Windows 11

[Joy Dean]

I have a laptop, about a month old, with Windows 11.

After setting it up, I copied some documents and pictures from the desktop of the old, no longer used laptop to a memory stick, then put the contents from the memory stick onto the desktop of the new laptop so I could decide which to keep at my leisure.

This morning I found that the desktop contents had disappeared! Some were documents, some pictures, some shortcuts. Eventually, I found they had somehow gone in something called Joy-personal. I did, though don't remember how, manage to put them in another folder called desktop and that folder is on the desktop now.

How can I stop this happening again, please?

[Calverley Lad]

We both need to read up about Windows 11, any suggestions for reading matter?

[F1fan]

Hi Joy,

OneDrive is heavily intergrated with Windows 11 and it sounds like your PC is setup to use OneDrive backup and personal folders.

Here is a Youtube video that goes through all sorts of things for Windows 11, and there are nice little chapters / bookmarks set as it is 2 hours in total :-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKn-r3X2CLk

Here is a Youtube video for OneDrive - it is on Windows 10 but works the same apart from it is already installed and signed in as part of the setup when you get a new PC with Windows 11 :-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM4eXdETKOY

[farmeroman]

Sounds like a nightmare. Windows 11 seems want to push users towards Microsoft accounts rather than local accounts and then to OneDrive and Office 365. I keep all of my stuff local though and refuse to use the cloud at all so I always use local accounts and locally installed Office and other software.

Each to their own though and the cloud clearly suits some people, particularly for data security, although I have my own local backup system and prefer not to trust MS with it.

Here's a (relatively) simple description of MS v local accounts: https://www.makeuseof.com/ways-microsoft-and-local-account-different-windows/

[Joy Dean]

Thank you, both, I shall look at the videos and the link.
Calverley Lad, we have some watching / reading to do 

My previous, seven-year-old, laptop was Windows 10 and had OneDrive but it hadn't troubled me then.

Someone suggested that I transferred my documents and pictures folders into C Drive on the Windows 11 new laptop, which I did; they have not been troubled by OneDrive. I shall, as previously, do backups on memory sticks. Cloud, and dropbox about which I have received a few emails, are of no interest to me. I just like a straightforward life without complications, and, fortunately, am getting older (a "boom baby") and don't wish to have things "thrown at me" which have no interest to me. They are fine for people that have the sort of mind that can take in such things, but mine just "glazes over" 

We bought a CD a few years ago that someone produced which solely has Word and Excel on it; they are the only things from Microsoft that interested us. This CD worked on the previous laptop but not on the new one. This is not a problem; I downloaded Libre Office (free) which is perfectly adequate. The majority of the time, if typing documents, I use WordPro from Lotus Smartsuite; fortunately I could install it again on the new laptop.

[antiquesam]

I haven't changed to Windows 11 yet but am constantly pressed to use Microsoft products rather than Google, which fits nicely with my Pixel phone and android tablet. Microsoft always seems slow and chunky to me

[F1fan]

We bought a CD a few years ago that someone produced which solely has Word and Excel on it; they are the only things from Microsoft that interested us. This CD worked on the previous laptop but not on the new one. This is not a problem; I downloaded Libre Office (free) which is perfectly adequate. The majority of the time, if typing documents, I use WordPro from Lotus Smartsuite; fortunately I could install it again on the new laptop

The documents should open on the new PC, especially as you have an Office Suite installed - Libre Office - I always recommend this as a free alternative to Microsoft Office, and is constantly being updated. Have you tried opening Writer in Libre and then choosing File, open and pointing it to a Word document on the CD and it should open, the same with Calc for Excel files ?

Lotus Smartsuite -  - I didn't think that would work on newer PC's. I used to use that before it stopped and really liked it. It's not been updated in years and any documents created with it should open in Libre Office, so I would stick with that and uninstall Smartsuite 

[Joy Dean]

We bought a CD a few years ago that someone produced which solely has Word and Excel on it; they are the only things from Microsoft that interested us. This CD worked on the previous laptop but not on the new one. This is not a problem; I downloaded Libre Office (free) which is perfectly adequate. The majority of the time, if typing documents, I use WordPro from Lotus Smartsuite; fortunately I could install it again on the new laptop

The documents should open on the new PC, especially as you have an Office Suite installed - Libre Office - I always recommend this as a free alternative to Microsoft Office, and is constantly being updated. Have you tried opening Writer in Libre and then choosing File, open and pointing it to a Word document on the CD and it should open, the same with Calc for Excel files ?

Lotus Smartsuite -  - I didn't think that would work on newer PC's. I used to use that before it stopped and really liked it. It's not been updated in years and any documents created with it should open in Libre Office, so I would stick with that and uninstall Smartsuite 

The CD that we bought a few years ago that someone produced solely has Word and Excel programmes on it, doesn't have documents on it.
Yes, using Libre Office I can open Word documents.

Lotus Smartsuite is not supposed to install on Windows 11. This appeared: "This app may not work correctly" etc. I had searched previously on the internet to see if others have managed to install it on Windows 11, and quite a lot of people had done so.  I attempted to install Lotus Smartsuite  from a CD using an external CD drive (the computer does not have an optical drive); inserted the CD, clicked on the right side of the mouse, searched for setup.exe or install.exe.
I would not wish to uninstall Lotus Smartsuite.

[Joy Dean]

Looking at the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKn-r3X2CLk one of the first things stated is that the taskbar is now in the centre. It was slightly irritating, I had found, so discovered quite soon how to move it to the left.

Next is talk about virtual desktops and widgets, and the integration of Microsoft teams chat and video conferencing, emails - I use Thunderbird personally - and gaming and widgets - perhaps this tutorial is not for a layperson? I have no idea what a widget is.