Junk Offender: Microsoft Office 365

Junk offender: Microsoft Office 365

When I signed up for an Office 365 subscription, Microsoft promised “instant access to new features every month”. It turns out that translates into a near-constant stream of junk updates installed by stealth, adding features I don’t want.

The trouble with Office 365 updates is that Microsoft installs them behind the scenes. They don’t ask permission or even let you know they’re being installed. So, quite often I’ll start work in the morning, only to discover that an update has installed new features that I’ll probably never use, or has altered existing tools in such a way that I have to waste time working out how to adapt.

Worse is the fact that, as with their Windows equivalents, major Office 365 updates have the uncanny ability to disrupt my day-to-day computing just when I least have time to cope with them, forcing me to attempt fixes for the problems that they cause.

Among other changes, the latest 365 update foists a dramatic update to the Ribbon on its users – all the icons are completely different and there’s no way to switch back if you don’t like it. The update also managed to render my Office applications unstable to the point that opening any of them randomly crashed programs, causing a ‘0xc0000142’ error that only a reboot would resolve.

At the same time, my PC also developed other problems, hanging on Restart and Shut Down. In the end, the only fix was to perform an online repair, which effectively re-downloads and re-installs Office.

You can turn Office updates off, but this also disables vital security updates (see screenshot above). So, it looks like I’m stuck with Microsoft’s junk updates – at least until my 365 subscription runs out next year.