Submitted 1 year ago by tinosaurier@feddit.org to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/25/too_many_outlooks/
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.
Windows Mail was IMO perfect for simple mail at home. Now they replaced it with Outlook with slightly updated UI but also with ads.
Guess what - I started looking for alternatives. So far Wino Mail seems pretty good - someone else on here recommended it.
I asked my magic 8 ball about this and it said “Outlook not so good”
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.
Microsoft destroys product names like no other company.
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.
How… how do they not have a smooth on-ramp for what is basically a straight upgrade to the same service?!
I’ve stepped away from Microsoft. Not my favourite company regarding mailing and chatting.
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!
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
Same with the US govt.
Do u mean doge?
Same with Google.
I imagine Microsoft has the same problem as Google, which is internally prioritizing flashy new things over maintaining useful old things. That’s why Google comes out with so many new things and kills so many old things.
If you want a raise/promotion/etc., you have a better shot at it by bragging about the new feature/service you launched than bragging about maintaining the relatively stable project that’s been running for years but could use some improvements.
It’s a really bad structure imo and I hate that Google and other companies prioritize like that :/
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.
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…
Outlook and Teams have PWAs that are actually more performant than the desktop apps (anecdotal). They are missing some features, but for the opportunity to use Linux at work, I make it work. Have to use Ubuntu for some unknown reason, but it’s better than using Windows
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.
Bullshit, new outlook is total garbage. I dragged a folder inside a folder in the left column and it fucking disappeared. Had to revert back to classic, otherwise folder was in a black hole. Plus other issues like plugins.
I install classic on every computer I setup now.
I think the parents suggestion was to not use it.
However, it’s a bit like avoiding water on a boat given how pervasive the cancer is.
Most of the MS suite is pretty awful. OG OneNote was a good idea. VSCode is ok, just quite slow. Oh LSP is fantastic, I believe that was developed by MS.
The Office Suite and PowerBI are terrible, by 2025 standards it’s glossy trash.
Laughs is just open in the browser.
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.
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.
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.
My understanding is that it’s called work profile. It’s like having 2 users in the same phone. One is personal and you manage it. The other is company owned and you can only install apps whitelisted by your it admin.
I’d love to keep outlook off my personal phone but there’s no chance I’m getting a company phone considering I’m a shop employee and everything in it is an afterthought for IT. Like our computers still run windows 7.
Unfortunately I need email to do my job, on a ping system for what to test and general communications with coworkers who are often not there or traveling in the field.
Just to expand on this. There is an Exchange specific wipe feature. I think it is quite old school and not really used. Have seen it, but never tested it myself. As per documentation it can perform device wipe, but only if native mail client using ActiveSync is used not Outlook. And it probably does not work with all native mail clients, depends if app has device admin permissions.
Current Intune MDM model always uses separate Android storage so any operation including wipe will affect only this storage not your personal space so employer can not see nor delete your personal data.
In Intune there is another option without a need of enrolling device (MDM) where you can manage supported apps. It’s called MAM. If wipe is initiated it affects only data in all apps that support MAM.
In short, companies / schools cannot really wipe your device if we are talking about Intune MDM. Other MDM solutions probably can.
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?
Sounds like that’s exactly what they’re trying to do.
This is what happens with innovation when only monopolies are left on the board.
Name an industry, it’s the same. But here’s the dog shit. You still have to give shareholders returns. When you ran out of shit to innovate like 25 years ago, ran out of companies to buy 10 years ago, and already captured the regulatory bodies. Congrats it’s game over.
Except it’s never game over. Just squeeze one side til the toothpaste runs out.
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.
I just stopped deleting everything and now use my archive as a trash instead
Microsoft anything = confuses people
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.
outlook.office365.com/mail/inbox
^ this is the new version lmao. It’s just an electron app (more or less)
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.
If this is Android look into enrollment which will use separate storage called work profile so you will essentially have 2 independent copies of Outlook. Or it might be possible to have second copy of Outlook depending on your Android flavour. Samsung has Secure Folder for example.
Oh, I’ve tried the shared mailbox thing. I had it at my last city and it worked fine, but our third-party IT service contractor here is the shittiest I’ve ever heard of.
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.
My work and my former university uses outlook and Ms apps as their primary line of communication
how shielded are enterprise accounts from the data harvest?
The data is still harvested but it stays within their own tenant.
So does MS know what I look like and have my age and phone no? presumably the tenant cloud is zero-knowledge from Redmond’s perspective
Very much so.
They are paying for the service and expect appropriate treatment.
Companies generally frown upon their data being taken. It’s only consumers who use “free” services that really suffer from this. After all, if you’re not paying you are the product.
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.
My dad also uses Outlook on hi Android tablet. I don’t get it.
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.
My dad is also a huge Outlook fan. I think you need to just have been using it for 20+ years
Yeah, maybe it’s a case of software Stockholm syndrome or something.
Yeah I feel this. Outlook pisses me off. So does Microsoft in general.
What pisses me off more is HP.
Yes but I don’t use HP for email because it won’t let me send one if my cyan ink is low.
Sounds about right. They tried to get me sign up for a subscription for customer service. They told me they could solve my issue (I forgot my bitlocker encryption key and was giving my old HP laptop to a family member so I needed it to whip the device) but only if I sign up for the subscription. It wouldve cost me $54 to get customer service that day. I laughed at the guy over the phone and he tried to defend the company by saying its worth it pay since I did not know how to solve my issue and needed their help. I didn’t pay and found a work around on my own
OUTLOOK NOT SO GOOD
Sometimes I think about the billions of dollars of wasted productivity caused by Outlook being so bad at rendering email.
I think about the productivity lost because people use Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint every day. Maybe even multiple times a day.
Word and Powerpoint are not the worst - just think about all the time lost due to whatever Microsoft is doing in Teams or by random decisions like moving the start button to the middle instead of leaving it where it was since 1995, which automatically renders every corporate training video obsolete.
Most applications would be fine with plain text, some could use markdown, some would need org-mode, a bit further something like HTML or word-perfect format.
They have managed to fuck up something as simple as right clicking. There are no words.
It’s even crazier to think they participated in establishing the right click paradigm to begin with.
Dude they fucked up Ctrl+S and Alt+F in paintbrush and it still fucks with my workflows.
You know you’re an old time user when you call it paintbrush :)
Why are Microsoft employees so fucking stupid?
8 thousand executives making product decisions from the top down and trying to cram every facet of the business into every other product.
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.
The corp I’m working at moved to Outlook Web.
It’s so hostile about downloading attachments through anything but OneDrive it’s comical.
We have too. I absolutely hate it.
Every fucking version displays our HTML email signatures differently.
this entire article is about a single tweet some guy made as a joke
Welcome to journalism in 202x
It’s exactly the quality of journalism you get for free.
“one reddit user said…”
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 1 year ago
And they are all terrible and constantly getting worse.