Microsoft

Microsoft 365 Family Price Increase, Bypassed

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Not too long ago I received an email from Microsoft informing me that the price for my yearly subscription to Microsoft 365 Family was up for renewal, and that the price was increasing from $139 (AUD) / year to $179 (AUD) / year. A similar price rise is happening for Microsoft 365 Personal.

A little annoying but hardly very surprising given that just about everything in life has gone up in price. A hike of 29% did seem a bit steep, but what can you do? For a product that I use myself, plus share with my wife and children, it has become a must use product in our work and school lives.

I mean, even our OneDrive shared folders were still working to expectation, unlike many others.

Just a week or so ago, however, I stumbled across an article talking about people’s frustration with the price rise, and to my surprise, a way to get around it! That’s right, you CAN have the same functionality as you have always had, and still pay the old price.

Don’t need Copilot? Don’t pay for it!

As it turns out, the price increase is to do with the added functionality of Copilot, Microsoft’s generative AI bot and Cortana replacement. Without having had much a play with it, from what I have seen it is designed to help compose letters, emails, I guess help with creating formulas in Excel, and no doubt more.

But if you didn’t ask for it and don’t want to use it, why should you pay for it?

What do you know, there was no mention of an option to have Microsoft 365 Family without Copilot in the email I had received.

No clear options above other than to pay the new price, nor a clear explanation as to the reason behind the price rise. Is Microsoft being sneaky?

The key here is to go to your Microsoft account dashboard, and manage your subscription.

Cancel your existing subscription, and select a new one without Copilot

What they don’t tell you, is that by managing your subscription and cancelling it, you then get the option to select the option to choose Microsoft 365 Family Classic (or Microsoft 365 Personal Classic), which comes without Copilot AI, and is at the same price you were paying previously.

You can find good instructions on the Microsoft website, though I guess you need to know to begin with that this is an option, which is where the sneaky perception comes in. Plus, why wouldn’t using Copilot be an opt-in, rather than opt-out? Also note that when you select to cancel, you’ll see a warning explaining how you’ll lose everything in your OneDrive storage if you cancel, though this is only if you cancel your subscription completely, and not if you select another plan.

Also note that if you are currently on 365 Family, you can’t choose 365 Personal Classic (you can choose this if currently on 365 Personal), however you can still select 365 Family Classic. Re-confirm your payment details, and you should be done. 

From the Microsoft site:
Downgrade to Microsoft 365 Personal or Microsoft 365 Family Classic
Go to Subscriptions. Sign in with the Microsoft account associated with your subscription, if prompted.

Find your current subscription and select Manage > Cancel subscription

To downgrade to another plan with fewer features, select Microsoft 365 Personal Classic or Microsoft 365 Family Classic, or another plan that works for you.

Follow the instructions to complete the switch.

Your existing subscription might not change immediately, but it will automatically switch to the new plan at renewal. You will not be charged for the new plan until it renews.

My plan “downgraded”

Once done I then received confirmation via email that my plan had been changed to Microsoft 365 Family Classic, and that I would be charged the existing price of $139 (AUD).

It’s worth noting that you need to do this within 7-10 days of your current subscription expiring.

Thoughts anyone? I found it a bit irritating that Microsoft had done such a thing, with no proper explanation or options freely given to their customers, without digging.

They have even been reported to the Australian consumer watchdog, the ACCC, so it will be interesting if anything comes of that.

At any rate, feel free to share or comment if you found this post helpful, and hopefully you have managed to save a few dollars as well!

OneDrive Users Continue to be Frustrated by Shared Folder Bug

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OneDrive shared folder added to My Files

A shared folder in OneDrive now acts like a browser shortcut (for some users)

It came to my attention a few weeks ago (mid June 2024), from a customer of mine, that they were having an issue with a OneDrive shared folder. The customer is using Microsoft 365 Family. This is despite following the instructions to have the folder(s) that are “shared with me” added as a shortcut to the local OneDrive folder.

OneDrive shared folder added to My Files

The problem is that with one member within the Microsoft 365 Family, the folder no longer acted like a regular local folder via File Explorer. Instead, the folder looked like a shortcut (little blue arrow bottom left corner) and when clicked on would open the online/Browser version of OneDrive. Other family members are not affected (yet) and the issue appears to affect both Windows and Mac users, and is not necessarily tied specifically to the version of OneDrive. Meaning, all computers are using the same version of OneDrive (Build 24.126.0623.0001, 64-bit), yet just one family member cannot see the folder shortcut as they normally would.

This remains a cause of frustration for the customer (now into July 2024), due largely to a loss of productivity and apparent apathy from Microsoft. I have seen it stated that a support response has been along the lines of, “well you can edit the document in the browser version of OneDrive”. This only works if the file has a browser based editor though, as otherwise the user must download the file, edit it locally, and re-upload, all while hoping someone else isn’t doing the same thing. Not good enough, Microsoft.

Anecdotally it may only affect Personal and Family users, and not Office 365 Business users. This merely flames the conspiracy fire as people look to explain as, “Micro$oft forcing people onto higher paying plans and prevent very small business from using 365 Family”.

Whilst it seems Microsoft do acknowledge the issue, at time of writing there has been little information by way of updates on progress or any indication as to when a fixed version will be available (or really, what users would need to do, if anything, once a fix is released).

More can be seen about it in several Microsoft support forums, or Reddit posts. No doubt found elsewhere as well, as people start to turn to alternative solutions such as Dropbox and Google Drive.

My own testing

I think the issue somehow lies with the OneDrive account.

I have come to this conclusion after trying numerous things to fix the issue on one laptop, which included:
removing the shared folder from the problematic computer, and re-adding it
removing OneDrive completely and reinstalling it
Taking the access away from the laptop user, removing the folder from the laptop, and re-applying everything
Performing a fresh install of Windows on the problem laptop

None of the above worked.

Really I should have tried the following before doing the Windows reinstall (purely to save time):
I logged into the problem laptop as a different family member, one that was not having the issue. It worked! The OneDrive shared folder was behaving as it should.

Out of curiosity I then logged into my own laptop as the “problem” user, and I could now reproduce the issue locally.

I decided then to share the problem folder with my own Microsoft account, logged back into my laptop as “me”, and OneDrive was back to normal and the shared folder was behaving as expected.

Edit March 2025: another folder I was testing with (shared with me from my daughter’s account) now appears as a browser URL shortcut only, so I too am now affected.

My loose workaround

From this, I concluded that the issue actually lies with the account associated with OneDrive, and not strictly the operating system or version of OneDrive.

Theoretically therefore, if I could share the folder again with a new account, then maybe the issue would go away (if albeit temporarily).

This worked! A bit of a hassle as I wanted to make sure the new account had enough OneDrive space and therefore added into the Family (luckily had spare licenses) and there isn’t much else this user needs to do within OneDrive other than access this one shared folder, but it worked and now the problem laptop is logged into OneDrive (and OneDrive only) as the new account.

Now that I’m typing this out, the Microsoft 365 Family license might not need to be used, so I’ll see if this can be done away with.

The key to it all though (as I see it) was to have the new account created, and the OneDrive folder shared with them. Perhaps this method will help someone else? I’d love to hear if it did or if you have another workaround!

Please share in your social network if you found this helpful.

Why a JPG will not display (IE8)

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blog feature image

A rookie mistake no doubt, but whilst troubleshooting another issue a client had found on one of my sites when viewed on Internet Explorer 8, I noticed something else odd. Some images weren’t displaying.

Nothing too sinister about these images, they are JPEGs (.jpg), they are small, other images in the same format worked fine.

So why is it that a JPG will not display in IE8?

Having a look around the web I saw other people having a similar issue, and a lot of the help provided suggested checking IE settings (making sure images were set to display) and things along those lines. But I knew this wasn’t my problem, considering other images worked perfectly fine.

It wasn’t until this morning when I decided to compare two images (one working, one not) that I finally discovered the issue; the image mode.

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