Why Windows 8 sucks

Brian Boyko so perfectly sums up the failings of Windows 8 that I'll let you hear it from him directly:

Hold up...answer that question again but this time tell the truth

I had a voicemail message on Friday from a user that was frantic because they had lost a document that they spent a few hours modifying.  I figured it was a classic case of "opened from email" but you always have to be careful when making those assumptions.  I called the user on Monday and asked if the document had been opened from an email.

User: No, I create the document from scratch.

Me: So you opened up excel and saved the document to your desktop, then worked on it and then saved, closed it, and when you went to open it again it was blank?

User: No, I opened excel, worked on the document.  I saved it and emailed it to someone, then they sent it back to me and I worked on it some more, saved it, and went to attach it but it had reverted back to the one from before.  Why would our computers do that?

Me: I don't think our computers did.  So...just to be clear...you did at some point open it from your email?

User: No.

Me: But you opened it when they sent it back to you via email?

User: Yes.

Me: So at some point you opened it from your email?

User: I guess so.

Me: And then you changed it and clicked "save" and closed it down.  Then the file on your desktop did not have those modifications?

User: Exactly.

Me: Yeah, it's lost in your temp folders.

After a few minutes of digging around the AppData folder I was able to retrieve the file.  I wish users would realize that not telling support what actually happened makes fixing the problem that much more difficult.

How Do I.....?

I received this work ticket from a user, the underlined portion being the important thing:

I then, very politely, sent him instructions on how to add a new item:

Reply-All

Next time, instead of using Reply All, why don't you just take out an ad that says "I don't know how e-mail works."

Please read the directions

Yesterday, I got a call asking for help setting up a Blackboard page.  I set up the page, enrolled the user with the necessary permissions and sent them a helpful link on how to enroll other users.

Today, I get an email telling me that they are unable to enroll the students into the class and can I please create accounts for the students so that she can enroll them.

I call her back, ask her if she can send me the list of students she couldn't enroll and I'll make sure they get their accounts created.  I call the central office that creates the accounts and ask if they can generate these accounts.  Central calls me back and says "those accounts already exist."

I take a look in the system and sure enough those accounts already exist.  A light goes off in my head.  She didn't...she couldn't have meant...yup.  I suddenly realize that instead of using the big "Add Enrollments" button that is mentioned in the "how to" the user has been using the search box designed to find users already enrolled in the class.

Once again, totally my fault...why?  Because for a brief moment I thought a user might actually read directions.  Silly me.