By Jim Calloway

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” is the much-quoted opening to Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.

Sometimes Microsoft’s automatic updates have the same reaction. We love it when something new and useful appears with little fanfare, like the Dictate button that provides great speech recognition in Word and Outlook or the recent advanced search feature to search through Outlook in new ways. But then there are the times when you log in and things have shifted around, including that feature you need to use right now to meet a deadline. That can be frustrating. (Tip: After looking for something that was moved for a short time, just ask Google how to do whatever in Outlook or Word.)

I noticed that the Quick Access Toolbar was missing recently. Of course, it wasn’t really missing. An update had moved it to the top of the Ribbon instead of below it, where I prefer. That was probably why the post New look Office 365 isn’t loved by Microsoft’s paying customers spoke to me. It covers resetting the QAT and how to grab the title bar to drag a window to a new location after Microsoft has crammed the title bar with many other buttons.