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How to lose your work using Undo Copy in Windows

mihai.fm

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Re: How to lose your work using Undo Copy in Windows

#81

Post by miles »

bakugo wrote: post #13

I have indeed lost work this way multiple times before. Wish there was some way to outright disable Undo Copy, or at least put it behind a confirmation dialog. Edit: Actually read the entire page this time and there's indeed a registry edit to disable it, but it disables every other type of undo as well which isn't ideal.

> Wish there was some way to outright disable Undo Copy

The article explains how to:

"Is there a way to prevent this?

Yes. Just disable this silly feature using the Windows Registry.

Create a DWORD entry named MaxUndoItems with a value of 0 under:

HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

Alternatively you can run this equivalent command:

reg add "HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced" /v MaxUndoItems /d 0 /t REG_DWORD /f

Log off or restart and the context menu option will be gone. The associated shortcut (Ctrl-Z) will be disabled too (note that this only applies to Explorer, Ctrl-Z will still work in other programs)."

Re: How to lose your work using Undo Copy in Windows

#82

Post by datavirtue »

a2128 wrote: post #25

I tested to see what some popular Linux file managers do in this scenario, GNOME Files and KDE Dolphin. Neither of them have undo in the right-click menu. Pressing ctrl+Z pops up the standard "Do you want to permanently delete this file?" confirmation dialog. Dolphin goes one step further, if you say yes to the confirmation dialog, it shows an additional one: "The file (copy) was copied from (original), but since the…

Dolphin is the correct behavior.

Re: How to lose your work using Undo Copy in Windows

#83

Post by CamperBob2 »

datathrow0007 wrote: post #58
jtbayly wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sheets or docs? Within one doc, and multiple sheets makes sense, I guess. Across docs doesn’t make sense to me.

Docs. It's for when you want to have distributed data stores. For example, if you're building out a doc to track your net worth, income, and spending habits: - One main sheet that collates all the data required here (e.g. credit card statements, in-flows and out-flows from bank accounts, current debts and current assets) - Have 3 more docs: One that collates and summarizes your credit card charges One that collates y…

I could stuff this all into one single doc, with numerous sheets, but I don't want to deal with the cognitive overhead of having to navigate through an enormous amount of sheets I rarely (if ever) need to touch (again).

So instead, everybody else has to deal with the cognitive overhead of a document model that is used by no other mainstream PC software program known to Man.

Re: How to lose your work using Undo Copy in Windows

#84

Post by datavirtue »

taneq wrote: post #37
cka wrote: post #7

A similar annoyance is the fact that excel's undo applies to all open excel files. Make a change in a.xls, make a change in b.xls. if you ctrl-z twice with b.xls focused, it'll undo both of the above changes! This has bitten me more than once. Does anyone actually want this behavior?

I'm continually bewildered by some of Excel's design choices. You can't have two files with the same filename open at the same time even if the files are in different directories. And you can't, for some reason, save to a path with square brackets in it. (You can save it with round brackets, rename the file, and then load the file perfectly fine, though.)

All of that sounds perfectly sensible.

Re: How to lose your work using Undo Copy in Windows

#85

Post by someweirdperson »

jonhohle wrote: post #54
prawel wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you have some examples of that quirks?

As others have mentioned, copying and pasting in Excel is bizarre. Highlight the cells to copy; select copy - the source cells now have marching ants around them; perform any action that causes the marching ants to disappear and that content can no longer be pasted. It’s as if those cells are locked as the copy buffer as opposed to some in memory copy like every other copy operation.

It is neither copy nor paste. The copy is "remember this as reference" and paste is "do to this cell to make it relatively similar to the other".

Cut and paste is even better. If the cell to be cut is being referenced, the referencing cell can magically update to the place to paste to.

Selecting and copying the /content/ of a cell is a very normal copy and paste operation.

Re: How to lose your work using Undo Copy in Windows

#86

Post by someweirdperson »

masfuerte wrote: post #34
AraceliHarker wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since Windows 11 includes extensive telemetry, it is possible that Microsoft intentionally designed it this way for user productivity.

Excel has several UI quirks that date back decades. It's never been consistent with the rest of Office even. If Microsoft changed it the accountants would revolt.

> If Microsoft changed it the accountants would revolt.

What's stopping other trades from forming a similarly powerful lobby, like accountants seem to have?

Re: How to lose your work using Undo Copy in Windows

#87

Post by CamperBob2 »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #72

When Windows Explorer first appeared 30 years ago, it seemed too complex for me, so I stayed with Norton Commander and its clones that entire time. Guess stupidity can be advantageous.

Also, I've never seen XCOPY fail this way. What is this "Windows Explorer" thing people keep referring to?

Re: How to lose your work using Undo Copy in Windows

#88

Post by dr_kiszonka »

My dream job would be to get hired directly by higher ups (board, VPs, etc.) and be given authority to hunt down and fix idiotic stuff like this.

It is a fantasy because seemingly stupid stuff often has relatively good reasons to exist, but boy would I have a field day at most big tech companies.

Re: How to lose your work using Undo Copy in Windows

#89

Post by colejohnson66 »

tinus_hn wrote: post #30
cka wrote: post #7

A similar annoyance is the fact that excel's undo applies to all open excel files. Make a change in a.xls, make a change in b.xls. if you ctrl-z twice with b.xls focused, it'll undo both of the above changes! This has bitten me more than once. Does anyone actually want this behavior?

I think Excel is still the old mdi application that has been hacked to look like a sdi application. It’s only a recent innovation that it is possible to have two files open with the same filename.

They fixed that "same file name" annoyance? We have Office 2021(?) at work and it still has that "feature".

Re: How to lose your work using Undo Copy in Windows

#90

Post by dspillett »

tinus_hn wrote: post #30
cka wrote: post #7

A similar annoyance is the fact that excel's undo applies to all open excel files. Make a change in a.xls, make a change in b.xls. if you ctrl-z twice with b.xls focused, it'll undo both of the above changes! This has bitten me more than once. Does anyone actually want this behavior?

I think Excel is still the old mdi application that has been hacked to look like a sdi application. It’s only a recent innovation that it is possible to have two files open with the same filename.

That must be a very recent change - I'm sure I've run into that limitation not more than a few months ago.
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