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It may be the Irresistible Urge for Programmers to Tinker (Software Africa News - September 2022). Trying to make your computer program more helpful can be counterproductive in practice.
Here are some examples:
The Microsoft Outlook Attachment menu. When you write an email in Outlook, a handy “paper clip” tool on the toolbar lets you attach a file. This used to take you into an Explorer window to locate the file. No more! Now it produces a menu with the names of previous files you have used. If the file you want is not there, or if you want to find several files, you now have to take an extra step and click on the item at the bottom of the menu.
Hiding the ribbon in Microsoft Word & Excel: There is a helpful little drop-down arrow at the right-hand end of the ribbon. In earlier versions of these programs, clicking this hid the ribbon if it was visible,. If the ribbon was already hidden, that button would bring it back. A simple one-click operation! Not anymore! Now it produces a drop-down list of several options. Extra, completely unnecessary, work.
File Open/Save in Word & Excel. You used to be able to click on File > Open to get an Explorer window to locate the file. No more! Now, File > Open takes you through three more steps to reach the Explorer window. File > Save is similar. To add insult to injury, if you type a file name and then save it somewhere other than where the program recommends, you lose that typing.
Of course, telling Microsoft is a waste of time: They routinely ignore feedback.
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From time to time, someone may ask you for the Disk ID (Volume Serial Number) of your computer’s hard drive or a USB flash drive. Here is how to get it:
Hold the Windows key ˙ in and press R (or right-click the Start button and click Run).
In the Run dialog box, type CMD and press Enter or click OK.
The DOS Command window will open.
At the prompt, type VOL and the drive letter followed by a colon. Press Enter:
Bonus tip: You can get several volume IDs at the same time: e.g. type VOL C: D: G: Enter
When done, click the "X" at top right to close the Run dialog.
We are happy to announce another Autodesk price decrease as of this month. Our price list has been suitably adjusted and we have revised all open quotes. Might this be a good time to renew your AutoCAD early? We can't guarantee how long the strength of the Rand will last. Our beloved President could do something silly at any moment (like approving the remaining clauses of the Bela Bill), and crash the Rand.
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When you drag data to a new location in Excel, you might get this message: "There's already data here, Do you want to replace it?"
This is of course another of Microsoft's attempts to be helpful. Thereby complicating our lives, as described in the editorial. It would be better to have an option right there in that dialog box to turn the option off! But of course that would be too helpful
At least Excel does give us the option to disable this feature. It's just a devil to find amongst all the other features one may want to enable or disable. Here is how to do it:
Click File > Options. In the Excel Options dialog, click the Advanced tab on the left.
In the right-hand panel, near the top, is the group Editing Options. A little lower is the checkbox "Enable fill handle and drag-and-drop". Under that, unselect "Alert before overwriting cells". Click OK and the pesky warning will go away.
If you accidentally overwrite something, you can always use Ctrl+Z to undo it.
Next time: A new topic!
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New software! Microsoft Copper Lot!
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