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Windows 10 Tablet & Railmaster / Elite

Pete172

By Pete172
in Hornby RailMaster & TrackMaster

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  • 2 weeks later...
Pete172 Collaborator

Pete172

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Hi AC/All,

I set up my newTablet tonight, most impressed.... I even got the Mail aspect sorted out & applied all the privacy settings you suggested, so many thanks for your help.

The only issue so far is that when I open Mobile Word or Excel and try to create a new document, it wants me to create a Microsoft Account first !? any thoughts on this or anyway around it as i would like to be able to create,read and store my documents on my own Tablet or attached drive.

Many thanks ,

Peter.

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Augustus Caesar Mentor

Augustus Caesar

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The only issue so far is that when I open Mobile Word or Excel and try to create a new document, it wants me to create a Microsoft Account first !? any thoughts on this or anyway around it as i would like to be able to create,read and store my documents on my own Tablet or attached drive.

Hi Peter

This will depend upon the version of Office installed but you can change settings normally to save stuff to the drive internal to your equipment.

You should never ever need t open an MS account at any time and this is just one of their ways to try and fool you into opening an account with them so they get you to save files etc to their servers... in a cynical world this can be seen as spying on you via your data held on their servers... a bone of contention now for a good while this one.

Under Options you should see the Save link which allows you to save by default to the drive... as I say though each version from 2010 is slightly different. Let us know what version you have and we'll put you right.

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Pete172

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Hi AC,

When I click to open Word Mobile, Excel Mobile or Power Point Mobile, it displays a notice as follows --

"Sign In to continue. We need to see if your account allows you to create and edit documents"

If I follow that lead, it takes me to an online page that explains the virtues & benefits of having a MS account.

So, I can't even create a Word document without starting a MS account. I have explored the PC to find out what version of office or word is installed, but I can't see anything..except Word Mobile etc. I can't even find it under programme files.

Thanks,

Peter

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Augustus Caesar Mentor

Augustus Caesar

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Hi Peter

It looks from the descriptions and knowledge I have of these things you need an Office 365 subscription in order to even start editing or using documents of any sort with Office Mobile. This ultimately leads to online saving of documents through MS Cloud or at least MS's servers.

You'll end up paying monthly for the privilege which, to me, is nonesense. Your best bet is to forget the mobile versions and if you have another version of a desktop edition of Office, say 2007, 2010, 2013 or even 2016 (latest) then use that instead.

If not there are free versions of Office suites such as Open Office which will do you the same more or less as the Microsoft products.

 

With only 32GB of hard drive space it may be that installs of other products may not be viable anyway.

If there is definitely no other option other than to register with Microsoft then you may need to think about it. The regsitration will be free anyway so an MS account is not always a bad thing. Just be careful when subscribing to their products like 365 because you are literally 'renting' the product not buying it.

Once you do sign in with an MS account the software may then open up options to save to the drive but a lot of the subs based pieces of software do not allow it. It's a money making scheme on a huge level for the likes of MS, Adobe and the likes. For your problem though there is not much help on the net that I can find but that's not to say it ain't there. It's a specific question you ask and maybe some forums will give an answer but I wouldn't bank on it a great deal but you never know.

I'm always willing to try and help so if a question does arise from this do ask...

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Pete172 Collaborator

Pete172

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Hi AC, - Happy New Year !

I am not a happy bunny, as I recon the advertising of the Tablet is a bit misleading - it says the tablet includes Mobile Word etc (which it does) but it omits to say that Word etc can't be used until a MS account is created !!

I was thinking the same as you suggested, that one way round the issue is to install another bit of software like Libre Office, though I don't know how much space it will take up on my hard drive. I intend to buy a 64GB micro SD card, which will extend the memory a lot (could I load aps into that ?)

I think I have an old version of MS Word 97 on a disk, and a disk with Office 2003 !.....but how would I load it into the Tablet ? copy it onto a pen drive & load it to tablet that way ?

The tablet seems to work well with my Mail/Outlook setup, so I really only need Word, and I suppose Excel as a bonus/ would like to have just in case..

Thanks,

Peter...

 

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Augustus Caesar Mentor

Augustus Caesar

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Hi Peter

A Very Happy New Year to your good self too...

 

If you have a USB socket (no matter the size) you can always use an external DVD drive to connect to the tablet and install from there if room permits on the internal drive.

You HAVE to bear in mind that you won't be able to install programs to fill up the hard drive space as the system needs a caching area on the drive which creates a swap file. That is needed as temporary memory where data can be stored by Windows and programs that is required repeatedly throughout the session you use it for. Installed memory chips only use a once only capacity and that data is lost when the tablet is turned off whereas the hard drive can retain it until it is overwritten by another process.

 

Adding a memory card can be used for data storage but Office may not run from it. There is nothing stopping you from trying it out though. Word 97 would use less space but it is probably not not a great deal so 2003 would be a better option.

 

If you would want to install from the memory card you could make it a bootable card (although not necessary) and then put the Office suite onto it or do it in one process using relevant software.

 

The problem with this kind of tablet (if indeed yours is one of those I categorise here) is they are sometimes overhyped by the manufacturer or seller and they don't tell you at all what they are missing as opposed to a laptop for example or even a full Windows version of another tablet. It's only when you ask for a full demo or get it home you realise it's not what you thought or worse it is not capable of doing what some say it is.

 

The versions of Word and Excel you mentioned above might just be able to fit comfortably without impinging on drive space too much but later versions will take more space.

 

Let me know how you get on.

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Pete172 Collaborator

Pete172

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Hi AC,

I checked System / Storage / C drive, it says I have 20GB remaining of 29.1 GB ..(should be 32 GB !!).

You said above that I should aim to keep some of my HD space free... how much should I keep free ?. I'm not sure how much space LibreOffice would take up....bearing in mind I still want to load R/Master !

The drive situation is not easy here, as the only other dvd drive I have is built into another PC, so could I run the MS Office disk & copy it to a pen drive, then load it into my new tablet that way ? - but the software is probably designed for Win 95 or 98 so may not be able to run it anyway !..

P.

 

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Augustus Caesar Mentor

Augustus Caesar

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Hi Peter

Your drive space will always show a shortage from that advertised or the drive's true full size. This is because Windows has to allocate some space for itself to operate from... these are system files, boot sector files and the likes. It is unusable from your point of view. This is normal and happens on all computers - no matter what make or model. So, although you may think the drive is smaller than advertised it actually isn't.

Your swap file could ask for about 5gb to be kept free on the drive although less then that can be done. This is automatically set within the install of Windows although you can physically change this yourself... though it is highly unrecommended purely because you need to know exactly what you are doing. So you have plenty space to work with and your machine will always warn of low drive space which would eventually slow Windows to a crawl... literally... or just stop.

At this point you should have enough drive space to install even a new version of Office though do keep an eye on the space it takes up and uninstall components you are unlikely to need.

Copying to a USB stick (pen drive as you say) will almost always work and you can install from there. The only caveat is the installer may have predefined drive letters to install from (say 'D') and this can cause issues if your drive letter becomes something else... not a common occurrence these days though.

Give that a shot and let me know how you get on.

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