I just finished a call from my father who has a Windows 10 PC with Office 2010 installed. All of a sudden he became unable to use Office and didn’t understand why, so he called me. Much to my amazement, and his, Microsoft had pushed upon him Office 365 and now, by default, was using Office 365 which would then prompt for an account login.

Now, I initially thought I’d reset the default application associated with each file type, but the interface in Windows 10 is horrific! and with the number of file types to modify I’d be at it until the New Year, so I decided it would simply be easier to uninstall Office365 altogether especially since we never installed it in the first place.

Well, that’s where the real problems occurred.  After removing Office365, I found Office 2010 no longer worked, all my previous file associations were not restore and I had a real mess now thanks to some great uninstalling processes from Microsoft!

I have since repaired Office, recreated file associations, …, but what a mess and a couple hours I’ll never get back, little alone the hours of frustration that my father has had thinking it was his mistakes…  the last thing any retiree needs!

Microsoft should be ashamed of themselves!  Pushing products in updates, overriding setting and not restoring them properly and of course they never have to deal with any of this!  The home user is supposed to figure all of this out on their own.

So how many hundreds, thousands, or even million users have found themselves in this state thanks to Microsoft’s aggressive approach of shoving Office365 down their throats?!

The next question now is how can I block this from occurring again?! and to that I still have no answer.

I’m starting to believe this may be related to what is described in the How-To Geek article Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps On My PC Without Asking because I also see all sorts of extra 3rd-party CrapWare having been installed without any form of user consent (I know MS will say they have consent from the EULA that gave them every right in the world!).  Once again, thank you Microsoft for the CrapWare and respect you show towards your users.