I've been doing it wrong! If you want to report a bug to Microsoft in order to improve Excel, there are four easy steps to elevating your "Send a Frown" to Microsoft. Follow these steps to ensure they reach a real human who can fix the bug.
Leave a comment below before March 31 to have a chance to win an Office Insider vintage distressed ball cap.
Leave a comment below before March 31 to have a chance to win an Office Insider vintage distressed ball cap.
Transcript of the video:
Learn Excel from MrExcel podcast episode 2275.
Make a difference in Excel as an insider.
Hey welcome back to MrExcel netcast, I’m Bill Jelen.
Well today, we’re going to talk about why you want to become an Insider and if you are an Insider, how you can make a difference in Excel in 4 important steps. I was getting those wrong. How to report a crash and if you stick around till then end, a chance to win one of these cool, Insider ball caps.
Let’s get started. Alright.
The question is, why would someone want to be an Office Insider? And the obvious answer is, you get the latest bits. You get to try the newest features. Things like dynamic arrays data types, artificial intelligence and that’s a great reason to be an Office Insider. But there’s other reasons. You get to be part of the community in Insider forums and really, that’s what this podcast is about. If you discover something wrong, you want to send feedback to Microsoft so they can fix the issue before it reaches the people in the monthly channel or the semi-annual channel.
Now hey, look. I hear people say, “We shouldn’t have to provide feedback. Microsoft should just get it right.” But that’s not reasonable because every version of Office is coming out on at least 17 different endpoints and the bugs, they don’t call them bugs at Microsoft, they call them regressions, the regressions only usually happen if you do X followed by Y followed by Z.
Now, I see these a lot because I’m doing the same 7-hour seminar over and over and over, 35 times a year, right. So I’m do this, followed by this, followed by this, followed by this. And then if that next thing crashes or there’s a problem, I’ll realize it right away that it’s not like it used to be. And those are things that I can report to Microsoft. But you play an important role because you do a different set of steps day after day after day after day, right. And you might be the only Insider who’s actually creating this type of a pivot chapter after a pivot table that’s been grouped by month and quarter who knows what it is. And again, as an Office Insider, we’re living inside this orange ring here, we’re the first million people to get these bits. If we report the issue then it will prevent the 6 ½ million people out here in the monthly channel or the hundreds of millions of people out in the general availability channel. Right.
Now, what I learned last week at the MVP Summit is the right way to report the issue and I’ve been doing it wrong. There’s four things.
If something is wrong in Excel, if you discover a bug or regression or whatever you want to call it, what you have to do is come out here to help, go to feedback, in feedback choose “I don’t like something.” Give a good 2, 3 sentence description of what is going on here, attach the logs and most importantly, down here, say that you can contact me about this feedback. Why is that so important? There is real humans reading these inside of Microsoft and the Insider team has found they frequently need to reach out to the person sending the feedback to get clarification on what happened.
If the report doesn’t have an email address, it often ends up in the dead end, and they cannot follow-up. With the increasing number or reports, those with an email address are giving priority.
Frequently, I’ll send a frown but I don’t bother to send my information and that puts me in the second bucket. If you really want to make a difference, make sure to fill this out completely and then submit.
Okay. And then the question that a lot of other Excel MVP’s asked, “Wait a second.
What happens if it’s not just a regression but it actually crashes Excel? Should we send a frown after a crash? Is it too late? I mean there’s no screenshot to send.” And here’s the amazing news. If Excel crash, open Excel and before you do anything, don’t open any files from that point, send a frown. In the description say, “The last session of Excel crashed when I did XYZ.” The telemetry from that last session is still available and it still will be a useful feedback.
Now, check out this cool, vintage, distressed Microsoft Office Insider ball cap. I go this at the MVP Summit in 2018 and then I use it for when I need to look cool. Now this last rocket launch that I was photographing a nice Delta 4 medium there for ULA(?) rocking my ULA t-shirt, but also my Microsoft Office Insider ball cap, it just feels cool, it just feels cool there with all that old, industrial complex at Cape Canaveral Airforce station.
And the Office Insider team has given me several of these to give away. So, it’s really simple.
All you have to do is leave a YouTube comment let’s say before March 31st, 2019 just say hey or say you’re in the Insiders program how you’ve—what bugs you found in the Offices, I mean regressions you found in the Office Insider program and I’ll choose 5 winner randomly and mail these out to you no matter where you are. Anywhere in the world, I’ll be happy to ship this to you.
And hey, don’t forget to subscribe and ring that bell so you can get notifications future episodes. Thanks for stopping by, I’ll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
Make a difference in Excel as an insider.
Hey welcome back to MrExcel netcast, I’m Bill Jelen.
Well today, we’re going to talk about why you want to become an Insider and if you are an Insider, how you can make a difference in Excel in 4 important steps. I was getting those wrong. How to report a crash and if you stick around till then end, a chance to win one of these cool, Insider ball caps.
Let’s get started. Alright.
The question is, why would someone want to be an Office Insider? And the obvious answer is, you get the latest bits. You get to try the newest features. Things like dynamic arrays data types, artificial intelligence and that’s a great reason to be an Office Insider. But there’s other reasons. You get to be part of the community in Insider forums and really, that’s what this podcast is about. If you discover something wrong, you want to send feedback to Microsoft so they can fix the issue before it reaches the people in the monthly channel or the semi-annual channel.
Now hey, look. I hear people say, “We shouldn’t have to provide feedback. Microsoft should just get it right.” But that’s not reasonable because every version of Office is coming out on at least 17 different endpoints and the bugs, they don’t call them bugs at Microsoft, they call them regressions, the regressions only usually happen if you do X followed by Y followed by Z.
Now, I see these a lot because I’m doing the same 7-hour seminar over and over and over, 35 times a year, right. So I’m do this, followed by this, followed by this, followed by this. And then if that next thing crashes or there’s a problem, I’ll realize it right away that it’s not like it used to be. And those are things that I can report to Microsoft. But you play an important role because you do a different set of steps day after day after day after day, right. And you might be the only Insider who’s actually creating this type of a pivot chapter after a pivot table that’s been grouped by month and quarter who knows what it is. And again, as an Office Insider, we’re living inside this orange ring here, we’re the first million people to get these bits. If we report the issue then it will prevent the 6 ½ million people out here in the monthly channel or the hundreds of millions of people out in the general availability channel. Right.
Now, what I learned last week at the MVP Summit is the right way to report the issue and I’ve been doing it wrong. There’s four things.
If something is wrong in Excel, if you discover a bug or regression or whatever you want to call it, what you have to do is come out here to help, go to feedback, in feedback choose “I don’t like something.” Give a good 2, 3 sentence description of what is going on here, attach the logs and most importantly, down here, say that you can contact me about this feedback. Why is that so important? There is real humans reading these inside of Microsoft and the Insider team has found they frequently need to reach out to the person sending the feedback to get clarification on what happened.
If the report doesn’t have an email address, it often ends up in the dead end, and they cannot follow-up. With the increasing number or reports, those with an email address are giving priority.
Frequently, I’ll send a frown but I don’t bother to send my information and that puts me in the second bucket. If you really want to make a difference, make sure to fill this out completely and then submit.
Okay. And then the question that a lot of other Excel MVP’s asked, “Wait a second.
What happens if it’s not just a regression but it actually crashes Excel? Should we send a frown after a crash? Is it too late? I mean there’s no screenshot to send.” And here’s the amazing news. If Excel crash, open Excel and before you do anything, don’t open any files from that point, send a frown. In the description say, “The last session of Excel crashed when I did XYZ.” The telemetry from that last session is still available and it still will be a useful feedback.
Now, check out this cool, vintage, distressed Microsoft Office Insider ball cap. I go this at the MVP Summit in 2018 and then I use it for when I need to look cool. Now this last rocket launch that I was photographing a nice Delta 4 medium there for ULA(?) rocking my ULA t-shirt, but also my Microsoft Office Insider ball cap, it just feels cool, it just feels cool there with all that old, industrial complex at Cape Canaveral Airforce station.
And the Office Insider team has given me several of these to give away. So, it’s really simple.
All you have to do is leave a YouTube comment let’s say before March 31st, 2019 just say hey or say you’re in the Insiders program how you’ve—what bugs you found in the Offices, I mean regressions you found in the Office Insider program and I’ll choose 5 winner randomly and mail these out to you no matter where you are. Anywhere in the world, I’ll be happy to ship this to you.
And hey, don’t forget to subscribe and ring that bell so you can get notifications future episodes. Thanks for stopping by, I’ll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
