Microsoft Accidentally Breaks Replying To an Email On Outlook (theregister.com)
- Reference: 0184036990
- News link: https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/06/22/2048235/microsoft-accidentally-breaks-replying-to-an-email-on-outlook
- Source link: https://www.theregister.com/personal-tech/2026/06/22/microsoft-accidentally-kills-epic-outlook-email-threads/5259388
> In some instances, having a user copy and paste the salient bits of the email they are responding to might not be such a bad thing. We've all had emails that required epic amounts of scrolling to find what started the conversation, so forcing users to think about what they actually need to include is no bad thing. However, disrupting user workflows without warning -- well, that is undoubtedly a bad thing.
>
> This is, after all, one of the most basic things an email client needs to do, so shipping a product with a bug that breaks this functionality says more about Microsoft's approach to quality than anything else.
[1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/replying-to-or-forwarding-an-email-does-not-include-the-original-message-in-the-email-body-in-legacy-outlook-for-mac-2aff3768-e7c5-4f5e-90ab-2e3976f424e8
[2] https://www.theregister.com/personal-tech/2026/06/22/microsoft-accidentally-kills-epic-outlook-email-threads/5259388
[3] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/5923437/outlook-for-mac-version-16-110-when-i-reply-to-the
Probably an enhancement by an AI agent (Score:5, Interesting)
Just a guess.
Re: (Score:1)
Nah, they're just jealous that other people's fuckups have been dominating the news, and they want some of that old-fashioned media love too.
More importantly (Score:5, Insightful)
That's going to break a PGP reply chain and the subsequent messages will be made unreadable.
Slim pickins (Score:3)
Going to guess that effects a pretty slim number of Outlook for Mac users though.
Good that the headlines says accidentally (Score:4, Insightful)
It helps distinguish it from all the times Microsoft intentionally broke things in order to prevent interoperability with their rivals. I sure am glad that their illegal Monopoly was broken up back in 2000 and we didn't just elect a heavily pro corporate president whose doj dropped the lawsuit the first chance they got... That would have been terrible for computing.
Raises hand (Score:1)
> omits the original message from email replies ... suggested workaround is to roll back ... [or] copy and paste the salient bits of the email they are responding to
How about forwarding the message back to the sender(s), does the original still get included?
But I doubt it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps they were trying to get rid of their god-damned forced top-posting.
A: Because we read from top to bottom, left to right.
Q: Why should I start my reply below the quoted text?
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: The lost context.
Q: What makes top-posted replies harder to read than bottom-posted?
A: Yes.
Q: Should I trim down the quoted part of an email to which I'm replying?
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3)
> Perhaps they were trying to get rid of their god-damned forced top-posting.
Think of it as a reply with the previous conversation as an "FYI" attachment if you need to review context.
In practice it works well, imo.
In most simple cases you already know the context so don't need it. And if you do you can look down.
And if you get forwarded an email or added to a convo mid thread, it's good to be able to first see the latest message to get some idea why you got the thing or what the request is, and then you can dive into the bg below. And yes in many of these cases i will
Re: (Score:3)
Whoosh. You do you. But MS pretty much *forces* top-posting. They make it exceedingly difficult to do otherwise. But if you know the history, they're clueless noobs on the Internet.
Re: (Score:3)
T > Perhaps they were trying to get rid of their god-damned forced top-posting.
h >
i > A: Because we read from top to bottom, left to right.
s > Q: Why should I start my reply below the quoted text?
>
i > A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
s > Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
>
w > A: The lost context.
h > Q: What makes top-posted replies harder to read than bottom-posted?
y >
> A: Yes.
I > Q:
Pretty weird use case! (Score:4, Funny)
It's a pretty weird use case in an email client, replying to a message. Small wonder it was apparently left off of their automated regression suite, ja?
Re: (Score:2)
Seems they cannot even get basic things done reliably now.
Or (Score:3)
> workaround is to roll back from version 16.110
or just install Thunderbird.
Many Mac users can use web-mail (Score:1)
and for those that can't, Microsoft will be glad to $ell it to you.
For Mac users using Outlook to connect to non-Microsoft mail servers, Redmond ha$ a deal for you too.
Which Outlook? (Score:2)
New Outlook
Classic/Legacy Outlook
Web Outlook, but basically New Outlook
in-line reply (Score:2)
"making it difficult for recipients to follow conversation history."
"so forcing users to think about what they actually need to include is no bad thing."
Yeah, we kinda used to have such a thing. It was called "trim and inline reply" (bottom reply). Kinda like I JUST DID IN THIS POSTING. But, alas, that was not the Microsoft-way. So it turned into full bottom quotes just being added forever with top replies to 10 questions with no context.
Re: (Score:3)
My company uses lots of Macs. Some of the users are software developers. The main reason I did not get a Mac during the last refresh was one application was Windows only. That system was retired so I do not have that limitation anymore.
Re: "Administrators with fleets of Macs" (Score:1)
wrong are u from 2004?
Re: (Score:3)
Have you never seen a school? (apparently not) >Administrators with fleets of Macs >...don't exist outside Apple.
Re: (Score:1)
Hahahahah tell us you're old and out of touch without telling us you're old and out of touch.
[I mean aside from the fact we're having this discussion on Slashdot.]
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, that's why [1]JAMF [wikipedia.org] is a $600+ million dollar company...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamf
Re: (Score:2)
Don’t know the current numbers but IBM was one of the biggest users of Macs. [1]https://www.cio.com/article/23... [cio.com]
[1] https://www.cio.com/article/236396/ibm-says-macs-save-up-to-543-per-user.html