|
guppy posted:I just got a ticket assigned to me for a user who -- this is my description, hers is nigh incomprehensible -- no longer has her recent recipients auto completing in Outlook. She had previously spoken to our helpdesk for a different email-related issue, and among other things they rebuilt her email profile, nuking the file that holds that information. Fortunately the helpdesk rep had the presence of mind to mention in the ticket that he'd done that, so at least I knew what happened. That file is stored locally and no earlier versions are available, so she's out of luck. Which, whatever, you want external contacts saved, add them to your address book. The user is still very upset because "I took the initiative to know that they'd be there." Motherfucker, that is not what "taking the initiative" means. In fact, you did the opposite of taking the initiative. You didn't do poo poo, and that's why you now have a problem. Easy fix to regenerate the .nk2 file: compose a new email, select every single contact as a recipient, disconnect the computer from the network, hit send, wait for it to fail, delete it from the outbox. All autocomplete entries will be restored.
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 15:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 06:09 |
|
|
guppy posted:I just got a ticket assigned to me for a user who -- this is my description, hers is nigh incomprehensible -- no longer has her recent recipients auto completing in Outlook. She had previously spoken to our helpdesk for a different email-related issue, and among other things they rebuilt her email profile, nuking the file that holds that information. This is an issue often enough with basically everyone that uses outlook, and I'd be annoyed at my minions if they didn't back up the NK2 file before rebuilding the profile.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 15:34
|
|
|
We make it a point specifically to not backup the n2k file. It's the same with anything else locally on users computers.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 15:38
|
|
|
Auto-complete is a convenience, not a requirement to get work done. I do not shed a single tear for those who get so butthurt over losing an NK2 file. They can get hosed as far as I am concerned.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 15:43
|
|
|
Sickening posted:Auto-complete is a convenience, not a requirement to get work done. I do not shed a single tear for those who get so butthurt over losing an NK2 file. They can get hosed as far as I am concerned. Tell that to a C-level and watch poo poo rain from the sky.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 15:48
|
|
|
Losing an NK2 file because a machine dies is one thing, having someone too lazy to write a 2-second script to transfer a few useful things over is another.Crowley posted:Tell that to a C-level and watch poo poo rain from the sky. This too. Or any doctor/lawyer.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 15:49
|
|
|
We have it in the employees handbook now, so there is no excuses. It helps that management has my back on this.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 15:50
|
|
|
EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:This is an issue often enough with basically everyone that uses outlook, and I'd be annoyed at my minions if they didn't back up the NK2 file before rebuilding the profile. it would have been the smart thing, yeah. But autocomplete isn't an address book, and while it's okay to be momentarily annoyed at the inconvenience, the only actual "problem" is that the user used something for an inappropriate purpose and it bit her in the rear end, like users treating the Deleted Items folder like storage. tehloki posted:Easy fix to regenerate the .nk2 file: compose a new email, select every single contact as a recipient, disconnect the computer from the network, hit send, wait for it to fail, delete it from the outbox. All autocomplete entries will be restored. Unfortunately it's specifically external recipients she's concerned about. Internal ones are in the GAL and it isn't a big deal. The issue is that she doesn't remember anyone's email address, and doesn't maintain then as actual contacts, only cached email addresses.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 15:54
|
|
|
guppy posted:Unfortunately it's specifically external recipients she's concerned about. Internal ones are in the GAL and it isn't a big deal. The issue is that she doesn't remember anyone's email address, and doesn't maintain then as actual contacts, only cached email addresses. Ah, so it's a user doesn't know how to use the tools they use every day to do their job problem.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 15:57
|
|
|
Actually it's an Outlook doesn't bother with the fine details problem. It should automatically store those contacts somewhere permanent in the profile, instead of somewhere that can apparently be easily wiped out. Make an address book specifically for contacts that haven't been explicitly saved, for crying out loud. People have more to worry about than keeping track of their loving contacts. They have their own jobs to do, and it isn't to spend all their time learning how to work around technology and its weaknesses. You can argue all day that they should know how to use the tools for their job, but an e-mail client is such a simple and old thing that it should be perfected by now to the point where you don't have to learn anything, it just works. Especially Outlook, which has been around for years and years, and has had millions if not billions of dollars put into it. Have you ever completely lost track of a contact in gmail? No, of course not, because it saves the e-mail address of everyone you ever correspond with. Blaming this on people not knowing their tools is wrong. If anyone should be aware of and go out of their way to avoid this issue (aside from Microsoft needing to fix it), it's most of the posters in this thread.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 16:11
|
|
|
the littlest prince posted:Actually it's an Outlook doesn't bother with the fine details problem. I agree with you to the degree that if an organization forces outlook, and it's missing a feature like automatic contact adding, that's an outlook problem. However, in my office's environment, outlook works terribly with our mailserver and I almost always recommend zimbra desktop or thunderbird, but everybody insists on using outlook even after I tell them about all the features it lacks compared with the more robust solutions. People really do choose software for familiarity and yet don't bother to learn how to use it in a reasonable way.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 16:19
|
|
|
Honestly, maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about. I switched machines from Windows 7 with Office 2010 to Windows 8.1 with Office 2013 and all my external autocompletes still exist.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 16:28
|
|
|
On the subject of autocomplete, a voicemail came in from someone with the same name as one of our employees. Some months back our employee was a moron and gave out her own personal email address wrong to a bunch of people. Then those people started emailing work email to that address, and the recipient emailed them back and told them to stop. Eventually it got back to me and I just blocked that address as a recipient altogether in our firewall, and instructed our employees how to remove her from their contacts AND the Outlook autocomplete. Until today when this person actually called in to complain that she is still receiving email from us. I see a dozen emails from our (obviously incapable of following through) employees but they've all been blocked. Somehow she is still getting email from us. But I have no idea how?  I was thinking of just deleting the .nk2 file remotely from these people's computers and letting them suffer the consequences but I can't do it if they have Outlook running...
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 16:31
|
|
|
I'm an embedded software engineer at a small (<20) company. We don't really have IT, so everything is cobbled together between my boss and I. Basically, we're probably some future IT guy's worst nightmare. As an aside, most of the people here are (bafflingly) competent, and that's good, because my job is not to be a help desk, I have an overly aggressive and wildly scoped set of projects to work on (you know, related to embedded software). Most of the time, a simple explanation, or a step by step procedure will get people going. Unfortunately, my boss is more important than me, which means that most day to day problems end up on my desk. One such incident: we have a "director of quality", he's a degreed electrical engineer, many years experience in industry. Yesterday his WinZip trial ran out while he was trying to zip up about 600 JPGs to email. Because we don't really have a ton of money, we've just been giving everyone 7-zip, or instructing them to use the windows 7 compression tools. I set up this guy with 7-zip, show him how to add things to an archive, or just right click a folder and make it into a zip. Easy enough. 30 minutes later: he's livid, saying the program I installed doesn't work and why would I give him this crap software, the entire folder of jpegs barely zipped to anything smaller and its unacceptable we need to buy him winzip blah blah blah. I spent the next 45 minutes explaining that jpegs are already compressed. There isn't much you can do to make one smaller (losslessly).  : Director : me You gave me this crappy software it doesn't even work! What's going on? I've used it pretty successfully for awhile now It won't make my folder smaller! Winzip used to be a lot better this is unacceptable! What are you trying to compress? I'm trying to send these images to a manufacturer. This is [affecting production]. (45 minute explanation of compression process, why you can't compress something already optimally compressed) That's not how it works! And winzip made this folder 10MB! I really don't think that it did. You see, you can't just take data, remove some, and then have the same data. I'm talking to [your boss] later, why can't you just fix it for me?!I'm sure this is small change and/or daily experience for some of you, but dear god, maybe some day I can be woefully incompetent at a fundamental tool required for my job and make tons of money!
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 16:42
|
|
|
Sirotan posted:On the subject of autocomplete, a voicemail came in from someone with the same name as one of our employees. Some months back our employee was a moron and gave out her own personal email address wrong to a bunch of people. Then those people started emailing work email to that address, and the recipient emailed them back and told them to stop. Eventually it got back to me and I just blocked that address as a recipient altogether in our firewall, and instructed our employees how to remove her from their contacts AND the Outlook autocomplete. Set up a rule to block the email and auto-reply reply telling them that they're dumb.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 16:43
|
|
|
GreenNight posted:Honestly, maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about. I switched machines from Windows 7 with Office 2010 to Windows 8.1 with Office 2013 and all my external autocompletes still exist. Outlook 2010 and up store autocomplete data on the Exchange server. Somehow.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 16:47
|
|
|
Caged posted:Outlook 2010 and up store autocomplete data on the Exchange server. Somehow. Outlook 2010 introduced Suggested Contacts.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 16:48
|
|
|
Caged posted:Outlook 2010 and up store autocomplete data on the Exchange server. Somehow. That explains it. We moved from GroupWise to Outlook 2010 a year ago.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 16:51
|
|
|
EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:Set up a rule to block the email and auto-reply reply telling them that they're dumb. Good idea, I'm going to do exactly that.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 17:01
|
|
|
Sickening posted:Auto-complete is a convenience, not a requirement to get work done. I do not shed a single tear for those who get so butthurt over losing an NK2 file. They can get hosed as far as I am concerned. Ive seen Sev 1 tickets for restoring Nk2 files here.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 17:44
|
|
|
Caged posted:Outlook 2010 and up store autocomplete data on the Exchange server. Somehow. Somehow, btw, is in an ordinary email in that persons mailbox that has a special subject line and is flagged as hidden. It has exactly all the problems you'd expect it to have.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 18:10
|
|
|
That is incredible
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 18:14
|
|
|
EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:Set up a rule to block the email and auto-reply reply telling them that they're dumb. This doesn't work. The blocking part might, but they won't stop sending email to that address, simply because it's what pops up in autocomplete. I know this, because I switched from the hospital provided email to my company provided email (Hospital only gave me a 20MB inbox whereas company gives me a 250MB inbox). I set up a rule to forward any email from that address to my new address, then reply to the user that, that address is no longer in use and to update their contact list with my new address. This was 9mos. ago. I'm still getting emails to that address and have to go in every now and then to clear it out.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 18:21
|
|
|
EoRaptor posted:Somehow, btw, is in an ordinary email in that persons mailbox that has a special subject line and is flagged as hidden. It has exactly all the problems you'd expect it to have. I read this post three times, sure I must have misunderstood it. That is really amazing, and yet I find myself fully prepared to believe it.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 18:21
|
|
|
Zamboni Apocalypse posted:We have the HIPAA, so IT gutted a few hundred (or more) drives last year; when they were tossing a pile of old casings/circuitboards, I asked about the magnets, and they'd kept some for themselves and heaved the rest.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 18:25
|
|
|
coyo7e posted:One guy wanted to take a bunch of them home for his kids. We were cool with that, once we explained what could happen if a couple small ones got swallowed. To clarify: the iron content in the child's hemoglobin will be ripped from his blood and pulled inexorably towards the magnet, causing massive internal damage and a grisly death. :magneto: For content: I received a nasty email from an application guy who was all kinds of pissy because his servers only had 2 CPUs and 512MB of RAM. "Agrikk! WhatKindOfIdiotBuildsAModernServerWithThoseKindsOfSpecs?!?! You idiot! Everything is screwed up!" "Umm... the server I built for your project has a pair of hyprthreaded Xeon E5-2690 processors. Each processor has 8 hyperthreaded cores for a total of 32 cores. And you must have mis-read whatever you were looking at, because I see the server has 512 gigabytes of ram installed. Is half a terabyte of RAM enough?" "..." It's not even 10:30 on a Friday and I am already in a poo poo mood.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 19:27
|
|
|
Isn't it more that the magnets will stick together through the intestines, eventually necrotizing and/or lascerating them and causing waste to spew into the abdominal cavity?
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 19:30
|
|
|
Agrikk posted:To clarify: the iron content in the child's hemoglobin will be ripped from his blood and pulled inexorably towards the magnet, causing massive internal damage and a grisly death. :magneto: Not so much, but two swallowed magnets can attract each other when in the bowels causing obstructions that require surgical intervention. edit: ^^^ or that.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 19:30
|
|
|
I like my version better.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 19:44
|
|
|
What I'm hearing is that magnets will give my children superpowers. - Every Manager Ever.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 19:59
|
|
|
docbeard posted:What I'm hearing is that magnets will give my children superpowers. What I read was mentally voiced by Sir Ian. And on a second readthough by Professor Farnsworth. And I honestly can't decide which one is better. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 20:11
|
|
|
I just read it as by Frink...I think we may have issues.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 20:28
|
|
|
Zamboni Apocalypse posted:What I read was mentally voiced by Sir Ian. I just read it mentally as Stephen Colbert.... content: An email came in : We need a new mailbox setup, but we need IT to monitor it. Its for a employee survey and we need to make sure that only people who aren't with the company see replies to it.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 20:41
|
|
|
The VP of Marketing just told me he wants me to push down a half dozen shortcuts to every employees desktop in the org. Each shortcut goes to a difference section of the intranet. He wants custom icons for each shortcut. He wants to make it so that if the shortcuts get deleted, they re-appear on next boot.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 21:16
|
|
|
GreenNight posted:The VP of Marketing just told me he wants me to push down a half dozen shortcuts to every employees desktop in the org. Each shortcut goes to a difference section of the intranet. He wants custom icons for each shortcut. He wants to make it so that if the shortcuts get deleted, they re-appear on next boot. Besides the custom icons, that's about 30 seconds of work with group policy.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 21:24
|
|
|
Orcs and Ostriches posted:Besides the custom icons, that's about 30 seconds of work with group policy. Yes I know. I've done it before. It's not the work that I'm complaining about, it's the fact that someone wants it done at all.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 21:26
|
|
|
That seems like a pretty benign request.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 21:27
|
|
|
No it's not. An intranet page should be functional enough so that a user doesn't need a half dozen shortcuts on their desktop of all places. Bookmarks? What's that? Users who already have a screen full of shortcuts? Good luck finding the new ones.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 21:29
|
|
|
GreenNight posted:No it's not. An intranet page should be functional enough so that a user doesn't need a half dozen shortcuts on their desktop of all places. Bookmarks? What's that? Users who already have a screen full of shortcuts? Good luck finding the new ones. Rule #1 for Clueless Users: If it's not on the desktop, it doesn't exist. Rule #2 for Clueless Users: If you change their desktop, they will hate you. You're hosed no matter what, buddy, but there is a valid use case here. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 21:43
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 06:09 |
|
|
Sirotan posted:I was thinking of just deleting the .nk2 file remotely from these people's computers and letting them suffer the consequences but I can't do it if they have Outlook running... No, but you can create a scheduled task to delete it on start-up. (Or move it, if you're feeling less bastardly today) You can also schedule the computer to reboot overnight. (Or five seconds from now, if you're feeling more bastardly today)
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2013 22:43
|
|
