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Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Well that was a fun morning - technology and tears

As usual I logged on to the computer early in the morning and it started up - but wait - all Office software isn't working. What the heck?

An eternity on the phone with a very nice man from Dell's help desk and the eventual solution was to uninstall Office and reinstall it. Now it works. But what about the future?

I have resisted shifting everything over to google docs but am rethinking that position.

What do you use to ensure you won't lose all of your emails, contacts, documents, etc.? If you switched to google docs how did you approach moving and converting everything? What do/don't you like about using it?

Help.

7 comments:

  1. I have a network drive at home (hard drive) that backs up everything automatically. Well, it did have to be set up once. It has lasted about 3 years so far. My previous portable hard drives didn't last long at all. Had you been using the same version of Office for a long time?

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    1. Office 2013 was installed in late July when I bought the new computer - so no, not long. The help desk had no idea what happened but now I have a Microsoft Security Essentials important update pending and am nervous to install it LOL.

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  2. Honestly, I use both, because they both have pluses and minuses. Google is super convenient, and free, but it's in the Clouds, so I need WiFi to use it. When traveling, I prefer to do our budget tracking from my hard drive, so as not to be completely reliant on WiFi, and thus use Microsoft Office.

    One nice thing about Google is the sharing capability. I share my Google calendar with my family, and no longer use Outlook as a result.

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    Replies
    1. Hmm, I'll have to think about using both. It is having everything stop working that is unsettling since my last computer's hard drive died in July.

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  3. You can back everything up on an external hard drive. Also if you used a free email account with Yahoo or Gmail you wouldn't have to worry about your computer. It would always be there on the web and you could access your email anywhere. Google docs might be a solution but I find it difficult to use. I am thinking that even if your computer crashed and you had to get a new computer, they can usually move everything over to the new computer so it isn't really lost.

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    Replies
    1. I also find google docs rather clunky but it is always there regardless of what you are using to access the internet. I do back things up but the "I can't get to anything" in the meantime is so frustrating. I think I need to deal with my email and contacts first by seeing how I can store them on my provider. Not how I want to spend my time. Sigh.

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    2. I sympathize. I hate it when things go wrong with my computer.

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