Office 365 Updates and minor comment on 1 Password updates

A while ago (not very recently) I reported the problem I had with the Automatic Update feature of Office 365. About once a month Micro$oft kicks out updates for the Office 365 suite of software. My problem has been that after consuming about 20 minutes of action and messages that the software was successfully updated. the files had not been updated to the new version

However upon checking I would determine that the applications were still in the prior version level. I developed my own “drag and drop” method to REPLACE the prior version with a new version

This week MIcro$oft released version 16.29. I undertook to see if I could determine why the Software Update process didn’t work

To paraphrase (Pogo I think) “I have analyzed the problem and it is ME”

For about 30 years I have used the following procedure for managing the Application Folder when the application has a “license”, “activation code / key”, User Manual, etc.

  • Create a Folder inside the Application folder with the name of the “application” In this case the folder was named “Microsoft 365”
  • Locate the application (s) and related other files / information inside the named folder

Thus in Finder view I could quickly and easily locate all information related to the application.

Today I moved the 3 applications (Excel, PowerPoint and Word) I use from the Office 365 folder outside the subfolder and back to the Application folder

The Software Update ran AND the 3 applications are now at version 16.29

This set of software (from Micro$oft) is the only software that can’t get through the sub folder concept

Not directly related but 1 Password from Agile Bits has an interesting, almost equivalent, problem doing updates.

I use Time Machine (on 2 external drives) and SuperDuper (on another drive) to back up my iMac

Often, when Agile Bits undertakes to do an update I get an “error” message that I have more than one copy of the application and stops the update process awaiting my action Their updater has found the copies on the external drives.

A non-functional recommendation from Agile Bits has been to not have any external drives connected except when I plan to do a backup. Not very realistic for Time Machine or even Super Duper

That raises a different question for me. With recent versions of macOS, any application that isn’t being run from the Applications folder is sandboxed, which takes additional time to accomplish. I wonder if that means the root level of /Applications or if sub-folders are also excluded from such action? I need to test that.

The applications were in the Applications folder but not immediately.

Will be interesting to see what you determine

Jerry

Ah! Yes, good sleuthing. In general, messing with the expected hierarchy for apps can cause problems. In an ideal world, it shouldn’t, but ever since we moved to Mac OS X and Apple gave us “special” folders, we’ve learned that fighting with the recommended hierarchies can result in unexpected issues.