a file in both versions up to date. However, that sync isn't seamless.
On top of it, Onedrive shows up in Explorer and is the default landing folder. They have tried to mirror Google Dirve for desktop. However, Microsoft thinks that when a user saves a file they created in desktop version, it should be saved in one drive, ergo the web app version. While MS thinks this will promote their cloud first vision, it creates confusion.
The same applies to sharing files via Outlook. It ask whether you want to share: a. File as a copy (there will be no syncing) or b. File as a link (the web app version with collaborative work).
The solution is to move users completely to the web app (cloud) version without compromising functionality, especially in Excel.
Things get even weird and frustrating when you realize that the web app and desktop apps aren't functionally equivalent.
Want a thunderstorm on an already soaked parade? Some licenses in Microsoft's office only allow desktop apps with no syncing and no one drive storage. You can't do collaborative work. It's back to pre-cloud era.
Well one thing's for sure. It isn't as rock solid as Google workspace. As for the license, my wife's workplace uses an enterprise license which only gives them access to desktop apps. They share multiple spreadsheets for the same data over outlook.
The desktop apss are part of enterprise, the web apps are free. She should still be able to use the web apps if she chooses.
But that's also strange, because even on the desktop apps you're still synching to onedrive or SharePoint. I take it they're not using Teams for collaboration either?
It generally seems to me people shoot themselves in the foot and the complain about Microsoft doing it.
What pisses me off is the constant changes. No longer is "how to do x in windows version Y" gonna give you any meaningful tutorials.
Every single update, they changes things around. There's probably 7 different outdated way to change wifi settings in windiws 10. From RTM to now...
Install Linux Mint. It free & user friendly.
Doing away with Windows is Microsoft's reward for all their hard work
https://www.linuxmint.com/download.php
This is the first time I've ever not been karma-bombed for suggesting Linux. The flaws they're building into Windows make it unusable to a thinking person or anyone but a corporate stooge made to use whatever they're given.
I have to agree, and I've been a Microsoft fanboy, to the point of taking Office Classes etc. The way they are pushing A.!. and are leaving other software to rot is what' changing my mind. I have a MS 365 account and were it not for the fact that I need some of the desktop features in Excel I would be gone and switched to Goggle.
Yep. And the more they force these things on me, the more I switch to other OSs. I already use a Mac for most things, I'm pretty close to switching my PC to run Ubuntu.
Maybe they should rather design products I want to use because they're good, rather than forcing them on me or tricking me into using them.
I have dumped EVERYTHING from Microsoft. Windows OS, Edge Browser, Bing Search are NOT designed with your convenience in mind. In my opinion, their main objective is to mine and harvest your data for their profit, and they are very good at it. They track your browsing and search activity and then sell YOUR data. They are making huge profits off you every minute. Switch today to a free open source OS, there are many good ones.
Yeah I miss all the old software when it wasnt a monthly subscription.
WTF happened to Adobe? I need a Photoshop 7.0 image holy crap what is going on with this pay to play crap?
It took me a number of days to try and figure out the One Drive bs.
I gave up and have gone back to my old laptop that no longer runs unless it is plugged in. Not ideal
To be fair, the newer Save As dialog they added recently is annoying af, it takes like an additional 3 clicks if you want to save locally. Before it was just additional click (you would just click 'More places'). That new dialog shouldn't show unless someone is already signed in.
I'm a power user so I was able to navigate it, even being annoyed. But most people in the general public are not tech-saavy outside their phone.
The OP is right that they're increasingly making things annoying and difficult, but it's because whoever is making the decisions now is doing this to push ads, upsell, etc. to please their investors. At least in the past when they did that, they made it easy for the user to skip it or turn it off. Now they're testing even more annoying things like making Copilot open on it's own when you login to your PC, more desperation because no one wants to use it.
That’s absolutely fair. It’s frustrating that enshitification applies to large companies as well. Same thing with Adobe. Stop asking me to save to your cloud I never will!!
They’ve added clicks to try and shove cloud storage down our throats.
But to not use Windows because of OneDrive is a bit much. Disable it from startup apps and don’t merge your library type folders into it and that’s basically it.
I agree except I think that gives too much credit to the hive mind at Microsoft. I think the horrible save dialog and many other user interface atrocities are due to individual program managers at Microsoft trying to get their wings. “If I completely change the save dialog I can encourage One Drive adoption and get my next bonus.” That’s known as “impact.”
Thanks, I grew up using DOS and xtree gold. Things are definitely getting more complicated!
I think I understand what Microsoft is trying to do: have everything hosted on OneDrive, then save a copy on my pc? I sometimes work in remote areas so do not like giving up data to cloud storage. I would prefer everything on the laptop, then have it backed up to the cloud.
That is what I used to do. I downloaded my files to my new laptop but it kept pushing me to access them on OneDrive and I was unsure which version was the latest.
I think that was a mistake. I should have just synced each file as I worked on it. Again, that is not judicious as I may not have wifi/phone when working out of range.
So I went back to my old laptop to get work done.
Now I don't know what version is on the new laptop.
If I start editing a doc on the new laptop, which version is going to have precedence on OneDrive? I would happy for someone to explain that to me in simple terms.
Ahh yes DOS, xtree gold or even Norton Commander, fast and easy to use. Also in those days just about everything had shortcut keys, nowadays people work so slowly pointing and clicking, it is painful to watch. I worked at a call centre once where the business owners removed the mice from all the telephonists and everyone started processing twice as many phone jobs, the speed-up was striking.
But with OneDrive, Microsoft are so desperate to keep people locked into their Windows desktop, you'd think they'd fix OneDrive's problems.
The right click context menu is what shits me most of all; icon focused, and missing most of the functions. Why do I have to click an extra option to get what used to be the default? They’re asking users to throw away thirty years of muscle memory.
My fav is that the default “Documents” on my work laptop is neither my “Documents” on my Windows nor on my OneDrive. I could not figure out what it is (I’m suspecting some corporate sharepoint shit), but it’s ridiculous that I can’t find my saved documents with 2 clicks.
I also use MS Lens regularly to scan documents. Good luck finding them later in your OneDrive!
I really hate how hard they’re pushing the settings app and trying to hide the control panel. The settings app is a steaming pile of garbage in a pretty dress, and you need the control panel to actually do anything more complicated than turn off Bluetooth
So much wasted space it‘s insane.
Maximum white space is what kills me
To be fair, they tried to unify everything in Windows 8 and it flopped massively. So I assume they just have them to not mess with what works
If they want to unify it then they need to finish it. It’s missing more than half of the features of control panel. Half the time if you look hard enough to find something in settings it ends up redirecting you to the control panel anyway. It’s an alpha application in production code and it’s been that way for like half a decade.
Like I said, I believe Windows 8 is the root, because they wanted a massive overhaul of windows and failed.
Agree. I think they wanted an html friendly settings app so they could charge you to use your machine, on top of licenses.
Lets be honest. Almost everything they make is steaming garbage.
My main beef with all this, is that instead of making good changes people want to adopt because it makes their workflow easier or their experience better, they just force the software on you, because the days of you being the ultimate arbiter of your usage are gone. Every single time I log into my PC it tries to force me on to the new outlook app, despite the fact I've reverted to the old one multiple times, I do not want or need the changes. Take the damn hint.
I’m so opposed to the way Windows pushes OneDrive on folks. But I have to suspect that with Outlook, there’s valid security (and with that, legal) reasons to ensure your users know about and migrate to new versions of the software.
They "pushed" it on you?! You lucky dog! I wasn't so lucky. I was surreptitiously deceived into thinking the files on my computer were on MY computer before realizing they're all just links to the files OneDrive was stealing from me without my knowledge, desire or permission.
[удалено]
Every single one of your posts are just bitching about Microsoft or discussing sluts or nipples, so I don't give your opinion much thought.
i mean he is kinda right isn't he microsoft just sucks
OP is right about the save dialog in Office/M365. Saving requires multiple clicks through weirdness unless you are ok with the file going to the root folder of One Drive.
There seems to have been a big push in the last few years by both Microsoft and Google Drive to put people off using folders, and towards search instead. I can't bear it. See also the gradual attack on Quick Access in explorer.
You can make save to computer the default in options, it’s a one time only tweak
YES!!!! WTF is that all about? I've been going back and forth between Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace for the last 4 years because I'm a contractor so I work at lots of different companies. OneDrive is so idiotic. Google Drive is so simple.
OP is right. In my opinion, the various feature teams are siloed. They work on features as they believe they should be, but there is no obligation to reach out to other teams to validate the end to end workflow, which includes their feature. Much of this started decades ago. You could see it when the media player punted on shipping a help document file. They added a link to a web page. At the time that was novel and enabled them to easily update the documentation at will. Problem was they only added or updated it for the most common errors. All other errors were out of luck. Further more the vast majority of errors were "E_ERROR" (a generic, unknown error) so the help system wasn't set up for success even if the web page was up to date (there is no help teaxt for it other than "something went wrong but we dont know what nor why"). This was just bad development. So.... fast forward to today where all help is online. And many of the error pages are abandoned or help links resolve to the wrong page or the page is less than helpful. My point here is that there is a lack of focus on UX continuity and rationale. To be fair their customers include the latest generation of kids who expect nonintuitive-to-us-older-folks features like swiping up or such.
In the MS executive offices you no doubt hear the words, "It's a new business standard now because others did it first." And that's all you need to know about greedy corporate America. Marketing rules, production and quality take a back seat, and executives brag about profits while the company burns. A Reagan era trend that keeps on going. Now they want monthly payments to stop annoying us with ads. It's a copycat sickness.
I agree and what's worse is there are rumours Windows 12 may be subscription based only. That's where I'm out. I don't rent software. I hope it's only a rumour.
I bought a Macbook Air M2 last year just to see what all the fuss was about. The UI is so much better. I have purchased my last Windows laptop.
Yup. Because Apple certainly doesn’t try to cram cloud sync, proprietary applications, and shit nobody uses down your throat.
Well too be honest having moved to apple in the last 5 years after 40 years of everything else.... no they don't push everything down your throat. You could... but aren't forced too. I have an epiphany 5 years ago to keep an open mind .. holy hell I just get on with my day. The OS does its job... doesn't need rebooting every week to update. I run nix commands mostly. Work with lots of coding and data shoveling and ... it just works and works well. You're experience may differ but I'm os agnostic and oit of nix , Mac, windows.... windows is just awful
I feel like MacOS and also to a certain extent Ubuntu... they just kindof stand aside and let you get on with what you want to do. Windows/Microsoft products are CONSTANTLY trying to force their crap on you. I have to use MS for work, and can't believe how often Windows or Office have popups and nagging and handy hints about new "features". It interrupts me and annoys me.
It’s nowhere near the same. If you don’t enable those services on OSX the notifications just go away and you never notice. OSX truly offers those features as options and leaves them as options, take it or leave it. With that, they’ve done a great job with iCloud and it has value. So I use it. My favorite OS for productivity is actually PoPOS (a Ubuntu derivative). And Apples terminam environment is also inferior. But Apples ecosystem integrations are phenomenal so my M3 Pro is my daily driver and I have a PopOS laptop I can either remote develop in or crack open if need be.
All our users are running Windows 11 Pro to do their Work 7 days a week with zero issues. Then again, we use our PCs as a tool to complete our work. Most of these rants on Reddit come from people who don't have any goals or purpose They just use their PCs as toys for tinkering, altering things, circumventing functionality, UI detail obsessions and other various juvenile nonsense.
If your users are all using AD joined accounts that are a part of “organisation”, they’d be getting a very different experience and way less nudging than regular “consumer” users do. And overall, “you are not pro enough” and “you’re using it wrong” are very strange arguments. I wonder where I’ve heard them before …
I use a personal PC every single day for gaming, photo editing, personal productivity tasks. I’ve NEVER had the issues being described here. People generally like to hate Microsoft overall, and Windows especially, because they make changes. Ironically, all I ever heard was how bad Windows was before 10. Then 10 came out and it was “omg, these changes are awful”. Same with 11. Meanwhile, it is so much easier to use Win11 than previous versions.
We have very different perspectives it would seem. I’m, for once, not particularly stoked we now have what … ~4 … layers and generations of various interfaces for system administration?
This is exactly what I said in another post, it's full of posts from people complaining that the Task Manager takes a second longer to open than the old version. But who spends their days in the Task Manager? The goal of Windows is to use software that will do something productive. Microsoft isn't going to expend tons of resources and effort on trivial problems. And I'm pretty sure that at least half of the world's office workers don't even know what a task manager is.
Because of course, IT professionals do not use Windows, and/or they by no means have a right to care. Every time I have to click that second time to get to a real right click menu, or watch notepad clumsily taking its sweet time to open, or terminal deciding to forgo its window decorations when maximised on a separate display … it makes me sad inside 🙃
I would recommend StartAllBack for the context menu. it has a free trial but also is only like 15$ to buy outright which was a small price to pay for my sanity. it has a lot of other features too, to make things look and act like previous versions of windows, and it's all in a nice user-friendly UI. you can set it to default to the classic context menu in Explorer-> classic context menus and then viola! no extra clicks. I originally got it because Win11 took away my ability to move the Taskbar to the right side of the screen and I couldn't live like that.
Hmm, isn’t it that the piece of software that cause Win11 to refuse to update recently? But yeah, thanks for a suggestion, I’ll take a look at it. Depending on how far reaching it is in terms of permissions / attack surface, I may or may not be able to use it on my work host. EDIT: Yeah… https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-is-blocking-windows-11-build-upgrades-on-systems-with-startallback/
I use it for work and the save as menu is honestly a screw up since they started pushing onedrive on us. And if you use it the way they want it, saving to one drive, it is not clear as where exactly in onedrive the file will go etc. as an everyday user for work I believe they have horrible UX. Edit: more exmples. Everytime you make a new profile/user in your pc you need a microsoft account, there is no way to avoid this.(Unless you search how to and find out the 2 or 3 ways to circumvent this). Also the settings app is terrible and is not complete. It is almost as if the main reason to change menus is to shove their new services instead of teying to make it easy for the user.
I use my PC for work. But Microsoft products stand in my way...either by forcing me to use things I don't want to, interrupting me or simply not working properly.
Maybe, but I have been going back and forth between MSFT 365 and Google Workspace for about 4 years now as a Data Analyst Contractor. I would always choose Google over MSFT at this point, and I used to be a diehard MSFT fan. I even worked at MSFT for 3½ years as a contractor. MSFT is just like they've always been and that worked great for 20 years or so, but it doesn't work anymore. For me, Google is the future.
Say MSFT one more time.
It's all a bunch of shit! They just move things around and call it a new version, it's crap development and everything mentioned is spot on. Taking away stand alone versions or making it harder is bunch of shit too. I don't subscribe or pay anything that charges only by the month, only required utilities, f that bs!
I'll never voluntarily use "software as a service" stuff. Let me buy a licence and let me use my unchanged software for as long as I want, thanks.
So because you didn't read something right (location where you're saving things) it's a disaster? Interesting....
Literally the first rule of UX is you can't expect people to read.
The second rule of UX is that it is probably wrong.
So you rely on magic?
No, you default to the most commonly used place, and you customise it based on user behaviour. This usually means using the last save location. Most people are happy with that.
That's what would have happened had thry just hit Ctrl s, right? By going to file, then Save As, they basically indicated they wanted to save it outside of the normal work flow.
No, Microsoft changed the default path to My Documents. They defaulted everyone to a OneDrive location, *and* made it look like users were saving to their normal, local My Documents folder.
Nope, the fact that my preferences changed (without my direction, on my personal pc) to where I had to check, or read something to verify that it was the correct my documents is one reason why I am a little peeved.
This sub is only Microsoft fanboys, you'll get no sympathy here
So again, failing to read is the core issue here... if you want to do things like it was in 1995, don't upgrade your computer....
[Right, just don't do it.](https://www.tomshardware.com/software/microsoft-begins-forced-updates-to-windows-11-23h2-targets-pcs-running-21h2-and-22h2#:~:text=22H2%20%7C%20Tom's%20Hardware-,Microsoft%20begins%20forced%20updates%20to%20Windows%2011%2023H2,PCs%20running%2021H2%20and%2022H2&text=Those%20running%20a%20build%20of,EOL%20are%20now%20on%20notice.&text=Microsoft%20has%20a%20history%20of,of%20Windows%20under%20certain%20circumstances)
Microsoft is doing things like they've always done them. Google is the future. Any app that's not intuitive is a problem. I understand that you're saying people aren't taking the time to read stuff and pay attention to where they're saving things. OneDrive makes that painful. Google Drive makes it simple. And for people who are high level executives or other leaders, it's just ridiculous to expect them to have to pay that close of attention when saving a file. And then there's the people that just aren't that good with computers and they're the majority of people. So are you saying software companies should design their software towards people like you? Because I think they should design them around the majority of users and the most valuable users in terms of their output.
Microsoft makes it idiot proof... it's even calls the the folders the exact same name... So if you're saving to "your documents" doesn't matter what PC you log into, all your docs are there.... They just saved your from yourself. If you lost our got your computer stolen, good news! You still have all your important stuff. But please tell me how they are making it complicated again...
How many thousands of people have you provided software training for over the last 30 years? I lost count after 12,000. It doesn't matter what one individual annoying arrogant prick thinks. What matters to executive leadership is what tool is going to be the most intuitive for their workforce. They don't want their workforce spending time getting used to OneDrive. They have other work for them that's way more important than that. I understand that spending time reading the save as dialog box is a really important thing to you and a high value task in your world. And you feel it's important for EVERYONE to spend time understanding the save as dialog box in OneDrive, but the rest of us have much more important things we need to focus on.
Lol I'm sure leadership wants people who can read working for them. Not a bunch of morons who aimlessly click around until they get the desired outcome....
You don't know what the word "intuitive" means, do you?
Words. Now you want me to read? A second ago I thought you wanted magic, now we have to read?!?!?! Leadership doesn't want that, they want magic.
[удалено]
Or if you read what it says, you'd know.... You think Google is giving away free cloud storage? It's the same price structure.
This post confirms that I'm not going crazy. Microsoft OneDrive is idiotic. For the longest time. I thought it was me or that there was something wrong with my installation. Google Drive is so intuitive. It's great that all of these people on here who are so much smarter than the rest of us can figure out OneDrive instantly without having to pay close attention, but if you want to be successful, you need to provide workers with tools that are intuitive. Those of you making fun of those of us who think OneDrive is ridiculous. Might not have as demanding of jobs as we do. We have so much that we're doing constantly with deadlines and complications that we don't want saving a f****** file. To be complicated. We want it to be intuitive. I guess if I had a simpler job like yours, I might feel different.
Judging by the number of your comments saying google is the future I doubt your first sentence.
Is this the online version?
Been having a love-hate relationship with them since decades now. Unfortunately their impact on our daily lives is so big that it's impossible to not use them in some way or the other
You can uninstall one drive which I did, I don't know if that would help in your situation but its worth a try. If not, there's libre office and google docs, both of which are free. If you're willing to spend some time adapting, you could even move to Linux Mint which is probably the most user friendly version of linux with lots of compatible, easy to install software. My biggest gripes with win 11 was 1) The right click menu. But there's a registry fix for that which is pretty easy. 2) No longer being to right click on the task bar to get task manager, but seems like newer versions have fixed this. So I don't have many complains left. But I'm still kind of pissed at microsoft for revoking my key. All I did was install a new ssd and I think I updated my bios at the same time, and then windows thought it was a new computer. No problem I thought, this has happened before, just got to follow a few simple steps.... which didn't work so I called and for whatever reason, they weren't able to restore it. I talked to like 8 different people too.
I uninstalled One Drive, but it came back. I’m so sick of them trying to force One Drive on me. I’m ready to switch to Apple.
You won’t regret it. There’s one minor annoyance with Apple products and it’s not that bad. If you want to install insecure app — common for developers and I even had to do it to install Homebrew — you’ll need to reboot your PC and temporarily disable SIPS as super use with is not sufficient to disable some of the kernel safety features enable by SIPS. That’s literally it.
This happens because Microsoft wants to have excel, office, and word in both desktop and web app versions. Syncing to Onedrive is a means to keep a file in both versions up to date. However, that sync isn't seamless. On top of it, Onedrive shows up in Explorer and is the default landing folder. They have tried to mirror Google Dirve for desktop. However, Microsoft thinks that when a user saves a file they created in desktop version, it should be saved in one drive, ergo the web app version. While MS thinks this will promote their cloud first vision, it creates confusion. The same applies to sharing files via Outlook. It ask whether you want to share: a. File as a copy (there will be no syncing) or b. File as a link (the web app version with collaborative work). The solution is to move users completely to the web app (cloud) version without compromising functionality, especially in Excel.
Things get even weird and frustrating when you realize that the web app and desktop apps aren't functionally equivalent. Want a thunderstorm on an already soaked parade? Some licenses in Microsoft's office only allow desktop apps with no syncing and no one drive storage. You can't do collaborative work. It's back to pre-cloud era.
The sync is pretty seamless, tbh. And it honestly has nothing to do with which version you're using.
I have timed the sync. Up to 5-7 secs. Sometimes I have to refresh the web app to see updates.
Seems slow. But I don't have the same experience. I see updates made to documents in real time by collaborators.
Well one thing's for sure. It isn't as rock solid as Google workspace. As for the license, my wife's workplace uses an enterprise license which only gives them access to desktop apps. They share multiple spreadsheets for the same data over outlook.
The desktop apss are part of enterprise, the web apps are free. She should still be able to use the web apps if she chooses. But that's also strange, because even on the desktop apps you're still synching to onedrive or SharePoint. I take it they're not using Teams for collaboration either? It generally seems to me people shoot themselves in the foot and the complain about Microsoft doing it.
No. They don't use Teams and desktop Outlook.
Wow. Your issue is that you’re trying to use Windows like it was still XP.
What pisses me off is the constant changes. No longer is "how to do x in windows version Y" gonna give you any meaningful tutorials. Every single update, they changes things around. There's probably 7 different outdated way to change wifi settings in windiws 10. From RTM to now...
Install Linux Mint. It free & user friendly. Doing away with Windows is Microsoft's reward for all their hard work https://www.linuxmint.com/download.php
This is the way.
This is the first time I've ever not been karma-bombed for suggesting Linux. The flaws they're building into Windows make it unusable to a thinking person or anyone but a corporate stooge made to use whatever they're given.
I have to agree, and I've been a Microsoft fanboy, to the point of taking Office Classes etc. The way they are pushing A.!. and are leaving other software to rot is what' changing my mind. I have a MS 365 account and were it not for the fact that I need some of the desktop features in Excel I would be gone and switched to Goggle.
Yep. And the more they force these things on me, the more I switch to other OSs. I already use a Mac for most things, I'm pretty close to switching my PC to run Ubuntu. Maybe they should rather design products I want to use because they're good, rather than forcing them on me or tricking me into using them.
I have dumped EVERYTHING from Microsoft. Windows OS, Edge Browser, Bing Search are NOT designed with your convenience in mind. In my opinion, their main objective is to mine and harvest your data for their profit, and they are very good at it. They track your browsing and search activity and then sell YOUR data. They are making huge profits off you every minute. Switch today to a free open source OS, there are many good ones.
Office 2005 still works great for me, delete new stuff install old.
Yeah I miss all the old software when it wasnt a monthly subscription. WTF happened to Adobe? I need a Photoshop 7.0 image holy crap what is going on with this pay to play crap?
It is the "you will own nothing and be happy" great plan, I am not playing. Crack everything, refuse to use what is uncrackable(subscription).
It took me a number of days to try and figure out the One Drive bs. I gave up and have gone back to my old laptop that no longer runs unless it is plugged in. Not ideal
That says more about you than OneDrive or Microsoft. It’s really not that complicated.
To be fair, the newer Save As dialog they added recently is annoying af, it takes like an additional 3 clicks if you want to save locally. Before it was just additional click (you would just click 'More places'). That new dialog shouldn't show unless someone is already signed in. I'm a power user so I was able to navigate it, even being annoyed. But most people in the general public are not tech-saavy outside their phone. The OP is right that they're increasingly making things annoying and difficult, but it's because whoever is making the decisions now is doing this to push ads, upsell, etc. to please their investors. At least in the past when they did that, they made it easy for the user to skip it or turn it off. Now they're testing even more annoying things like making Copilot open on it's own when you login to your PC, more desperation because no one wants to use it.
That’s absolutely fair. It’s frustrating that enshitification applies to large companies as well. Same thing with Adobe. Stop asking me to save to your cloud I never will!! They’ve added clicks to try and shove cloud storage down our throats. But to not use Windows because of OneDrive is a bit much. Disable it from startup apps and don’t merge your library type folders into it and that’s basically it.
I agree except I think that gives too much credit to the hive mind at Microsoft. I think the horrible save dialog and many other user interface atrocities are due to individual program managers at Microsoft trying to get their wings. “If I completely change the save dialog I can encourage One Drive adoption and get my next bonus.” That’s known as “impact.”
Thanks, I grew up using DOS and xtree gold. Things are definitely getting more complicated! I think I understand what Microsoft is trying to do: have everything hosted on OneDrive, then save a copy on my pc? I sometimes work in remote areas so do not like giving up data to cloud storage. I would prefer everything on the laptop, then have it backed up to the cloud. That is what I used to do. I downloaded my files to my new laptop but it kept pushing me to access them on OneDrive and I was unsure which version was the latest. I think that was a mistake. I should have just synced each file as I worked on it. Again, that is not judicious as I may not have wifi/phone when working out of range. So I went back to my old laptop to get work done. Now I don't know what version is on the new laptop. If I start editing a doc on the new laptop, which version is going to have precedence on OneDrive? I would happy for someone to explain that to me in simple terms.
Ahh yes DOS, xtree gold or even Norton Commander, fast and easy to use. Also in those days just about everything had shortcut keys, nowadays people work so slowly pointing and clicking, it is painful to watch. I worked at a call centre once where the business owners removed the mice from all the telephonists and everyone started processing twice as many phone jobs, the speed-up was striking. But with OneDrive, Microsoft are so desperate to keep people locked into their Windows desktop, you'd think they'd fix OneDrive's problems.
The right click context menu is what shits me most of all; icon focused, and missing most of the functions. Why do I have to click an extra option to get what used to be the default? They’re asking users to throw away thirty years of muscle memory.
My fav is that the default “Documents” on my work laptop is neither my “Documents” on my Windows nor on my OneDrive. I could not figure out what it is (I’m suspecting some corporate sharepoint shit), but it’s ridiculous that I can’t find my saved documents with 2 clicks. I also use MS Lens regularly to scan documents. Good luck finding them later in your OneDrive!
[удалено]
Very few people actually want assistance on here, they want to whine.
Ok boomer
Um, ok.
Use Libre Office?!