Get Rid Of My Places Bar In Microsoft Office
I chronicle my troubleshooting and computer paradigm studies here on Best Hubris because they play so tightly into my business strategy business and models. It always starts out as just a single issue on my computer or network, but it ends up being a deliberate strategy by some technology company.
My Places Bar Slows Down Saves in Microsoft Office Word 2007 and Others
All of the sudden, my Microsoft Office programs are Initializing My Places Bar whenever I try to save a Word Document or Excel Spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation. It works, eventually, but it is really, really slow and annoying. The worst part is that my Office 2007 never used to pop up an Initializing Places window.
What is the My Places Bar anyway, and why do I need one? The answer, is, that I don’t. You don’t either.
Unless you are one of the two people on the whole planet who use Microsoft SharePoint for group collaboration, or whatever the buzzword is these days, then you don’t need or want anything to do with the My Places Bar.
Technically, you’ve been using the My Places Bar since Office 2000 or Office 2003, but you’ve never noticed because it was never so slow and so bothersome. What has changed is that Microsoft has started adding an Office Live Workspaces location to the My Places bar as part of certain installations or updates of various software products without asking, and without even telling you about it.
I’m not 100% sure what caused this change, but I’m not happy about Microsoft choosing to promote its BETA Live Workspace at the expense of the day to day performance of my PC. Granted, I checked out the Live Workspaces beta after getting about 100 emails asking me to, and I even installed the Office Live plug-in. Of course, I did that months ago and only recently started noticing this particular annoyance, so I can only assume that it came onto my Windows system recently.
I am not amused.
Ironically, Microsoft just made it harder to get people to use Live Workspaces, not easier. I have uninstalled the Office Live plug-in and I have deleted the sample documents I had put on my Live Desktop, and I have deleted the Office Live Workspace location from my Save As dialog box. In other words, I will not touch Live Workspaces again. So much for growing the user base.
Stop Initializing Places / Initializing My Places Dialog Box
If you are sick an tired of waiting for what used to be an instant load Save box to appear, you can get rid of the Initializing My Places bar by deleting the offending entry from your Save As box.
Chances are you have never bothered to customize your My Places box before. Chances are you never even knew that it existed, because all you ever wanted was a Save As box. Fortunately, it isn’t too hard.
- Click on the Office Symbol or File Menu and choose Open.
- Right-Click on the Live Desktop icon in the bar that runs down the side of the dialog box (That’s the My Places Bar, by the way.) and choose Delete.
- If you don’t see it, expand the box to make it bigger. The default size, of course, isn’t big enough for the extra entry, because no one ever added one and it was designed to accommodate only the real world entries that were there by default before the “upgrade.”
- If you see another entry, that might be the culprit. Anything over a network will slow things down.
Basically what is happening is every time I try and save a Word document, it populates the “My Places Bar.” To do so, it apparently establishes a connection. This takes a second or two over the Internet, especially if you aren’t already connected, or it takes just as long to time out. Either way, you are waiting to do something that used to be nearly instant.
To sum up, Microsoft decided that it would be smart computing to check an Internet service I never use EVERY SINGLE TIME I save any document. Or, in other words, my computer should be slower every single hour of every single day that I use it, so it would be easier to use Live Desktop!
It is times like these, where Microsoft chooses its strategic agenda over the needs and desires of users, that causes so many people to hate the company so fiercely.
So far this year, as part of its “strategy” to combat Google and force me to use products and services I don’t want, don’t need, didn’t ask for, and certainly didn’t agree to installing, having, or using, Microsoft has tried to slow down my system twice. First, with the sneaky installation of Seaport.exe which caused me to scramble for information because I thought I had a virus, and now with this bonehead move.
In both cases, Microsoft has NOT been forthcoming with information about what they are doing to your system without your knowledge. I had to search high and low to figure out how to kill seaport. I still haven’t seen any sort of article on Microsoft.com. Now, I had to read between the lines on SharePoint TechNet pages to figure out what was wrong with my computer after Microsoft chose to AGAIN do something to my computer without my permission.
(I know that technically, Microsoft’s lawyers carefully crafted the wording of the user agreement that no one ever reads to avoid legal liability, but you, me, and Microsoft, all know that they never actually had my permission no matter what they can argue in court.)
Obviously, there is no real option to Microsoft’s Windows Operating Systems, but that doesn’t mean I’ll keep using their other junk.
I already have AbiWord loaded on my laptop because Word 2007 is too bloated to run fast enough on it, and I’ve just abandoned Live Workspace permanently. The only reason I use Live at all is because of Windows Live Writer, and frankly, if ScribeFire gets a spellcheck, I think I’ll abandon Live Writer too.
If they keep this up, the only Microsoft product I’ll be running is Windows, and if I only buy something every 10 years when they get around to releasing a decent OS again, that isn’t good business.
Thanks for nothing, guys. Again.
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