hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2534.txt

Episode: 2534
Title: HPR2534: Moving to Office 365 (and painting the ceiling)
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2534/hpr2534.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 04:59:25

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This is HBR episode 2,534 entitled, Moving to Office 365 and Painting the Sealing.
It is hosted by ITWI's and is about 31 minutes long and currently in a clean flag.
The summary is, ITWI's talks about moving his company mail to Office 365.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
We get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15, that's HBR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at AnanasThost.com.
Hey there Hacker Public Radio, this is Nightwise from the Nightwise.com podcast calling.
As you might hear by the sound of the echo, I'm actually not in a cathedral, but I am in an empty house.
In an empty house at the moment, where I am, if you hear this, painting the ceiling, and it's a very boring job.
It is indeed, so I thought, you know what, you know, I put on some podcasts, you know how it is when you do some housework, it's so nice to do it.
But I decided to, you know, stick with tape actually, the lapel mic to my painting shirt that I have on,
because otherwise I would be covered in white paint.
And record a show for you guys as I'm doing this.
So please forgive me if it sounds a little roomy, that's because there is no furniture in our brand spanking you living room.
And I am painting my brand spanking you ceiling before we can move in.
And that's going to be the topic of today, moving, moving in and moving out as a geek and what that means.
So you're also going to get a little bit of a soundseem tour as I move the plastic that's on the floor around.
So I don't get paint on the floor and as I pour paint into the bucket and as I do all the things that you do when you're painting the ceiling.
So I hope you guys bear with me.
So I'm going to give you some content to make up for all of that, if that's okay with you guys.
So let's see what have we been doing.
This is the kitchen.
Sounds a lot less roomy than the living room, which is the biggest room in the house.
So that's why it sounds roomy.
And for the moment I have like three or four ladders standing around which I constantly have to move around because I am doing the ceiling here at the moment.
First layer, judging by the state of the ceiling because there was a fireplace here.
And the quality of the paint which I purchased, which could have been better, I'm going to have to do several layers before I get a result.
I'm going to have to do two anyhow.
Well, my enemy today is time, not as much time, but rather the rotation of our beautiful planet, which since it is rotating away from the sun.
And one of the things you need when you are painting, when you are painting in general, the ceiling or any any any surface actually is is daylight.
So that's something I'm going to be working on.
That's something I'm going to need.
The only downside with this is that the previous owner still has two large cupboards standing around like massive pieces of furniture, which you know have to be covered at all times because he's coming by to pick them up.
He wanted to sell them to me, but I don't like him. I don't like him at all.
I don't like anybody else's furniture in the new house anyway.
I think it's bad due to these people broke up in one hell of a divorce.
They literally are at each other's throats.
So these, to me, these cupboards are memories of that time.
And I don't want them in my house at all.
So sorry for the rustling noises as I cover these gigantic pieces of furniture.
My God, they are heavy.
They are so freaking heavy.
Who would ever, ever buy crap like this?
I have no idea.
My furniture comes from like, yeah.
But that being said, sorry.
Ranting.
Moving is quite interesting when you're a geek.
It's also quite interesting when that geek has his own company,
which of course needs to keep running.
It needs to continue operations.
Just cover this up.
Sure, I don't get a drop of paint on here,
because I might have to buy these fucking, which I don't want.
And moving as a geek is interesting, especially when you have a company,
because as I said, that company needs to continue to work,
needs to continue to remain operational, while you are moving house.
And that's something we've been doing over the last week,
especially in a little bit of a rust fashion,
as it turns out that our actual move
is going to be four weeks earlier than it was actually estimated.
So the notary office called me and said like, hey,
I got a nice surprise for you.
You get to move in four weeks before.
You actually thought you were going to move in, which was nice,
because now we are four weeks earlier in our new house,
but our entire planning scheme is down the drain.
So I was challenged with the fact that I needed to keep my company operational,
which is a small IT consulting firm,
small B.V. operative word here, me and my wife,
and also being able to run that from two completely different locations.
Now, the new house we bought is a little bit away from the city center,
at the other side of town, and it's really nice and calm and quiet here.
Hence, to my great apologies, the noise.
Sorry, I really got to make sure that I don't get paint on these things.
Where did I put my ladder?
Oh, there it is.
So I began with moving my own infrastructure.
My company is growing, and thanks to the new European privacy laws,
which is the general data protection regulation laws,
and we have to comply to quite a few rules
when it comes to handling consumers' data.
I could do an entire podcast about the GDPR,
because I give talks about it, but I'm not going to do that.
But as a suffice to say, one has to be compliant with the GDPR,
and one's suppliers, especially one's cloud suppliers,
have to be compliant too.
Now, I was with my company, still grandfathered in on the Google Apps platform,
that I once, many moons ago, got for free, why it was still free?
Which was nice, you know, and when I got my company,
you know, I just had the nightlife.com domain,
and I just added in another domain.
Brain Rangers, which is the name of my company,
and I had a couple of cloud, a couple of email accounts there.
I couldn't add another domain, because it was the free option,
and Google only let me go so far.
But in the end, it was ideal.
It works, it was fine, but there was quite a bit of mix-up
between our personal accounts, which were on those domains,
the nightlife.coms, which were on those domains,
and my company accounts, my company account,
which is on that domain.
And that's not really an issue, unless you start getting staff.
We're going to have a trainee pretty soon,
who's going to join my company for, I think, three months.
And when it's just you and the Mrs. Security,
doesn't really matter, compliance doesn't really matter.
But when you get staff on board, you've got to watch out.
You've got to be prepared for anything.
And I was time to professionalize my little operation.
So I migrated from Office 365 to Google to Office 365.
Now, why?
Well, compliance for one.
The GDPR compliance for Microsoft is a lot more advanced
here in Europe at the moment than the one from Google.
And when I need to make my company compliant with the law,
I can just take a box that says, my males are in the cloud.
Microsoft is handling my males.
They have servers in Europe.
And here's their GDPR statement and done.
So I migrated.
That was fun.
What did I have to migrate?
About two mailboxes.
A Google Drive.
And let me see.
Two mailboxes, a Google Drive, with some files on that.
And that's basically it.
So nothing fancy.
So what I did is I set up my Office 365 domain.
I purchased one business premium account.
So I would have, for 15 euros a month, all of my office
licenses.
And yes, I know you're going to have to read that there are
open source alternatives.
But if you have a business, it's a different thing.
I can do a whole separate show about that.
One of the reasons why I left Linux as a dedicated desktop
for my company.
But we'll get that, get to that on another time.
So I'm painting here in the meantime.
So what happened was I migrated these two accounts
to Office 365.
And Office 365 has a nice migration app, where you can just
open up IMAP on the Google mailbox and then
talk to the Office 365 admin panel that says, just
pull these emails in, because I had one business premium
account, which is my domain admin, and two user accounts,
which is all I have.
Why do I keep the admin accounts separate from the user
account?
Well, the same reason you don't log in as root on your own system,
at least I hope you don't, because that would be really dumb.
That would be really stupid.
So yep, set that up, started the migration.
It was all fine.
All the mail was imported.
And then there was the option to, you know, I
went looking for the option.
How do I import my calendars and my contacts?
And in the Office 365 admin panel, there
is no option for that.
So while you can batch import mailboxes,
you cannot batch import contacts and calendars.
You have to do that individually for each user.
So what I did, you know, the drill,
export the IKEL file, and import the IKEL file
using the web interface of my users Office 365.
Maybe I can't.
Once done and dusted, I was pretty happy with the result.
I had the same had to do the same thing for the calendar,
which did have some issues, because I had a fairly large
calendar, and it decided, no, it doesn't work.
It doesn't work.
Gee, thanks, Microsoft.
It doesn't work.
No, no, no, it doesn't work.
So I had to rebuild our business calendar for the next three
months manually, which was not fun.
But hey, once that migration was over,
the move was complete.
And I thought, you know what?
I'll use Outlook on iPhones and on mobile devices.
Yeah, that lasted for about 20 minutes.
Pretty soon, you get to see that even on iOS, Outlook
is a pretty immature client to use.
It doesn't have all the functionalities.
It's, although it's great on Android,
not so much on iOS.
Because I have been using Outlook on Android
to get at my Gmail, which gives you this paradox,
where a Microsoft program is the best way
to access Gmail on an Android device.
But hey, that being said and done,
we went back to the general Apple client,
which has a very good integration
with Office 365 and the Exchange Connector.
And we started using that.
So that was that, that was that.
Then I wanted a simple Google Drive.
And you have OneDrive, that's great.
OneDrive is like Dropbox on steroids.
Not just basically Dropbox.
A little more immature, but hey, it's OK.
It did the job that it had to do.
We were happy with that.
So that went fine until, until I wanted
to share files with the rest of my company.
And that is in OneDrive, a lot harder than you think.
Because then you need terrified drum roll.
Then you need the terrible program called SharePoint Online.
Took me a while to get it working.
I had to set up a SharePoint site.
And SharePoint is one of these things.
If an IT guy tells you to go look it up on the internet
or on SharePoint, he's basically flipping you.
You know what?
FU.
Go figure it out for yourself.
It's somewhere on OneDrive, you're right.
It's somewhere on SharePoint, you're right.
Go find it.
Because that web infrastructure that everybody's
been toting for years, that should be the cat's meow
in SharePoint, it's bullshit.
Nobody uses it.
Users take a look at it, can't find their way around.
And the first thing they ask is, can I just have the file
view?
And you give them the file view, and you're happy.
So what you've basically done, and I've
seen this in many companies, is spend, I don't know,
a couple of $100,000 on a migration project
to go from your file server to SharePoint Online.
And use it as a file server.
Because what I did was I just synced it with my OneDrive,
the SharePoint site.
And that way I could access and share it.
It just worked.
So that was fine.
So yeah, that was done.
So SharePoint done.
And it's OK.
So my first impressions with migrating to Office 365
were moving to Office 365 were pretty OK.
I mean, Microsoft has matured a lot.
I've been using it at Firefox browser
because when I don't have Google anymore, who needs Chrome,
I've got a lot of stuff to eat up my memory.
And I got to say I was very pleased with it,
because it worked well.
The web-based versions of stuff like,
let's see, the web-based versions of stuff like Word
and stuff, they're pretty good.
They're pretty good indeed.
I mean, Apple can learn a lot from Microsoft in that way.
And the Google apps, as nice as they may seem,
just don't have that much possibilities.
And the downside with using Google Rider apps
is that you use a lot of compatibility
when you are truly working on a device independent way.
Could be very carefully opinion, the ceiling,
right next to a brick wall.
Raw brick wall, very nice, very pretty.
But if I smudge on this, you will see it.
And the Mrs. will not be pleased.
And she should be.
So when you use Google Rider, it's fine.
You export to Word.
That's fine.
But then you are, you know, a digital nomad that you are.
You're away from your computer.
And you get a word, files into you.
And you open it up in Google Rider.
And somehow, the layout gets ported.
And this is not Google Rider's fault, I know.
This is Microsoft's fault being nice and proprietary
with their stuff, as they always are.
But, you know, whether or not you get to, you know,
be angry at Microsoft for that, it's the reality.
And if you are an open source hobbyist in the ham shack,
who I don't know, Payne's Polka dots on assault rifles
all day, drives around in a truck, and screams at the neighbors
in their trailer, that's fine.
You can go full open source installment on Microsoft
for doing this.
But it's just a business reality.
And the business reality is like, OK, this isn't working.
And it needs to work, because I get paid by the hour.
So my IT needs to be efficient.
And if it's not proprietary, well, I have my hobby for that.
I will crawl into my geek corner and do all the night
wise, open source stuff all the time,
and be as cross platform and open and installment friendly
as I want to be, but not from my business.
So Microsoft web apps to the rescue, and they work well.
So I'm pleased with that.
I was very pleased with the migration.
Let's see, Microsoft has some new apps that they want you to use.
Skype for Business is one of these things
that I don't understand.
They're Skype, they're Skype for Business.
I have never, ever understood the actual difference
between both.
I have never understood the fact why there should be two clients.
I mean, why?
One was fine.
So we're not using that yet.
All of the SharePoint stuff, you can build a team site.
You get a counter per team site, an email address per team site,
and stuff like that.
Haven't played around with that much yet.
Just build one SharePoint site.
And that's it.
And you can grant access to that to people, and it works fine.
I'm very happy with the end result.
It's going to work great for my company.
But yeah, not so much fan of going completely
in the proprietary zone there.
Meanwhile, I've started to paint the second part of the ceiling,
or the last part, I should say.
There you go.
You always have to have three layers, three strokes horizontally,
and three vertically.
And then paint them on top of each other.
I don't like, it's very against my rhythm.
You want to go all Mr. Yunagi.
Paint off, paint off.
But it's like paint on, paint on, paint off, paint off.
Which is very strange, but hey.
So that was my Office 365 migration.
What else am I using?
Well, Microsoft has this thing that looks like Trello,
which is called plans, which is cute.
It's like a kid dressed up like Batman going, I'm Batman.
It's Microsoft dressed up like Trello going, I'm Trello.
It's not Trello.
But it works pretty OK.
It gets worse when you take a look at Microsoft forms.
Now, there's a kid dressed up as a, I don't know.
It's a kid with a brown garbage bag,
with a black garbage bag on its head screaming, I'm Batman.
You are not Google Forms yet.
OK, it's still in beta, it isn't ready yet,
but hey, come on, it's a dynamic web form that
goes into a spreadsheet.
I use it on Google, in our Google environment a lot,
to give feedback when people would come to talks that we
would give, and stuff like that was fun.
It worked well.
Easy.
All the data that was entered in the form
was automatically entered into, that's
a cult in the spreadsheet.
And we do our bookings that way.
That's basically, it's the only thing that is, by the way,
still on our Google environment for the moment,
because we have no valid alternative.
That noise, that's our heating or central heating,
so I have to let the air out, I think.
This is a big house, and it has all kinds of strange noises,
especially when you're here alone the first time.
You're like, what's that?
What's that?
What's that?
So Google, Windows Forms, cute, but kid in a garbage bag
screaming, I'm Batman.
And that was the migration in the end
when pretty OK, none of my mail's got lost.
I was able to import all of my contacts.
We even took a look at using Outlook on our Macs.
And I got to say, again, kid dressed up as Batman screaming,
I'm Batman, I am still pissed with Microsoft,
although I understand their decision,
that Outlook on the Mac is such a retarded program,
because on the PC, Outlook cuts me out.
That's an industry standard, not the best mail program,
but hey, an industry standard.
And those are important industry standards.
So yeah, that was that.
And on the Mac, it's not, it's like a retarded sibling.
I don't look, come out, look to your Outlook too,
but not quite.
On the PC, you have these fantastic integrations
with stuff like OneNote, which I live on.
I'll talk about OneNote in a little while.
On the Mac?
Nope.
Looks like, I don't know, what's it called?
Damn.
The default, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Ah, evolution.
Yeah, that has this evolution feel to it.
Wants to be stuff, but not point there yet.
On the PC, it's great.
And so we decided, you know, we'll take a look at it.
Let's see if we want to use it for the next couple of months.
But if we don't like it, we just switch back to,
on the Mac, we were using ML, which was great.
And well, on Linux, there's not really a great Outlook
connector client, but that's not really an issue,
because, or quite frankly, the web interface is fantastic.
Yeah, that was that.
So the last app I want to talk about in my Windows suite.
And doing this on Hacker Public Radio
must have people foaming at them out.
But hey, I'm a cross platform geek.
I use whatever works for me.
Take your storeminisms.
And please, MV slash storeminism to slash where
the sun don't shine.
I just do stuff that works for me.
But it's the one of the apps that I really like in the Microsoft
Suite, and which I swear by, is one note.
For the longest time, I could not
understand people screaming about one note.
They did everything in one note, and I went like, yeah.
OK, looks OK.
I got a drink here.
But it was kind of like Chef went online.
I didn't know what to do with it.
What would you do with it?
Until I started using it.
So I used it to type stuff in.
That was nice.
And it would have little folders and stuff.
So I didn't have 25 word files, so text files.
It looks better than ever note.
Sinked better than ever note.
Oh, OK, no problem.
But then, but then, this Jeremy Clarkson would say,
but then, I got an iPad Pro with a stylus.
And then, and then, the world's opened up.
Oh, my God.
The pen accuracy on the iPad Pro is fantastic.
I was looking for something to replace paper,
because I have the disease that, whenever you give me
a scrap of paper, that is important.
And judging by the range of importance,
there is a logarithmic scale or equal
to the importance of the pace of paper.
And there is the chance that I lose it.
The moment I put a piece of paper, the high of the chance
that I lose it.
And absolute receipt from, I don't know,
$16 years ago might have that for you.
But, you know, the, I don't know, tax papers for a car,
which I got three minutes ago.
Oh, my God, where did I put them?
It was on a slip of paper.
I do not know where it is.
That's me.
It's not my fault.
So, going paperless was a big thing for me.
And one note was something that really worked.
And on the iPad Pro, it is the killer app.
So, suddenly, I started doing everything in one note,
taking pictures in one note, making annotations,
on those pictures in one note, jotting down meetings
in one note, and the great thing is,
when I put my iPad aside, it immediately
seemed over to my PC.
So, I could just pick it up back there and continue,
which was, what, bloody awesome.
And for me, one note is one of those killer apps.
Web-based version of one note, also pretty darn good.
Mac version of one note, quite good.
iPad Pro version of one note, very good.
And Surface Pro version of one note, other windows.
Well, you have two on windows.
You have the one note app, which you should burn.
And you have the actual application
that comes with the Office Suite, which is free to download.
And fantastic.
And this is one of the migrations that was very hard to do
when I did a migration from one note,
from my personal account.
I just had a basic Outlook account, which
seemed to my Outlook notebook.
But now I wanted to go to my one drive on my Office 365
environment, and blonde hold.
That don't work.
That no tools for it.
No solution exists for it.
You'll have to do it yourself.
So, you'll have to open both notebooks upside-by-side.
And one of these notebooks was on the SharePoint Drive,
shared with my wife, which was quite,
took some jiu-jiu getting working.
Apparently, somehow, one note decided
that it did not see my SharePoint site.
And it did not see the one note that I shared
on that SharePoint site.
So, I was kind of doubting the word SharePoint.
I started to call it's height point.
But those things aside.
What I ended up doing was open up my old notebook,
and open up a new notebook on the SharePoint,
and copying over the pages.
You can do that in Outlook.
You can just move the pages from one to the other.
So, you don't have a no-control A and a control C.
But that was, for me, a very important one,
because I have a ton of project stuff for my company,
and for clients that I work with on this one note solution.
All right, let me just finish up.
This end here, and then I'm almost done.
Yeah, but it was fun.
It was fun, especially since it worked.
You know, everything kind of works.
And I am pleased with the one note.
And that was my Office 365 migration.
That was one part of the move.
So, next up, I'll talk about a different part of the move.
Moving...house.
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