Microsoft's Many Outlooks Are Confusing Users
- Reference: 0176820747
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/25/215234/microsofts-many-outlooks-are-confusing-users
- Source link:
> Baffled by the plethora of Outlook options out there? You aren't alone. Microsoft veteran Scott Hanselman [1]posted a list of some more variants that could be used to do the same thing. It's a problem common to several Microsoft products. A file needs to be opened, but which app should be used? Should it be Outlook New, or Outlook (New)? With tongue firmly in cheek, Hanselman listed some more options: Outlook (Zero Sugar), Outlook (Caffeine Free), and so on. Hanselman, Developer Community veep at Microsoft, also included Outlook '95, although to our mind the peak came with the version of Outlook in Office 97. A happier, more trusting time when security was less important.
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> While users can create multiple [2]Outlook profiles to store email account details and data locations, Hanselman's post on Bluesky [3]highlights an issue facing many users of Microsoft's software : which incarnation of the application to use. Teams users often find themselves presented with a variety of applications -- Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Teams (Personal), for example, can often appear side by side in the system tray. [...]
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> There is a cautionary tale about [4]what happened when a soft drinks company tried to replace a well-liked product with a "new" version and renamed the previous preferred version as "classic." The list posted by Hanselman -- who is also [5]notable for tips on managing Microsoft's personal information manager -- is amusing, but also highlights the perils of having multiple, similarly functioning options to do the same thing, and the potential for confusing users.
[1] https://bsky.app/profile/scott.hanselman.com/post/3ll5obc6v5c2j
[2] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/overview-of-outlook-email-profiles-9073a8ac-c3d6-421d-b5b9-fcedff7642fc
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/25/too_many_outlooks/
[4] https://www.coca-colacompany.com/about-us/history/new-coke-the-most-memorable-marketing-blunder-ever
[5] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/shanselman_not-enough-people-are-coloring-their-calendar-activity-7304707251548696576-SRfn/
Solution (Score:3)
Thunderbird.
Re: Solution (Score:2)
Snarf ! Snarf!
Re: (Score:2)
Alpine here for day to day use. I also have roundcube if somebody wants me to look at his cat pictures without having to save the file in Alpine.
Suggestions for Microsoft (Score:2)
1. Stop pushing for 2 year Long Term Support (LTS) releases as a way to force people to upgrade and avoid maintenance costs . For example, .net, Visual Studio 2019 which somehow couldn't build .NET 6 applications without manually hacking the configuration files
2) Stop pushing all things to connect to the cloud or internet. Build products with a "disable and hide cloud links and features" toggle in the configuration
3) Stop building products which do not remember user configuration, like Teams, if you logout
Congrats! (Score:3, Insightful)
By putting up with all the shit Microsoft does in Windows, you have given them carte blanche to do anything, no matter how obnoxious to users. You've worked hard to ignore all the bad stuff, making excuses, or applying fixes, and then stubbornly continuing on with Microsoft products. Now all this hard work is finally paying off with a plethora of increasingly shitty versions of old software. Notepad was simple and worked but now you get [1]notepad with AI [slashdot.org]!
Congrats on sticking it out this long, you've earned this.
[1] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/11/07/224248/even-microsoft-notepad-is-getting-ai-text-editing-now
Leave it to Microsoft (Score:2)
Leave it to Microsoft to make an email program horribly complicated.
It was a solved problem. A PIM (Personal Information Manager) was relatively simple and effective back in the PalmOS era. Mostly it relied on office metaphors of having a calendar, datebook, contact file/rolodex, etc.
In Microsoft's defense, HCL Domino (Lotus Notes) isn't any easier. It's a kind of program pretty much every office worker uses, including the programmers, but they are written like nobody has a clue about its use cases and work
What? Just wait for Windows 12 (Score:3)
With 3D printed quantum AI which will require a modest entire computer upgrade, and you will finally have the functionality of a 1980s 16 bit desktop computer!
Re: (Score:2)
3D printed mobile quantum AI. Get it right!
Re: (Score:2)
What the hell are you larping about? I printed all quantum AI 4D with my HP Epson directly to WiFi and all it spit out was 1080P confusion.
Next, I checked my connection on the moon. It was 100000000% perfect. But I noticed a slight bit of lag. So I unplugged the WiFi, and replugged it to nothing, and now everything is fine.
And the best version.. (Score:2)
The best version of Outlook, IMO, was the free Outlook Express.
It just did the job of email quite nicely. Don't really need bells and whistles with an email client.
This problem isn't just outlook (Score:2)
How many people without looking it up can tell me the difference between "OneDrive by Microsoft Corporation" and "Microsoft OneDrive"?
How many people know the difference between "Microsoft OneNote" and "OneNote for Windows 10" as well as "OneNote 2016" (this is a trick question, two of them are the same.
People still use Outlook?? (Score:1)
I haven't touched Outlook since I used WinMe! Yahoo/Gmail/Proton all have a web interface.
Let's just say... (Score:3)
...that with so many versions, their outlook is rather unfavourable.
The New Cloud Office Suite Shitshow (Score:3, Insightful)
The entire Office 365 suite (which I think is "Microsoft 365" now?) is going downhill. Excel and the rest have become enshittified by relying on their funky far-off cloud for everything.
There's no reason an application should take 20-30 seconds to draw a window on launch. Even if it's wandering around up in the clouds somewhere trying to find the file. Sometimes it never draws the window at all. And there's no way to tell if you have to task-kill or just sit and wait a while longer.
I'm not sure how they managed to make me long for the days of Windows 7 and Office 2007, other than they somehow managed to make something worse.
Re: (Score:2)
Argh - replying because of bad mod!
Totally agree - I find Outlook unusable these days
Re: (Score:2)
They certainly are helping to sell LibreOffice. Its app start up in nothing flat. Excel takes forever and then another forever now.
Microsoft's Office Products... (Score:2)
Microsoft's Office Products are customer hostile. You get stuck using them at work and therefore they have managed to be the "Default" for most people. Today, even though you pay for their products, Microsoft products are also basically adware/spyware. They tell you that "Windows is Free" now, but that simply is not true. Your Windows license have included upgrades at no additional cost for a while, but that is not "Free". Even their professionally licensed products are ad supported.
The best Outlook (Score:2)
> although to our mind the peak came with the version of Outlook in Office 97
The best Outlook is Thunderbird.
New Outlook is phishing scam (Score:1)
So far nobody has pointed out that Outlook New is just rebranded Windows Mail. They are blatantly forcing users to give their email accounts passwords to Microsoft. Microsoft accesses user mailbox even when user is not using application. If user sends email to "email service provider server", Outlook (new) is not sending email to provider server. It is sending that email to Microsoft.
Where is my PST (Score:2)
Outlook (New)???
More suck, please. (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, and Outlook does not synchronize with Teams properly, and Teams meetings may or may not work properly depending on the phase of the Moon, and teams is _really_ bad on the iPad, and you never know where files are in Teams (in Chat, Sharepoint?, and I have to click so many times to get what I want, and even more to download it) and on and on and on.
I marvel at Microsoft to turn what already has been a raging dumpster fire into a much bigger combined CF/dumpster fire. That takes skill and a lot of resources! Chapeau! At this point I am especially critical of Teams which, with luck, works maybe 90% if the time. I often wonder whether it is actually controlled by gremlins/China/Russia, and not Microsoft.
Nuff' said. I am just amazed people pay for this & companies flock to it ....
Re:More suck, please. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd be happy if teams let me copy a whole message without adding non breaking spaces (or whatever it is they use) and information about who sent it and the time.
Makes sharing code snippets a PITA.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd be happy if Teams let me save a file where I wanted to instead of dictating where everything goes. And the nonsense with "uploading" a file if you're talking to someone. You're not "uploading" anything. You're adding it or attaching it to your message.
Re: (Score:2)
Well:
> Microsoft's Many Outlooks Are Confusing Users
I am pretty sure those users were already pretty confused in the first place when they decided to use any flavor of Outlook to begin with.
Maybe the same applies for Teams? /s
Re: (Score:3)
If I'm not mistaken, "Teams for Work" and the personal version of Teams (called just "Teams") were recently combined into a single product - also called "Teams".
This combined "Teams" was then renamed "Teams (Classic)" about a year ago, when they decided to bring out "Teams (new)", which is yet another Teams.
All of these 3 pieces of software may be called just "Teams" when installed, and may or may not be able to install alongside eachother.
Re: (Score:1)
I'm going with user error there (or rather admin error). You've described a problem I've literally never had, which is saying something because the current state of Outlook and Teams is just an absolute clusterfuck. That said I don't doubt your experience is real. Microsoft somehow creates the least consistent software on the planet where two systems installed on identical hardware at the same time can experience different software problems right after first boot.
The whole never knowing where your files are