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Our household milk consumption has halved during the lockdown but because of short supply, not lack of demand! We have learnt to manage with less by not making milk puddings or milk based sauces and by eating less breakfast cereal.

All these shortages are short term logistics issues; people will eat much the same quantity of food whether in the home or out. Unfortunately, giant corporations are not as flexible as small business and take longer to change course, but I'm sure they will eventually. Probably just as things are returning to normal and they have to change back again 

I use OneDrive as a secondary, off site, backup and as a means of accessing some of my files from my Android 'phone when away from my desk. If it is set up correctly, it stores a permanent copy of the OneDrive files on the PC as well as in the 'cloud' so they are all available offline.

OneDrive is linked to your Microsoft account so the files should be available on any device linked to your account. Of course it is your responsibility to keep a record of your account details and password, but that applies to all such accounts. Unfortunately too many people, understandably, know very little about the technology but expect to be able to use the devices anyway, which is why modern systems try to manage everything for you whether you like it or not 

Mike.

It's hard to imagine what could be using that much space, even with 7,000+ people. I'm using RootsMagic (but it can't be vastly different in storage requirements) and my tree has only half that number, admittedly, but my whole data folder is only around 45MB and the media folder around 6GB including some 7,000 files in 250 sub-folders. Most of these hold downloaded image files of source docs and photos.

Might be worth running a full virus scan just in case there is something else filling up the drive 

Mike.

Pelican,

While I share some of your concerns about Microsoft, and about working and storing data online, I have used the free Office Online on occasion without problems. I also normally use LibreOffice but found the odd formatting issue using .docx files which caused some confusion when sharing files with others. Until recently I had a very slow rural broadband which made online working difficult, but even with that it was possible.

I have been using OneDrive for off-site backups for some years, also without problems, although I also use a second hard drive for Windows File History backups. My feeling is that so many business users rely on Microsoft that they cannot afford to have an insecure system, whereas I would be very wary of some of the third party 'cloud' storage providers.

Obviously I have no idea what sort of work you are doing. If you are working with highly sensitive documents, maybe this is not the answer but, bearing in mind the inflexibility of your co-workers I would be inclined to give it a try if possible.

You can set up OneDrive to keep a permanent copy of all files on your PC.

Mike.

Well, being public-spirited I thought I would try ordering my groceries for home delivery. I am over 70 but reasonably fit and well, in the sense that I'm not on any medication. All went well until I came to the 'checkout' . . . I won't be able to eat for the next ten days as the next available delivery is 28th March 

Luckily I can go to the shop myself or send my son but it does highlight the problems with this self-isolation proposal. We can only hope the shops quickly adjust to the new situation.