Yeah no shit. Then the new ones literally have less features than the old one. Like connecting SharePoint calendars
Microsoft's many Outlooks are confusing users and employees
Submitted 1 month ago by tinosaurier@feddit.org to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/25/too_many_outlooks/
Comments
PeteWheeler@lemmy.world 1 month ago
radiohead37@lemmynsfw.com 1 month ago
Windows having Settings and Control Panel. It is just an unmanageable bloat of legacy code.
cheers_queers@lemm.ee 1 month ago
I use control panel enough that i would be seriously pissed if they removed it. Why is it considered bloat?
based_raven@lemm.ee 1 month ago
I’d rather they remove all the new shit like “Settings” and just keep all the stuff they’ve had for god knows how many years. Control Panel ftw.
SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Seems like they wanted the web and app version of outlook to work identically. Some things don’t work on the web though, so they decided to cut features on the app until they were the same as web. It’s just such a corporate move.
knightly@pawb.social 1 month ago
Or having a button to refresh RSS feeds.
MisterFrog@lemmy.world 1 month ago
In true modern Microsoft fashion. Remove features, lock forum posts of people asking for them back. Provide no reason. Profit because apparently this shit is crack to companies.
dan1101@lemm.ee 1 month ago
OUTLOOK NOT SO GOOD
ripcord@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Try again later?
aesthelete@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Microsoft sucks and so does Outlook. My dad uses Outlook personally and I just can’t imagine that. It’s like taking your torture rack home with you for personal usage.
accideath@lemmy.world 1 month ago
My dad is also a huge Outlook fan. I think you need to just have been using it for 20+ years
Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Idk I like outlook. Its more feature rich and reliable than any other client Ive used. Especially since basically every company uses Echange for email.
Aggravationstation@feddit.uk 1 month ago
My dad also uses Outlook on hi Android tablet. I don’t get it.
Squizzy@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Microsoft is just awful at doing basic shit. Office or M365 or copilot or whatever it is called is a mess of new tabs, signing in and duplication of services.
Christ outlook sucks but it isnt even top five of how shit they are.
Rooty@lemmy.world 1 month ago
They have managed to fuck up something as simple as right clicking. There are no words.
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Dude they fucked up Ctrl+S and Alt+F in paintbrush and it still fucks with my workflows.
c2t@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It’s even crazier to think they participated in establishing the right click paradigm to begin with.
7rokhym@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
The new M365 Outlook is just webmail. Every upgrade is actually a reduction in functionality as they align to the web version. The good news is this eliminates the need for Windows.
Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
Yes! I’m so close to being able to switch the office PC to Linux. I only really use Outlook and Teams, everything else is in a terminal.
Now to convince Security that I don’t need their intrusive logging and scanning crap…
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 1 month ago
Sometimes I think about the billions of dollars of wasted productivity caused by Outlook being so bad at rendering email.
tias@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
I think about the productivity lost because people use Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint every day. Maybe even multiple times a day.
Tungsten5@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Yeah I feel this. Outlook pisses me off. So does Microsoft in general.
What pisses me off more is HP.
OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Yes but I don’t use HP for email because it won’t let me send one if my cyan ink is low.
Madbrad200@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
this entire article is about a single tweet some guy made as a joke
Steve@startrek.website 1 month ago
Welcome to journalism in 202x
garretble@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Hah, I JUST had a conversation with my boss about whether or not I was using the “new” outlook or the “old” outlook.
He’s apparently using the “old” outlook because there’s a toggle switch in the upper right of his window that says “try the new outlook!” and I don’t have that, meaning…I guess I’m using the “new” outlook?
Who knows at this point. It’s all trash.
Rin@lemm.ee 1 month ago
outlook.office365.com/mail/inbox
^ this is the new version lmao. It’s just an electron app (more or less)
durfenstein@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I still think there is a group of people working at microsoft, pulling the strings to dismantle the company from the inside. I haven’t seen an update that makes things better for any of their projects in years
peteyestee@feddit.org 1 month ago
Same with Google.
PagPag@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Same with the US govt.
Aggravationstation@feddit.uk 1 month ago
In my last job I installed Outlook on my personal phone to access my work calendar conveniently. Found out from a colleague that if the admin for an Outlook server you’re signed into on any device fucks up badly enough you could end up having that device completely wiped so I promptly uninstalled it.
NotKyloRen@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Yeah, you’re talking about MDM (Mobile Device Management) solutions/tech. I’m not an IT employee myself, but I am familiar with these things from work (similar situation as yours), and also because I’m a nerd and like researching these things.
On some phones, like Samsung’s (“Secure Folder”), you can have [essentially] a second, containerized instance of Android running. Or you can think of it like a virtual second user that ultimately you have control of. So what I did was install Outlook in that. Because the MDM permissions (e.g. wipe the phone) would only affect that container.
Rin@lemm.ee 1 month ago
here’s some advice from me. Outlook is completely usable from a web browser. This includes phone browsers… just use that if you need your emails on your personal phone.
nuko147@lemm.ee 1 month ago
New Outlook for Windows sucks. I tried it a few months ago and it is like a mobile app for idiots. It lacks many settings and many things. It is like windows 11, you need to do extra steps for stuff and settings you want. Also if you have only a standalone office and not a Office365 subscription they have ads, like their mobile app. Fucking Microsoft.
myrrh@ttrpg.network 1 month ago
…depending upon the week, somewhere between ⅔ and ⅘ of my workflow can be in outlook…
…our IT policy required a shift to new outlook last year and it devastated my productivity: i struggled against its user-hostile interface for a couple of weeks and eventually just stayed home so i could get work done, despite our back-to-office mandate…in short order i was given an administrator account and i’m back on old outlook again…
skisnow@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
I’ve been paying for Office365 home for years. Recently I started a business and signed up for 365 Business for the company email address.
Outlook stopped working, because the 365 Business account - which I specifically signed up in order to do email - doesn’t include local Outlook, and my existing home-licensed one throws a hissy fit if I try connecting it to my business account.
Microsoft sucks.
markvandijk@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
I’ve stepped away from Microsoft. Not my favourite company regarding mailing and chatting.
dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 1 month ago
How… how do they not have a smooth on-ramp for what is basically a straight upgrade to the same service?!
bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Whichever version it is, I hope that one day I can delete a mail, change my mind, press ctrl-z and it will actually undo the last delete and not some random one from earlier in the day.
Amir@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
I just stopped deleting everything and now use my archive as a trash instead
Ledericas@lemm.ee 1 month ago
My work and my former university uses outlook and Ms apps as their primary line of communication
mesamunefire@lemmy.world 1 month ago
“new” outlooks has less features than the old one. And its even harder to find things in settings (they removed a bunch of stuff). I dont look forward to this being on work devices…
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
don’t forget that it uploads your non-microsoft email accounts’ passwords to microsoft so that they can steal your mails to their systems
based_raven@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Our work uses outlook for web and it’s utter garbage. So much stuff you just can’t do.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I work in government, and on mobile devices Outlook government accounts are restricted so that all other accounts have to be removed from the app.
It sounds like a great security feature, but since I need access to 3 accounts for reasons, I’ve got one version installed on my city phone, one on my tablet, and had to install another on my personal phone.
We’re budgeting in a second city phone for me next year because Outlook sucks.
yarr@feddit.nl 1 month ago
I asked my magic 8 ball about this and it said “Outlook not so good”
DarkFuture@lemmy.world 1 month ago
As a help desk worker, I am starting to get tired of Microsoft’s bullshit.
Try something new and it doesn’t work out? Fine. That’s reasonable.
But can we stop breaking what was already working?
pahlimur@lemmy.world 1 month ago
All of Microsoft office products haven’t changed for the good in more than a decade. I still use office 2007 on my personal desktop and 90% of the features and buttons are in the same spot as the current office 365 offering.
Only thing that is an improvement is live collaboration, but that’s getting constantly screwed up by one drive sucking ass.
SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Why are Microsoft employees so fucking stupid?
Sixtyforce@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
The corp I’m working at moved to Outlook Web.
It’s so hostile about downloading attachments through anything but OneDrive it’s comical.
vk6flab@lemmy.radio 1 month ago
So, we can expect more security breaches?
Microsoft: Move along … Nothing to see here.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Good news though - Outlook doesn’t confuse anybody who hasn’t used it in years (or never). Last time I did was when I worked at MS.
gedaliyah@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I’m pretty happy with Thunderbird on all my devices. It’s not quite perfect, but it’s hard to make an argument that Outlook is better. It’d have to be a very specific use case I think.
max_dryzen@mander.xyz 1 month ago
how shielded are enterprise accounts from the data harvest?
werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Has anyone tried the new Atari Outlook? You want open that in Atari outlook?
Nah! I use shoelace outlook exclusively. I know its deprecated but just pull the chord a little and it’s as good as new!
joel_feila@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Laughs is just open in the browser.
Kyle_The_G@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I cant stand anything microsoft anymore. Teams, outlook, word, every iteration just makes me more angry.
deranger@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
I got a new job, fully remote, and we use Teams. Not gonna lie, I don’t get the hate. It seems as exactly adequate as WebEx or Zoom. None of them make me cum, none of them make me upset.
What is it about Teams that people hate so much? How does WebEx or Zoom do it any better?
Fully onboard with hating new Outlook though, fuck it sucks. Can’t even browse the global address list, it’s search only.
CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
It uses a fucking inordinate amount of resources to accomplish its task, mostly.
cron@feddit.org 1 month ago
Teams randomly selects the wrong microphone, so either people can’t hear me or they can hear everyone around me too (laptop mic).
How hard can it be to store my microphone preference?
orclev@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Teams meetings aren’t really that much worse than Zoom, it’s mostly minor gripes, although there are quite a few of those. The Teams chat client on the other hand is an absolute garbage fire that’s significantly worse than Slack, Discord, or pretty much anything up to and arguably including IRC.
An organization , “team”, channel, and chat are confusing as hell, that breakdown does not in any way align with the way communication works in a large organization. Why is there so little configuration available for notification settings? Why can’t I completely silence or ignore a “team”, channel, or chat? Why do I not receive notifications half the time for the things I actually want to be notified about? Why aren’t there threads or at least a sensible and easy to follow “reply to” option? Why can’t anyone seem to agree on the correct way to organize things? Half our groups are creating gigantic “teams” that include half the company, while the other half are creating shared channels nobody knows about. Both options suck.
jabathekek@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
For me, it has nothing to do with how good or bad the actual application is, it’s the terms of service that go along with it. Basically microsoft hoovers up every morsel of data you put into their system, including your voice and face. I liken it to giving all your personal data to someone (including your voice and face), they put in a pretty looking safe on the side of the street and then they sell the keys to it.
Ignoring the fact that the data could be stolen from one of the many third parties it partners with, microsoft could (will) also give the data to the government which will then be used as evidence to deport or jail you or people you know for speaking out against the American regime or acted against Gods will and had an abortion. Or maybe someone in DC makes up some bullshit law targeting some arbitrary demographic which includes you, they request data from microsoft which is promptly provided; you get arrested and sent to jail or deported.
Data privacy is important, especially when the government is corrupt and insane. It’s prudent to protect ourselves and the people we know.
Haven’t needed to use it myself, but here’s an open source alternative I’ve heard a lot about:
meet.jit.si
Not sure it’ll help with your work though.
CouldntCareBear@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
I had to use teams with multiple accounts with multiple organisations. Sometimes my account is added to their organisation, sometimes I used their provided account. Microsoft was going for a one sign in approach and the whole thing just totally failed to account for my situation. It never successfully let me switch accounts, running multiple concurrently certainly never worked.
With one situation the work around was to follow the original organisation invite again, reset my password then proceed with my meeting. I’d do this maybe ten times a day sometimes if I had to bounce between different companies.
And all controls are basic as fuck. It’s a business tool that thinks its target market is my grandma. All controls were apple-ified. I’d get a long error code and I couldn’t select it to copy and paste it, and if I clicked off the window the notification displaying the error code would go away, so i’d have to print screen the error code, paste out somewhere, and then type it out manually into Google to try and diagnose. This was a singer problem 30 years ago. Why are we going backwards?
Anyway, rant over. It’s a pos. Slack is light years ahead.
myliltoehurts@lemm.ee 1 month ago
I’m in the same shoes about new job having to use teams and I wildly disagree. It is awful.
The best part of it is the noise cancellation on the microphone in calls seem pretty good and having a chat created for meetings is a good integration. BUT…
Compared to zoom, I guess it’s not a big deal really. I’d prefer zoom but it’s oh well. Compared to slack (which has it’s own set of problems, but still) however it seems like a pile of shit in my opinion.
freebee@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Teams is fine for video calling and screensharing. The mess begins when organisations, as MS encourages them to do, try to embed everything there is into teams. Then it can very fast become a black hole where no one finds anything anymore
villainy@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Teams is mostly fine these days and I think it’s the only MS product that is getting better over time instead of worse. If you have a competent IT team then the various MS integrations can actually work well to make Teams a usable one stop for comms, recordings/transcripts, scheduling, file sharing, etc.
New features are slow to come but they do come. The insane memory footprint became much more reasonable for me when they moved from Electron to their own Edge-based WebView2 thing last year. The preview builds have finally combined the “teams” channel listings and ad-hoc chats into one tab where you can group them together however you want.
Teams still pisses me off on occasion but no more than any other piece of enterprise software. It’s fine.
Kyle_The_G@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I use it for school. I’m in different groups and I need to use it for chat, file and image sharing on different projects and its an absolute nightmare trying to keep track of channels, I’d rather use literally any other software to accomplish this task. Most of us just jump on discord and use that.
phdepressed@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Teams is annoying because even when you don’t use it, it prioritizes itself and opens making it take longer to get to the programs I actually need and use. This is only a few seconds on new computers but can be minutes on older ones. First world problem sure but my computer should run how I want it.
I’ve also never been able to get the web version to work there’s no error code it just doesn’t connect. IT doesn’t know and the Microsoft guy just said to use the app, which goes back to the above. If it’s going to be an app then leave it as an app if you have a web version then maybe it should fucking work.
Gimpydude@lemmynsfw.com 1 month ago
The leave button is right next to the share button. That’s my biggest complaint.
Nindelofocho@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I manage teams in a MacOS environment and ive seen teams fail to notify when people get a message or phone call straight up. Ive seen it fail to deliver a message, automatically select audio devices (because it has to use its own selection of audio devices) sharing screens is like watching a slideshow no matter what network you are on, controlling another users computer is even worse. Our headsets are Plantronics “certified for teams” or whatever its called and the mute button sometimes desyncs with the client and the headphones may be muted but the client not or vice verse. Theres much more but im so tired from dealing with teams all day. I also think its just a wildly unintuitive ui, settings are completely strewn across all sections
neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
I had to enroll users in teams. Doing so was confusing and 1 user would never get the invite. I ended up ditching it after about a month.
Hawke@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I only use it incidentally but my biggest gripe is the total inability to perform its one function of teleconferencing.
The bit where it lags the audio badly and then speeds it up to catch back up to real-time is absolutely infuriating to listen to, and such a failure of a tool that had. one. job.
redwattlebird@lemmings.world 1 month ago
Teams has been successful in detecting my headphones and mics 20% of the time. So, my alternative is to go on my phone and also my laptop (but mute myself) so I can share my screen during meetings. Windows detects my headphones and mics just fine in other applications, like Zoom or Discord. It’s a pain in the ass.
atrielienz@lemmy.world 1 month ago
My biggest problems with Teams are system slowdown (this was a big issue before I got my new work laptop), and different versions of Teams launching at startup (personal as default and then you have to choose professional or whatever and wait for it to reload everything). Back during the pandemic I had two different Teams (one for my reserve component, and one for my regular job) and it was a nightmare.
sfxrlz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
It closes and opens itself multiple times a day for whatever reason, updating ? Crashing ? I don’t know because it always just reappears in a completely other place than where I had it before.
jabeez@lemmy.today 1 month ago
Well, are you using “new” Teams, or “classic” Teams, both of which can be installed and nag for updates that fail. My “new” Teams (just finally had to uninstall “classic” altogether) just randomly crashes/restarts throughout the day, and also randomly is “unable to authenticate”, making me offline but unaware of it, so miss messages. My “old” Outlook also ~15-20% of the time, on a fresh PC start, just can’t connect to server, and nothing will fix it except for rebooting PC. Yeah, so fucking done with MS shit, it’s all hot garbage, from 11 on down through all their apps. They’ve fucked up EMAIL ffs.
datavoid@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Weird, I always cum while using Teams
(Dear employer - this was a joke)
GhostlyPixel@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I’ve also had no issues with Teams and haven’t had coworkers with issues in probably five years. I prefer it significantly over Slack, and my first job was using IBM/Lotus Notes before they switched to teams, that was a clunky nightmare.
Buelldozer@lemmy.today 1 month ago
TEAMs was terrible going into the pandemic but it’s steadily gotten better, especially over the past 18 months. Reading down the comment chain though I’m in awe at the amount of problems that people are apparently still having with it!
TEAMs via app or browser on my Windows 10 box at work? Fine. TEAMs via app or browser on my Windows 11 Surface? Fine. TEAMs via app or browser on my wheezy HP laptop with Windows 11? Fine. TEAMs via browser (Firefox even!) on all three of my Linux systems? Also completely fine!
Hell I’ve got Creative T-60 USB-C speakers, a logi webcam, and Turtle Beach headphones hooked to a USB sharing KVM for two of those linux boxes and it still just works.
I must be the luckiest dumb-ass alive when it comes to MS TEAMs because at least for the last two years it just works.
TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
I used self-hosted rocket chat before, now I use teams, I understand perfectly all the hate
jj4211@lemmy.world 1 month ago
For the scope of WebEx and Zoom, it’s… fine… mostly. I mean I hate that I can’t really full screen a remote screen share, so it could be better, but broadly speaking, video, audio, and screen sharing is fine. Not coincidentally, this is pretty much the only standalone stuff Teams bothered to uniquely implement, most everything else is built upon sharepoint…
It starts getting annoying for chat platform. You want to scroll back, it’s going to be painfully slow. You participate in cross-company conversations, oh boy you get to deal with the worst implementation of instancing to keep your activity segregated I have seen. Broadly speaking it just scales poorly at managing the sorts of conversations you have at a larger company. If your conversations are largely “forget it after a few hours”, you may be fine.
Then you get into what these platforms have been doing for ages, Lotus Notes and Sharepoint suggesting companies build workflows on top of their platform. Now the real pain and suffering begins.
Rolive@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
Popup #10000: Have you tried feature XYX that nobody asked for yet?
aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
RIP Clippy
paraphrand@lemmy.world 1 month ago
skype!
Kyle_The_G@lemmy.world 1 month ago
ahh member skype?
acosmichippo@lemmy.world 1 month ago
the only thing i haven’t found a viable replacement for is onenote.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
Obsidian is my amswer to it.
oppy1984@lemm.ee 1 month ago
I went from a small business that was entirely G Suite to a mega corp that was entirely Microsoft. Company culture wise the mega corp is soooo much better, technology wise…I felt totally limited and like I had gone back in time.
I went from being able to pull up a Google sheet on my phone to live update decision makers both back in the office and people who were remote, to having to jump through hoops to open an Excel sheet, then request editing rights, then having to submit the edited sheet to my supervisor only for her to have a manager review and approve the edit, and then he’d have to attach the edited version to an all hands email and tell everyone to download and use the new one.
It’s gotten better since I started, we now upload everything to OneDrive, but they can’t seem to get the permissions right and every once in a while someone edits a file and someone has to comb though the edit history to restore it.
jabathekek@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
This whole comment chain makes me feel abject despair at the prospect of getting a job outside the service industry.
zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com 1 month ago
Shitty software still better than customers
BagOfHeavyStones@piefed.social 1 month ago
Bring back Outlook Express!