Microsoft admits Outlook might freeze when saving files to OneDrive Microsoft's January Windows update has delivered another blow for unsuspecting users – apps including Outlook might freeze when saving files to cloud storage services such as OneDrive or Dropbox. The megacorp acknowledged the latest issue days after releasing an emergency out-of-band update to deal with connection and …
Yes. That's one way. Not sure of the method you employed to not use Outlook and Onedrive, but mine was to dump all Micro$oft products and go elsewhere. It wasn't an overnight thing (without some really serious planning, I can't see how it is easily possible), but a major switch followed by using a virtual PC to fire up the odd app/program I hadn't yet found an alternative for (or had just reared up and let me know I needed to find an alternative).
It was all about 6 months, during which the instances of having to fire up the virtual PC became rarer..
Oh, I used to support PCs and used to work for a Micro$oft Gold Certified Partner - plus I beta-tested as part of that employment. So it wasn't as if I moved from a software environment I 'sort of' understood, to something a little more unknown. It was from something I had a firm grounding in, to something I hadn't a clue about.
However, I've now been 'sober' for about three years and can honestly say that I am more comfortable these days than I was in the final few years of Windows and Windows software.
It isn't an overnight switch. You can't expect to switch at the weekend and be happy by the following Friday. You have to weather the pain (and it is a paid at times). However, the result is freedom and relief.
These days, I read about the regular Micro$oft update cycle 'glitches' with a smile and see it all as entertainment.
You are confusing where the maturity is.
The email channel is well understood and the subject of reams of internationally agreed technical standards, which is why almost anyone except from MS can build a working email client.
Its clear where the maturity *is not*
The issue isn’t email as such, it’s file access. Given the nature of .pst files - a “simple” file-based online database, this would suggest other thick client online database applications such as SQL*Server Express will also fail if using cloud storage.
A question has to be whether the web-based Outlook 365, which by default will use OneDrive also suffers from the problem, just that it’s not visible to users in the same way.
i remember when i was much younger i'd always install the latest updates.
when fixing someones PC the 1st thing i'd do is updates.
i've been a mac user since ~91, ive taken the same approach on those too, until recently.
i will be keeping my systems on osx/ios26 & may roll back my laptop to osx 15.
app updates i will make a judgement on, OS updates i will take the service updates but i likely will not be upgrading to osx/iso 27 unless i truly need to.
if i could roll my ios stuff back to ios 18 i would.
There are no new features in iso26 i actually want.
If i'm not having an issue with my apps why do i need to update?
re app vulnerabilities, my personal machines are protected by apples xprotect etc plus the apple firewall, plus home firewall, plus nat so most addressed exploits likely can never be remotely exploited.
unless i'm facing a usability issues or bugs then i likely have no need for the app updates.
Its not like updates fix all bugs or won't introduce new ones as per this article so why would any sane person update unless there is some significant reason to?
Got the Mac on Sonoma and have no reason to do more than apply service patches at the moment. On the laptop though, I think I have taken leave of my senses, since I'm running a rolling Linux distro (Tumbleweed), but at least it's easy to roll back when (not if) something breaks.
It's *never* been a good idea to access PST files over any kind of network link, they're too fragile and the repair tool is a very blunt one that more often than not lost data for you.
MS used to advise they were not to be used over networks
Allowing them to be stored in OneDrive is idiocy.
I find it insane that Borkzilla continually fucks up and yet there is no big-name company or even country that decides that enough is enough, let's find another solution that actually works 24/7/365.
I'm pretty sure that, if all the costs of Redmonds' failures were tallied up, it would largely cover the cost of going to Linux and having something that is actually stable for a change.
But no. Fortune 1000 companies and everyone else just goes along with Windows, like it's a brain worm that has infected everyone.
If the Internet ran on Windows Server, half of the world would spend half its time not being connected. You think game server companies use Windows ? Think again. They know how picky gamers are, and they know the value of true 24/7/365 service. Gaming is more reliable than MS Office, these days.
And that's not going to change any time soon.
I suspect this is actually a wider issue. The health dashboard refers to “apps” freezing. I’ve just had Notepad refuse to open .txt files on two different machines, with File System error. Said .txt files open in Word OK, so not a disk error, (and on two different machines at about the same time?) Uninstalling Notepad and installing a new copy from the Microsoft Store seems to have fixed it on both machines.
Notepad, on Windows 11, IS an "App". If you want the non-app version you have to use any Windows Server version. 'cause even in Server 2025 the notepad.exe ist still the classic i.e. Windows 7 style program. Windows 10 and 11 are "App", i.e. the cancer-code-induced-blown-up-crap type. (Dunno about Windows 8, don't have such a VM)
The fact that you uninstalled it and reinstalled it from the store is the proof.
If you've a corporate deployment, for Flying Spaghetti Monster's sake, manage the default PST and OST locations.
Use the deployment XML/Group Policy to ensure the default location is something like C:\Exchange. At least by default. Users can still do strange things. Suitably trained, all techs will know to at least start looking.
Never had a PST or OST file work after being opened within Onedrive. Zip archive of PST file in Onedrive, sure. ZIP file reduces the temptation to open a file "just in case" or "just for testing".
It's not like saving your work on a computer is a basic function we've relied on for about 40yr or anything.
Is MS suggesting we just upload everything into Coporite and let it 'remember' what we were doing?
Any idea how we step of the enshittification bus? I'm tired of everything being shittier than it was in the 90s and 10x the price.
Ever since PST files were limited to 2GB they were a liability.
I'm surprised they work under dropbox or onedrive AT ALL.
Not having your emails online somewhere and having a local copy is fantastic, but the moment you put something that should be on a LOCAL storage to be placed on a network, funky stuff starts to happen. 20 years of cruft on the whole exchange/outlook architecture might have something to do with it, perhaps, by chance? Not designed for purpose being the rest of the problem?
Update from December and January have broken MS word and assistive technologies like read aloud have simply stopped working or pause after the first paragraph and refuse to start again.
Last time this happened in 2003 required to change or remove plug-ins to get it to work again that affects no longer works.
Very, very slight correction to Richard Speed’s article but I do believe that PST stands for ‘Personal STore(age), no tables involves it's basically a massive text file. Unless fellow commutards know better and can correct me - which is fine, as only idiots believe they know everything and aren’t open to being corrected!
And historically, PST files never liked being on any sort of remote storage, even having them on a local files server could be an issue. So, yes I can well imagine that if one got lifted and shifted to OneDrive, then all sorts of interesting hilarity might ensue.
I’ve said this before and I think it's worth repeating, Window’s biggest advantage is that it works on all manner of oddball legacy equipment, and Window’s biggest problem is that it works on all manner of oddball legacy equipment!
And I think that this is a case in point, PST files, legacy, but yet still used by many customers, don’t take kindly to being moved to remote storage - but are the people currently developing Windows even aware of this and other (legacy) technologies?
What I firmly believe MS should have done with Windows 10 was to initiate a full rewrite, dump all of the legacy baggage,’oh you are still using a scanner application written in 1995, no updates available - tough, will not work in Windows 10, get a new scanner’! But they didn’t; they had the opportunity to draw a line in the sand and move on. But they didn’t, they caved to ‘backwards compatibility’, and this is the result - and it can only get worse!
> PST stands for ‘Personal STore(age), no tables involves it's basically a massive text file.
You are terribly wrong. I can store the mail "as is"contain text, but it has a b-tree and directory type database format. Usually the data is stored compressed, uncompressed got out of fashion long before I first used outlook (> two decades)..
The netscape/mozilla/thunderbird/seamonkey mail file format is pure text. With an additional index next to it.
