[ThoAppelsin]

This account had been my oldest digital property, which I had been using for probably over 10 years now. I haven't been using it any differently than before, so now I am left absolutely clueless with a sizeable digital property of mine being lost. I could have kept a copy of everything and not got all-in to the OneDrive with the On-Demand feature, but I don't know what I could have done to not lose 3.5 out of 4 years of pre-paid (required) Office 365 University service, because Microsoft simply does not tell.

[DenisM]

Email the office of Attorney General of your state with a grievance - you paid for it, it was yanked from you, no one is picking up the phone. This is what AG is for - protecting consumers from all kinds of snatch-and-run, big and small.

Now you might think the AG won't have time for you, but the AG is not sitting there reading the incoming email and deciding to act. The AG clerk on duty will check that basic facts and dates are present in your email (make sure to include them), and ask the BigCo for their side of the story; all that before anyone even looks at the merit of the case. The BigCo will now face a choice - continue corresponding with the office of AG (which is billable lawyer time plus a drain on management brainpower), or shut you up by giving you back your stuff (which is free).

[mirimir]

OP is in Turkey :(

[brudgers]

How have you been using it?

[ThoAppelsin]

Sending/receiving emails from it on Hotmail. As a cloud storage to my files on OneDrive. To prepare documents, tables, presentations on Office. To listen to music when there was Groove. Logging into my two Windows 10 computers. To purchase/download software to my convenience on the Store. While signing in to other websites, either using my email, or via Microsoft sign-in.

Probably just like everybody else.

[PascLeRasc]

So what Linux distros are you considering?

[Animats]

Yes. I refuse to go to Windows 10 because of that sort of thing, but some day, Windows 7 will no longer be usable. Running my Android phone without a Google account keeps getting tougher with each update. The jaws are closing.

Of course, Linux has a different set of problems. I just spent most of a day getting audio to work again on Linux after accidentally turning on HDMI audio. This is the 16-step procedure for fixing "no sound" problems in Ubuntu Linux.[1] It's a cut and paste of ten years of hacks for fixing sound problems.

(I took a stab at writing a sane audio troubleshooting procedure.[2] It doesn't have to be that awful.)

[1] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoundTroubleshootingProced...

[2] https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2397280

[StudentStuff]

There are other distros out there, I'd take Debian or OpenSuse over Ubuntu any day. Switching audio outputs from HDMI to analog and vice versa isn't a nightmare in normal Gnome (its usually 2 clicks), but it looks like Ubuntu has heavily modified Gnome to match their theme, and perhaps their modified Settings panel didn't bother to include that.

[ThoAppelsin]

I didn't get to that stage, for now at least. I am still thinking of just starting a new Microsoft account, which unfortunately will not be my [e-mail] this time, that was priceless.

Another $80 is still less than many other cloud providers for 4 years, and going down the Linux road is way too rocky for my preferences, though, may change.

[_emacsomancer_]

> and going down the Linux road is way too rocky for my preferences

The Linux road is pretty smooth for most things. And it has the advantage that it doesn't just disappear into thin air with no explanations....

[brudgers]

Was the user name 100% compliant with Microsoft's TOS?

[brudgers]

Was the four year prepaid university license to Office 365 100% compliant?