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This is not the saga about buying a new computer, about which more later, maybe. (Short story: Microcenter.) (... Well, I said it was short!) No, today's story (which should also not be hugely long) is ... Microsoft. All about Microsoft. And their attempt to force each and every person to use Office 365, whether they want to or not.
So. New computer is mostly set up. After a couple days of getting things going, I realize that I forgot to pay my November bills. So I do what I usually do, go in to the vendor in question in a browser, pay the bill, get the receipt, and ... then realize that I forgot to install Office 2019, so Onenote may not be here. But! I remember reading that Windows 10 has Onenote as part of the OS, so maybe things will work!
... Yeah, not so much. There's a version of Office 365 on the system, but the one thing I absolutely Do Not Want is to have my bills online, and while the system recognizes that these are Onenote notebooks, it won't let me open them without establishing a Microsoft account.
But! I remember that Onenote 2016 is free, and available, and still supported for a number of years, so I can do that instead! So I download and install Onenote 2016, and the system rather understandably complains about some conflicts. So I uninstall the bits of Office 365, and also the bits of Office 2019 that seem to also have come with the system (weird, that) along with OneDrive, restart, reinstall Onenote 2016. So, SUCCESS! ... right?
Actually, no. Turns out that even attempting to open the files -- which it wouldn't let me do without an account, mind, and I didn't create one -- converted them from Office 2013 format to Office 365 format, and now it won't let me open them at all without a valid Office 365 account. Which will NEVER EVER HAPPEN because there's no way in hell I'm putting that stuff online all in one place for Microsoft to plunder at their leisure. (Anyone who believes their privacy statement that they won't do such a thing is a fool. And even if they're honest about that -- and they won't be -- having all that online in one[...ish] place is basically a big fat target for hackers.)
Thankfully, my old computer is still around and working fine, so the information is available and usable. And hey, I can always just transfer them again to this computer and use them with Onenote 2016, right? ... well, possibly not. Turns out that Onenote 2016 is deliberately handicapped. If you have an existing notebook that hasn't been converted to Office 365, maybe you can open that. Maybe. But you can't create new local notebooks in Onenote 2016. It forces you to make new notebooks on OneDrive. (And once more with feeling: HELL NO!)
That is just ... really impressively, spectacularly evil. I'm impressed, baffled and infuriated.
Also, puzzled that the market at large didn't look at this and see a huge opportunity for people who don't want to have their stuff online; apart from exporting to Word and PDF, there doesn't seem to be any decent way to get Onenote stuff OUT of Onenote. (It may or may not be that Evernote can import that sort of information, but they seem to be having several of their own issues lately.)
So, for the time being, bills will need to be exported individually to PDF. Which also means that I can't use Firefox, because alone among the major[...ish] browsers, Mozilla declines to add a "Print/Save to PDF" option. And, weirdly, as I recall, adding Acrobat Reader to a system doesn't add those options to Firefox, either. (I have Sumatra installed; I'd really rather not install Acrobat, frankly.)
Complete sidenote: actually purchased Office 2019 -- I do need Office for those times when I have to bring that sort of work home, and while Libre Office's Word replacement does mostly well enough (unless I'm collaborating with someone else on a document), its Excel replacement just has had too many problems dealing with formulas and things for me to be comfortable using it for that sort of work. I did read that installing Office 2019 automatically converts Onenote 2016 to the entirely online Onenote App for Windows, so I'd thought that just not installing it would mean that I could use Onenote 2016 alongside Office 2019. (Reportedly, Onenote 2016 complains that you're not using the most recent versions of everything but it's still usable.) But honestly, unless I can bring over my old notebooks and use them on my local computer, I don't really see the point.
Really, just truly, astoundingly evil.
So. New computer is mostly set up. After a couple days of getting things going, I realize that I forgot to pay my November bills. So I do what I usually do, go in to the vendor in question in a browser, pay the bill, get the receipt, and ... then realize that I forgot to install Office 2019, so Onenote may not be here. But! I remember reading that Windows 10 has Onenote as part of the OS, so maybe things will work!
... Yeah, not so much. There's a version of Office 365 on the system, but the one thing I absolutely Do Not Want is to have my bills online, and while the system recognizes that these are Onenote notebooks, it won't let me open them without establishing a Microsoft account.
But! I remember that Onenote 2016 is free, and available, and still supported for a number of years, so I can do that instead! So I download and install Onenote 2016, and the system rather understandably complains about some conflicts. So I uninstall the bits of Office 365, and also the bits of Office 2019 that seem to also have come with the system (weird, that) along with OneDrive, restart, reinstall Onenote 2016. So, SUCCESS! ... right?
Actually, no. Turns out that even attempting to open the files -- which it wouldn't let me do without an account, mind, and I didn't create one -- converted them from Office 2013 format to Office 365 format, and now it won't let me open them at all without a valid Office 365 account. Which will NEVER EVER HAPPEN because there's no way in hell I'm putting that stuff online all in one place for Microsoft to plunder at their leisure. (Anyone who believes their privacy statement that they won't do such a thing is a fool. And even if they're honest about that -- and they won't be -- having all that online in one[...ish] place is basically a big fat target for hackers.)
Thankfully, my old computer is still around and working fine, so the information is available and usable. And hey, I can always just transfer them again to this computer and use them with Onenote 2016, right? ... well, possibly not. Turns out that Onenote 2016 is deliberately handicapped. If you have an existing notebook that hasn't been converted to Office 365, maybe you can open that. Maybe. But you can't create new local notebooks in Onenote 2016. It forces you to make new notebooks on OneDrive. (And once more with feeling: HELL NO!)
That is just ... really impressively, spectacularly evil. I'm impressed, baffled and infuriated.
Also, puzzled that the market at large didn't look at this and see a huge opportunity for people who don't want to have their stuff online; apart from exporting to Word and PDF, there doesn't seem to be any decent way to get Onenote stuff OUT of Onenote. (It may or may not be that Evernote can import that sort of information, but they seem to be having several of their own issues lately.)
So, for the time being, bills will need to be exported individually to PDF. Which also means that I can't use Firefox, because alone among the major[...ish] browsers, Mozilla declines to add a "Print/Save to PDF" option. And, weirdly, as I recall, adding Acrobat Reader to a system doesn't add those options to Firefox, either. (I have Sumatra installed; I'd really rather not install Acrobat, frankly.)
Complete sidenote: actually purchased Office 2019 -- I do need Office for those times when I have to bring that sort of work home, and while Libre Office's Word replacement does mostly well enough (unless I'm collaborating with someone else on a document), its Excel replacement just has had too many problems dealing with formulas and things for me to be comfortable using it for that sort of work. I did read that installing Office 2019 automatically converts Onenote 2016 to the entirely online Onenote App for Windows, so I'd thought that just not installing it would mean that I could use Onenote 2016 alongside Office 2019. (Reportedly, Onenote 2016 complains that you're not using the most recent versions of everything but it's still usable.) But honestly, unless I can bring over my old notebooks and use them on my local computer, I don't really see the point.
Really, just truly, astoundingly evil.
