Distractions...

I do now know how it happened, but apparently, when Microsoft went to charge my credit card for my annual Office 365 re-up, the transaction failed (and you can search me as to why—the card was still valid, up to date payment-wise, and nowhere near maxed, but I digress..), and Monday, my subscription lapsed.

Hard.

There was no "degraded" performance, as far as I could tell, in Office apps—they plain stopped working. (I didn't do an exhaustive survey, but upon opening Word, for example, I got a message about there being a problem with my subscription and I basically could not use the application.)

Okay. I filed that knowledge under "a good thing to know," and clicked on the button that had popped up in word, offering to open my browser, navigate to the right payment page, and let me make a payment. I did (without a hitch, I might add).

I went back and opened Word again. I got the same dialog box, but this time, clicking on the button took me to a page where my Office setup was "reinstalled," which I assumed (that word, again) meant a little to-and-fro between my machine and the mother ship in Redmond, and away I'd go.

Well, it was a little more complicated, in that something got downloaded, which I expect might have been some updates, because the entire process completed within about two minutes.

I go to open Word... same problem.

Hmmm.

In the end, I have a phone conversation with Microsoft Office support, the upshot of which is my having to uninstall Office completely and completely reinstall it for the annoying problem to go away.

That was last Tuesday, and I spent the entire rest of the day playing catch-up.

A good thing to know, indeed.

Cheers...