Microsoft, the Masters of Idiocy
Posted by Sopel93@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 288 comments
I need to have a small rant.
You remember how for the past 2000 years, the text underlined in red can be corrected by "right click" and selecting the correct word? This applies to every single Microsoft product, including the perfect Teams.
Someone in Microsoft dev team decided "You know what, fuck you, in New Outlook you will have to left click to select the suggested word and righ click will give you an emoji option."
Is it Friday yet?
Bont_Tarentaal@reddit
And whose bright idea was it to put a search field in the title bar?
Clahrmer48@reddit
What a nightmare that was when that came around. So many users mad at our IT department.
Nuggetdicks@reddit
Yeah! Why can’t your IT department make better MS products?
Kek
pineconez@reddit
Tbh when it comes to UX design, a 5 year old with a box of crayons could make better MS products. Not that I'm in favor of legalizing child labor or anything, but maybe as a summer camp...?
No_Lie_8710@reddit
This comment decreased my frustration by 50%. Imagine, the MS frustration. That's a BIG achievement! :D Thanks! :)))
URPissingMeOff@reddit
...or an after school program
medicinous@reddit
microsofd india edition is it a helpdesk or a scam call youll never know atleast our UI works
Jug5y@reddit
Legit tho I got roasted in a ticket today for putting templates in an inconvenient location in PowerPoint
Nuggetdicks@reddit
🤣
Sudain@reddit
I'm still looking for a remedy for that.
JohnC53@reddit
They've hijacked the title bar so much it it's almost impossible to select it to drag the window (eg, to another monitor)
Xzenor@reddit
Windows key + arrow keys
Bont_Tarentaal@reddit
Have anybody heard of CUA (common user access)? What happened to those guidelines?
URPissingMeOff@reddit
The same place all stupid bullshit comes from. A new manager or VP trying desperately to justify his bloated salary by "shaking things up"
DoctorOctagonapus@reddit
A team of glue-huffers
robisodd@reddit
It would be at least a little better if you could collapse it down to an icon like you can in Excel or Word (File > Options > "Collapse the Microsoft Search box by default"), but there's no option in Outlook, for some reason.
Kodiak01@reddit
The same ones that decided Alt-Tab was never working right and "fixed" it.
cisco_bee@reddit
Serious time? The enshitification of UX worries me deeply. I don't know if it's the snapchat generation coming into the workforce or what, but more and more I just say "what the fuck"?
Kiernian@reddit
Every time some project manager says "We need to bring in a UI/UX guy" I start panicking.
Like, I realize it's actually a legitimate field, but the majority of the people working in it can't seem to make a UI that users can use intuitively.
I don't know why, but they're seemingly taught all kinds of flashy shit and absolutely nothing about the psychology of interacting with something.
Like, we know Apple figured at least SOME of it out because we see toddlers using iPads, but by and large, every interface I see on every app is "WHO MADE IT THIS WAY AND WHY?!?!".
Like, why is the first lesson of UI design not "If users can't figure this out with no training, it's a shit interface"?
I could not care less about rounded corners, smooth dropdown animations, or visually pleasing spinny circles, I just want to be able to find all of the options and all of the ways to use the program without having to fucking google search how to do something.
I don't care about your cutoffs, cutovers, lazyrefreshes, or widgetbars, if I can't do everything I need to at a relatively easy glance without clicking through multiple screens, you're overcomplicating stuff via "simplification".
The slow destruction of the menu bar (file, edit, tools, etc) is ridiculous, but so is nesting options twelve levels deep on phones.
I can sit people down (young, old, anywhere in between) and show them a handful of apps from 20+ years ago and while they'll complain about it being UGLY, it at least makes SENSE.
Somehow we forgot the fact that the REASON the user interface exists is for the USERS TO INTERACT WITH THE PROGRAM. When the interface becomes a hindrance to that end goal in any way, shape, or form, I don't care how fucking pretty it is, it's BAD.
There's way too much bad "science" involved in UI/UX design and it needs to be taken out back and shot.
ProfessionalITShark@reddit
IMO I suspect all the good ones are locked in with Apple, and nobody is paying the current ones in Apple to leave.
Kiernian@reddit
Right, but you'd think that the EXTREMELY SUCCESSFUL SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT that are behind what they're doing would be taught/fostered/sought-after everywhere else.
Not everything has to LOOK like apple to take the basic, core usability and design/layout principles at the root of what they're doing and apply them on things that look different. The ones that work best, anyway.
That being said, things like easily identifiable icons, basic standardized straightforward simple language in menu options, menus that make sense, and emphasis on good spacing, font sizes, decent-sized hitboxes for touchscreen elements, and a tendency toward 2-dimensional (flat), clutter-free design are doable all over.
That's just for starters.
The problem is, we're teaching most UI designers bullshit based on bad premises about use that infers things from bad datasets on user interaction.
As a result we end up "prettying things up" at the expense of function more often than not when we should be regularly stepping back and going "what DOESN'T work about using this interface?" before something gets released.
We've accrued the interface design equivalent of technical debt by starting with bad functionality ideas with the goal of achieving any given particular "look" and perpetuating them because it's what people know.
"Enterprise" software is rife with this, but it's nearly everywhere else, too, and still we get everyone constantly refactoring UI's for no good reason to the frustration of their users. Facebook is a prime example, but the whole office suite starting with "The Ribbon" is another.
Compare teams chat, zoom, discord, or telegram to something like ICQ at the height of it's popularity. They all suck in comparison to the likes of a 90's instant messenger when it comes to usability. That's seriously damning.
ProfessionalITShark@reddit
Often times the school of thought is the culture, and until Apple UX designers (and their management and leadership) start disseminating across the industry, in droves, starting with the rest of MANGA, into Fortune 10, Fortune 50, Fortune 100, we won't have that good culture spreading into these places, and then with enough critical mass, it should cause a general industrial shift in thinking.
Kiernian@reddit
...and yet it only takes one really big company deciding to do massive sweeping tech layoffs and everyone follows suit...
The problem is that "good" changes like moving towards a more excellent UI design culture are "soft" metrics and the people in charge are too many layers removed from facts to do anything but think like cavemen when it comes to company-wide decisions. Their vision of the business is about as good as that of the skyline from a Tower Viewer covered in seagull filth on a cloudy day. Their drastically reduced world-view is so myopic they just club everything over the head on command like the spastic caveman precursor to pavlov's dogs. CAPEX bonk OPEX bonk EBITDA bonk
The fact that every single SME in almost every single area of expertise in almost every company on the planet has to make presentations to JUSTIFY any internal idea that's going to have up-front cost, EVEN IF IT'S GUARANTEED TO GENERATE ONGOING EFFORTLESS BENEFITS LONG TERM but the people s/he is presenting to will happily trust vendors selling flashy lies with no basis in reality and flush money down the toilet at the drop of a hat speaks to how awful most MBAs are at handling anything that doesn't color-code itself when you set the field type to currency on an excel spreadsheet and since the MBAs are pushing BS uphill to the C levels, the problem compounds itself endlessly like trying to build a castle by jamming a dump truck load of play-doh through the spaghetti maker tool with an industrial car crusher.
Abitconfusde@reddit
I'll go one step further. Command line interfaces are superior to graphical.
illarionds@reddit
Not if you have to use it on a phone! (or any device without a real keyboard)
Abitconfusde@reddit
Voice commands are close enough to command line. Words is words. We aren't using pictures and icons to have this communication right here right now.
chaosgirl93@reddit
It is really freakin' funny how much those people who are terrified of terminals or don't know they exist sure love voice commands and those "AI" tools that all you can really do with them is... talk to them, have a conversation with the computer or ask it to do something. They say "Look! You can talk to the computer and it talks back, or does what you asked it to do!"
Just... huh.
Abitconfusde@reddit
exactly. I admit though, that being able to lay out text and arrange it nicely with pictures is a great advantage of graphical interfaces. I just think that a well designed text-based interface can be faster and much more elegant and expressive.
illarionds@reddit
Eh, I'm not using Lynx to view this page though. And definitely not to view Thunderbird, YouTube, WhatsApp and Word (which are what happen to be on my other screens right now).
Abitconfusde@reddit
Fair.
darth_static@reddit
USB host cables and Bluetooth make that a non-issue (except for having to carry another device).
illarionds@reddit
Sure, you can use a keyboard with your phone - but do you? I can't say I ever have.
If I pull my phone out of my pocket to do something quick, I'm not faffing around with a keyboard, or a monitor, or any of the things I theoretically could connect to it - I'm just getting stuck in right away. And I'd bet that that is how phones are used by pretty much everyone, the vast majority of the time.
A cli would not be a superior interface for a phone. (Which was the premise I was taking issue with).
chaosgirl93@reddit
I really wonder sometimes how phone design and portable devices in general would have gone if we'd just... never invented GUIs, or they hadn't caught on.
Xzenor@reddit
Exactly.. also, where do you keep your phone while typing on a keyboard? Needs to be in a stand or the keyboard must have a holder on it.. else it's just laying flat (if it can. Sucks in transport) and it's hard to watch..
URPissingMeOff@reddit
Not if you don't have a control key
paul_33@reddit
Was there something inherently wrong with a menu at the top? File - Edit - Preferences - etc? Why the fuck do all these modern apps hide everything in random spots, with custom icons making it impossible to explain to someone over the phone.
For fucks sake put the File menus back
Tekz08@reddit
coughAdobeAcrobatcough
paul_33@reddit
Tools menu acting as some kind of bizarre add-on looking nonsense.
Kiernian@reddit
A large part of me died inside sometime around ten years ago, the first time I heard a coworker say 'click the hamburger'.
Xzenor@reddit
I mean, I get the reference.. top bun, burger, bottom bun.. sure. But "3 dashes" has just as many syllables so it takes the same amount of time to pronounce but it's a lot less stupid.
vCentered@reddit
Yeah there's something about referring to a menu button as a hamburger that just makes me angry.
pdp10@reddit
He doesn't know about the three seashells! Hahaha!
paul_33@reddit
I refuse to call it that even if its the recognized name. Its just silly
Kershek@reddit
The only thing I didn't like were the pop-up windows within pop-up windows that made it a mess to navigate.
OPhasballz@reddit
I used to enjoy navigating PCs via keyboard instead of mouse since it was faster than a mouse once I had learned how to get into the menu bar. guess what is total trash since windows 8? Tab navigation is inconsistent within most builtin menus.
Kiernian@reddit
Agreed, and this bothers the snot out of me.
MS has occasionally broken tab navigation in weird ways before (and usually left it broken), but it went straight to crap with 8 (which was ironically, when it was most needed due to driver issues with several mouse brands).
I rarely use it, but I still get testy when a keyboard doesn't have the "right mouse click" button over somewhere between spacebar and right ctrl. It's only TRULY necessary when the mouse isn't functioning properly, which is a LOT less often now with windows 10/11, but logitech still makes drivers that occasionally bogart the entire USB bus for no reason and turn everything else plugged into it OFF, so...
The_Wkwied@reddit
Preach. People shat on me when they started to introduce the ribbon in office 2007... I said this takes longer to get to the same things. I miss the menu bar.
Xzenor@reddit
Fuck the ribbon.. for some reason my though pattern on categorizing those items does not match that of a Microsoft developer at all and I refuse to customize that crap.
rux616@reddit
I'd just like to point out that those "visually pleasing spinny circles" have a name, and that it is "throbber". You're welcome.
Kiernian@reddit
I always forget that because I can't say it in a corporate setting without risking someone making a call to HR because they thought they heard something they didn't.
Probably for the best, really. It's a fairly silly name for it. It doesn't even throb.
ErikTheEngineer@reddit
When it was the Netscape N, it actually did throb.
rux616@reddit
Not with that attitude. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
SaucyKnave95@reddit
Isn't it "spinner"? I mean, regardless, I will now forcefully educate all my coworkers on the wonderful throbbers we have, but still...
rux616@reddit
Nope. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throbber
bleuflamenc0@reddit
When the college I worked for did a replacement of their website, which looked straight out of 1997, they hired this guy who was more of an artist than a web developer. His first work was sketching stuff on paper and showing it around to departments. Then along with some guys who were more on the app developer side, they created the new website.
I'm not saying it turned out fantastic, or that this is THE way to do it, but it turned out pretty good. I mean it's not a flashy website, but it looks decent and has been working well for years. It also scales very well regardless of the device used, because that was their main focus. I wonder if more of these UI guys would do better work if they started out with pencils and paper.
Mr_Gibbys@reddit
Snapchat generation here. I would seriously rather use XPs UI (and some of my friends do with windows shell mods). All of this shit sucks, but maybe I'm the exception.
Delakroix@reddit
You, young one, are on the correct path.
cisco_bee@reddit
I think you are. Kudos.
mmiller1188@reddit
It is 100% the tablet generation coming into the workforce. Every interface change I've seen on any application - web, local install , etc seems to reflect tablets / smartphones more than an actual computer.
Makes me feel like a boomer because I can't , at all, be productive on a smartphone or tablet.
ras344@reddit
I hate how they don't just use words for menu navigation anymore. Everything is labeled with some made up symbol that you have to decipher to figure out what it does, instead of just reading a word.
rollingviolation@reddit
gear icons: settings
3 dots: settings
3 horizontal lines: settings
fuck all these UX "designers" - what was so wrong with a menu with the word SETTINGS written on it?
SaladChef@reddit
The gear, the hamburger, the dots, the waffle, the silhouette of a person. What do they even have in common? UX designers are accomplishing the inverse of their stated purpose.
Xzenor@reddit
Well the gear for settings and the silhouette for profile has been used since way before the mobile era. They make sense too.
rollingviolation@reddit
these are the icons that show up in thunderbird when you click on the "hamburger" menu on my laptop.
What do they mean?
spoiler:
Delakroix@reddit
new profile/add contact
new something
notes?
View?
show nav pane?
Fonts?
settings
profile (why in the middle?)
err... puzzle?
settings(again?)
help/online help
power button within app???
Xzenor@reddit
In Thunderbird?
rollingviolation@reddit
yes, in Tbird. My point is that in a lot of cases, icons without context mean nothing. I'm willing to bet that most people get about 50% on this list of icons. There's a gear, a wrench, a puzzle piece, a silhouette, a silhouette with a plus sign, a plus sign by itself, an eyeball, and so on.
SaladChef@reddit
Sure, I agree with you. I'm just frustrated that perhaps something that UX should take into consideration is unification and perhaps something more standardised. It would make it easier for the user at the very least. 🤷🏼
Xzenor@reddit
No arguments there..
Xzenor@reddit
That didn't fit on the small phone display... And now they think "well they're used to it now. Let's just implement it everywhere"
HauntingAd6535@reddit
I recently saw that the three horizontal lines icon is called a "hamburger." WTF? I get the gear and the ellipses but still, WTF!
chaosgirl93@reddit
UIs that don't even have words, on the tablets and phones that people hand to toddlers... this is contributing to kindergarten/elementary age illiteracy, I think. See, before these locked-down simplified picture-based tablets, a lot of these kids would have a family computer, or if their parents were upper class enough and tech obsessed enough, maybe their own laptop for the older end of this age range, and to use those machines, you had to read all the stuff, and usually type things out, nowhere near as much as in the days of either DOS prompts or Unix terminals, but certainly more than now. And before that era, you know what most kids that age had for entertainment? Books! Picture books and board books, and being read to by their grownups or older kids. Yes, there was kids TV and they had toys, but they also spent time reading and being read to, if their adults were good parents or were bookworms themselves.
And now, you have a situation where the screens are addictive, don't require any reading, and the books and toys and outside and even the better quality kid TV can't hold a candle to the addictiveness of these surprisingly affordable tablets. So every overworked middle to lower class parent who can't afford better solutions just buys their two year old a tablet to keep them quiet and because over a few years it's cheaper than piles and piles of age appropriate toys. Then kindergarteners show up antisocial, screen addicted, and not even as close to reading as they used to be for decades. And because they still have the damn device when not in school, kindergarten isn't as able to fix the problems as it used to be, and it's only worse in first grade, and so on.
Level_Up_IT@reddit
!00%. Wtf does an oil derrick icon mean in personal computing?! Is it the button to check the laptop's oil?
KnowledgeTransfer23@reddit
OMG I just realized I've seen that icon on my work iPhone and other places and never realized what it actually was! And now I'm as flabbergasted as you are!
Kershek@reddit
Makes it easier for their international versions, but not easier for the consumer to decipher.
callthereaper64@reddit
Ironic that windows 8 already came and died
chaosgirl93@reddit
And good riddance to bad garbage!
8 was the Worst Windows Ever and I will die on that hill.
callthereaper64@reddit
Preaching to the choir
Ok_Analysis_3454@reddit
Good riddance!
callthereaper64@reddit
I can't upvote more than once
Xzenor@reddit
I'll help
PersonBehindAScreen@reddit
I’m 28… and I’m too fucking young to have this much to bitch about with technology smh…
chaosgirl93@reddit
I feel that way too hard at 20 myself.
techw1z@reddit
*cough* windows 8 *cough*
let's just hope they overdo it, users abandon windows en masse and MS rolls everything back to win7 UI out of shock
chaosgirl93@reddit
I don't care how MS responds, I just want to see people abandon Windows...
Eh, probably won't go the way we'd like it to.
cisco_bee@reddit
These fucking kids out here doing taxes on their phones and I'd rather stab myself in the eye than use a computer with a single monitor.
reni-chan@reddit
I absolutely hate even browsing the internet on the phone, let alone do any real computer work on it. It has only recently hit me that most people don't have personal computers/laptops anymore, they do everything on a phone/tablet.
I'm not even 30 yet.
HotPieFactory@reddit
You're you, you can reinvent yourself. I'm 40 and fucked.
Trif55@reddit
Nah, there's just a lot of dumb c*nts out there
We're a unicorn generation (born late 70s to late 90s) who just understand technology because we grew up having to figure it out rather than just tap once to install an app
SomeRandomUserUDunno@reddit
My wife and I had this conversation the other night (Both 30yo). The fact that so few of our friends have a home office/home pc. SOME have a laptop, others just tablets and phones. Mind boggling.
Not_A_Van@reddit
I currently use a single monitor.
Granted its 35inch 4k so I have 4 1080p windows running but still
wasteoffire@reddit
I do my taxes on my phone because the tax website already has all my info, so all I have to do is give it a once-over and send it in
gj80@reddit
Tablets and smartphones just suck for productive use. That's not a generational thing - it's an objective truth.
KnowledgeTransfer23@reddit
Elder Millenial here, grew up on PC. Even when working at a K12 school with an 1:1 iPad deployment, I didn't use a tablet.
Until I needed a new laptop that's both lighter and has all day battery. Left the school job and gave up a MacBook Pro, and began to miss it. Bought an iPad Pro and Magic Keyboard case (stupid expensive) and have fallen in love with it to the point where it's my go-to machine even over my Framework 13.
The organizations I work with all use Google Docs, though, so that's probably part of it. And while the Magic Keyboard case has some braindead design decisions (like it doesn't protect the Apple Pen when closed like other cases do), I've had it last through my associate's 2 Zagg and into his third keyboard case (a Logitech, if I recall correctly), so for the money, it's been efficient.
It's to the point where I'm trained to just reach my middle finger up and tap a red underlined word on the screen as I'm typing, as usually with Docs the line I'm typing is at the bottom of the screen so it's within reach. Now I try to do that whenever I'm on a laptop and it frustrates me that I built that habit!
That all said (if anybody is still reading this nonsense post) I'm an Android guy and general Apple hater. When I need a new tablet, I'll consider a Galaxy tab or maybe Pixel will have their tablet game on point. But for now, begrudgingly, I must sing the praises of an iPad for my most of my mobile use cases.
crazifyngers@reddit
The tablet generation didn't create tablets, nor did they design the interfaces. This is like boomers blaming kids for getting participation trophies. The boomer parents gave the partition trophies then complained.
However. I don't like all the blank space on modern UX.
Other-Illustrator531@reddit
I hate the blank space, it prioritizes aesthetics over usefulness to an extreme at this point.
SaltyBundle@reddit
It’s 100% gen x directors insisting we design for the tablet generation. I work with some younger people and they would never suggest any of that shit.
jailh@reddit
These guys can't either.
changee_of_ways@reddit
The blending of UIs designed to be used on a tablet with UIs designed to be used on a computer is so consistently enraging. Its like a car company only bothering to move the wheel and pedals to the other side when they produce a RHD car for a Left hand drive market.
FalloutRip@reddit
Honestly, I think it's just another back-and-forth thing we have to deal with from now on. UIs can be bad by presenting too much information, and bad for presenting too little information.
We swung from being overloaded with information, had a nice middle ground for a while, and now we've finished the swing to the other side on having UIs that are too simplified. I imagine it'll swing the other way as people realize that you shouldn't have to use a search menu or googling it to figure out how to change the damn theme in Word.
redmage753@reddit
Idk, if we keep pushing, maybe we can just full circle the search into a command line.
chaosgirl93@reddit
At this point I'm willing to concede that might actually fix things. Do that and document the commands somewhere. Problem solved. (People scared of commands but cool with searching for a setting or asking those damn AI tools to do the thing, shouldn't be using a computer anyway.)
Ok_Analysis_3454@reddit
Clippy and then Microsoft Bob were the true dawn of AI.
unixuser011@reddit
This, and the enshitification of error messages. Gone are the days of the NT blue screen where it tells you the contents of memory and the exact memory address of the problem to ‘UwU, we had an oopsy’ or a generic 0x800 error which may as well be in Latin
rollingviolation@reddit
couple of weeks ago, trying to upgrade an old laptop and the windows 10 installer fails with a message box with "unable to upgrade to windows 10" and an ok button. That's it. No logs, no nothing, just a message box and an ok button.
mailboy79@reddit
pdp10@reddit
Hodie Natus Est Radici Frater.
NoTime4YourBullshit@reddit
“Enshitification.” That’s my new word of the day.
JohnC53@reddit
At least the emoji option are hidden behind a click. Ever try to select some text in teams chat? The emoji pop up window constantly is in your way. Fuck off!
IndianaJoenz@reddit
Been saying this for a while. The UX coming out of Silicon Valley, and out of Microsoft, has become worse and worse.
This is why I still design UX like it's the 90s. Visual cues are so important, a concept lost on whatever the hell turdware SV is shitting out these days.
No-Engineering-1905@reddit
Try to fix a typo manually by placing my cursor next to the text, hit backspace key --> archives an email 😑
nohairday@reddit
I've said it before but I'm convinced all of the different departments in MS have a competition going to see who can release to live the most disastrous, moronic, or just plain broken update to their products.
They're total dogshite at the moment. I'm sure the people designing this shit at present have never used a fucking windows PC, server, or Microsoft application in their life.
Either that, or Elon is now their chief UI architect.
chaosgirl93@reddit
I would not be surprised if no one designing UIs for any of this stuff has ever had to use the software they design.
That's the nice thing about open source - it's a total anarchist mess, but at least the people programming it are also using it and they program it how they want to use it, so sometimes it's more sane than proprietary equivalents.
misterchief117@reddit
I've been convinced for years that all development and engineering departments at Microsoft work on separate isolated islands and can only communicate via smoke signals at night when it's raining.
This is all while the executives across all departments live on a single resort island where all they do is sit around circle-jerking.
They can occasionally check in with the other departments by using a broken monocular with a scuffed lens.
Tl;dr: Microsoft is so big that it suffers massively from split-brain syndrome. Nobody in Microsoft knows wtf is going on anymore and each team does whatever they can to rationalize their existence.
Alaknar@reddit
It's worse.
KhenirZaarid@reddit
Did I miss Oracle slimming down their legal department?
nohairday@reddit
See 'Recall' for peak enshittification.
I was completely (un)surprised when it was quickly discovered that the OCR record of all text on-screen that was recorded turned out to be kept in an unencrypted sqlite file....
I actually saw an opinion piece on the register a while ago saying it had great potential.
I hadn't seen such optimistic fanboi fawning outside of an iPhone launch...
Kiernian@reddit
I mean, that's how edge stores all of your autofill form data including passwords, why not do everything that way?
I mean, sure, the edge INTERFACE makes you auth before showing you anything, but you could just fire up DBeaver or whatever and crack open the Web Data file and go to town.
In fact, that might be the only way to remove autofills you don't want showing up anymore. If there's a way to do it in the interface itself, I haven't found it.
ridley0001@reddit
I think you need to hold shift and then delete the autofill entry.
North-Steak7911@reddit
At the risk of sounding like a bigot Satya taking charge and the massive increase in Indian workforce and outsourcing correlates massively with how shitty things have gotten.
ReputationNo8889@reddit
My outlook also "corrects" me when i type automatically. So a scentence like "it is very hot currently" becomes "iti s very hotc urrently" fucking love it that i have to correct every second word i type ...
KnowledgeTransfer23@reddit
Maybe you should compose your reddit posts in Outlook... :p
ReputationNo8889@reddit
I apologize for my bad grammar
bigbramel@reddit
That's an option which is opt-in.
ReputationNo8889@reddit
Really? I never recall seeing a popup/question to allow such a thing. Whats it called?
bigbramel@reddit
It's a setting of Microsoft Editor. When you compose a new e-mail, in the message lint in the options part there's a button for Editor.
I got a pop-up if I wanted to set-up Microsoft Editor when they released it. Could be that they do it differently in different geographical area's.
venbollmer@reddit
Right Clicks are being worked out of many Microsoft products due to accessibility.
reelznfeelz@reddit
Kind of makes sense. Should be a setting though IMO. 99.5% of the population is capable of right clicking. Those who can’t can configure it that way. Just make it easy to do so.
venbollmer@reddit
My team removed right click from my product about six years ago. It took about 3 months and folks got used to it.
I know it isn't what you want to hear, but someone somewhere said... It needs to be accessible.
I am not at Microsoft anymore, and stayed away from the Office team, but that would be my guess why there is a change.
uCodeSherpa@reddit
Then your products right clicks were dumb. Right click is a shortcut menu, not a place for sole access.
venbollmer@reddit
That's an interesting opinion.
uCodeSherpa@reddit
It is not an “opinion” that right click menus are not meant for sole access to something. Maybe I can name a software or workflow where that’s not the case. 99.99999999999999% of the time, right click = just a faster exposition of behavior. If right click was “accessibility problematic”, then your UX crew was/is stupid, and is ENTIRELY the people we are laughing at in this thread.
reelznfeelz@reddit
No I totally get it, I just don't understand why that isn't just an up-front configuration instead of removing right click for the 99.9% of people who want it and can use it fine. Of course accessibility should be considered important, and I know I'm sounding like one of these anti-woke nuts here, but I don't see why trashing functionality for everyone is the solution, vs ensuring people who need accessibility, can easily get it, without removing features. Whatever, stuff is dumb sometimes.
Superbead@reddit
Not to mention that removing right-click functionality can potentially induce disability caused by repetitive strain injury, due to having to make excessive other inputs to work around
reelznfeelz@reddit
True, I like working both fingers evenly, so I don't become disabled lol. For real though, could be a meaningful observation.
venbollmer@reddit
According to the Disability Status: 2019 - Census 2019 Brief approximately 20 percent of Americans have one or more diagnosed psychological or physical disability:
Census 2000 counted 49.7 million people with some type of long-lasting condition or disability.
So I'd say it's a bit lower than your 99.9% figure.
reelznfeelz@reddit
Also, of those disabilities, what percentage means you can’t right click? Sure a chunk of people have some kind of disability but that is all kinds of different things. Very context specific on if you’re disabled for a particular task. Color blind people can right click pretty sure.
reelznfeelz@reddit
Ok. Sure. Still a minority though by quite a bit. Just saying, we don’t design all our systems for left handed people and they’re like 45%. Accommodate both not just the minority seems reasonable to me.
robisodd@reddit
Also, partially, due to touchscreens. Not just tablet/phone interfaces, but many laptops today have touchscreens.
I'm sure some UI/UX person came to the conclusion that people would be typing on a laptop and, to spell check, they'd tap the underlined-word on the screen with their finger instead of using a touchpad to move a mouse pointer and right-click on it.
KnowledgeTransfer23@reddit
That's how I use spellcheck on my iPad Pro/Magic Keyboard "laptop" and, quite frankly, I'm accustomed to that to the point of muscle memory.
Which means that there's no blood test needed, MacReady, I'm already far too gone...
venbollmer@reddit
I'm a Trackball Jockey.
autogyrophilia@reddit
Of course it's a bit of a shit choice if you have Exchange and depends in their EEE features
But I find the new Thunderbird look to be so much more usable .
Much preferred over Outlook. Of course,
Xzenor@reddit
Is that the beta? A specific theme? That does not look like my Thunderbird at all
autogyrophilia@reddit
https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/08/make-thunderbird-yours-how-to-get-the-thunderbird-115-supernova-look/
Xzenor@reddit
Thank you very much
thunderbird32@reddit
It's a pity it doesn't work very well with Exchange, or I'd have switched to Thunderbird long ago.
pdp10@reddit
A company made a mail client focused on MS Exchange compatibility a while ago, but it didn't sell.
thunderbird32@reddit
Oh yeah, I definitely remember that. I actually own a license for it. It worked better than Thunderbird, but it still had some big issues. That said, it was a great start and if it were still in development I see no reason why it wouldn't have covered all my usecases at least.
Kiernian@reddit
Same.
The fact that I can't use all of my exchange online accounts with thunderbird as natively as I can with outlook is the ONLY thing holding me up from a complete and total switchover.
Ember_Island@reddit
Oh wow, I didn't know they updated the look. The old one was *horrendous* and why I stopped using it. I might have to reinstall it.
BoredTechyGuy@reddit
Do yourself a favor and stop using that garbage pile that is New Outlook.
Your sanity will thank you.
Sudain@reddit
What would you suggest instead?
ipnetor9000@reddit
lotus notes 🤣
Im_in_timeout@reddit
Real Outlook.
dontusethisforwork@reddit
lol it's called Classic Outlook now
I'm with you, Classic Outlook should be Real Outlook and "New" Outlook should be uninstalled.
Civil_Complaint139@reddit
there's a timer somewhere on Microsofts wall that is counting down until they can send a patch to forcibly uninstall "classic" outlook.
Wrong_Exit_9257@reddit
if you crash the shitty outlook 4x in a row it will roll back the update to the good version of outlook.
same goes for teams vs shit teams but you need to crash it 6x instead of 4x.
you can automate this with stop-process and get-process. i hope, if enough of us do this we can contaminate MS data analytics and maybe, just maybe, hold off the forced enshitification of MS apps for a few more months.
DoctorOctagonapus@reddit
Bold of you to assume a mountain of crash dumps will halt that.
dontusethisforwork@reddit
Gotta love the MS paradigm: We've created this thing that everyone is fine with, let's fuck it up for no reason!
PCRefurbrAbq@reddit
Outlook PWA in MS Edge, to fully embrace the change at the heart of all things.
robisodd@reddit
It is good to know how to use Outlook PWA, but it suffers from many of the same shortcomings as New Outlook. But you're right; it's the direction Microsoft is going and I suspect we'll be seeing ~~Classic~~ Real Outlook going away in a few years.
BoredTechyGuy@reddit
Good ol Classic Outlook.
throwsysadminaway@reddit
Soon there will be no choice https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-wants-you-on-new-outlook-for-windows-by-july-august-or-receiving-emails-may-stop/
MairusuPawa@reddit
Thunderbird will always be an option. My answer may seem provocative today sure, but it actually is a very nice mail + calendar client. The major thing holding it back is… well, the Microsoft stack, again.
illarionds@reddit
For real, I switched from Outlook to Thunderbird a decade ago, and haven't regretted it.
There are irritations both ways, but overall, it's a better experience for me.
(And that's coming from a 95% Windows/MS guy)
Twitch-Pydrex@reddit
You may wish to re-read this. This is for "Legacy" clients, such as Windows Mail/IMAP/IOS/Android clients and not the current updated Office 365 installed Package.
simple1689@reddit
Microsoft: Rebuilding yesterday's tools, with today's profit in mind
Its still boggles my mind you can't have multiple Settings windows open. That the context menu is still so bad that you are better off click "more options" to get the original Context Menu back. That the Taskbar is in the fucking center.
Do Microsoft devs even using Windows to develop anymore?
KnowledgeTransfer23@reddit
The taskbar is the least of my concerns. I hardly ever interact with it any longer. I thought I'd hate having the boundaries of the corner of the screen make it easier to target the Start button, but I never click on it any longer, just hit the superkey and start searching for the program I need to open.
Context Menu and Settings window, though, I'm lighting a torch for you and one for me. Hope your pitchfork is sharpened!
uCodeSherpa@reddit
There was a time not too long ago when you would be excited for total rebuilds. It usually meant better, faster software with fewer bugs and a better foundation for new features.
And now it means, slower software that demands 7 gigs of ram and 40% cpu, fewer features in the name of “pretty”, organization that makes zero fucking sense, every single thing is buried 30+ clicks deep where if you don’t know exactly where the option is, you’ll never ever find it again, turning UX on its head bullshit.
I writhe in fear every time my software updates the last couple years.
pdp10@reddit
After the debacle with the IBM AS/400, and frankly all of the IBM mainframe operating systems, I can see why.
welcome2devnull@reddit
Good that you can block the new Outlook and even in Win11 you can get rid of it :D
Maybe in a few years the new Outlook might become even useable (after replacing the whole dev team).
So_Full_Of_Fail@reddit
I was upgraded to win11 against my will. I've yet to find anything about it that is better than win10. So far all of the changes are things that I hate and add clicks.
I'm glad I dont have to deal with it at large, I just have my little corner of mostly linux things I'm responsible for.
Xzenor@reddit
I don't get the start menu anymore. It's just a couple of pins now. It's basically useless
uCodeSherpa@reddit
Some of the added clicks (like the ridiculous new right click menu) can be reverted with reg entries.
Personally, I do like the window organization changes, and the middle of the desktop buttons has grown on me. Otherwise I don’t find it any better or worse. It just is.
SomeRandomUserUDunno@reddit
First thing I changes was making the task bar icons/start button left aligned again.
Triggers me when I see people with it center aligned still.
HotPieFactory@reddit
They use Mac and not everybody has a rightclick option enabled, so things needed to change 😂
Key-Calligrapher-209@reddit
That's some legendary stubbornness from Apple, keeping right click disabled by default. Do they even sell one-button mouses anymore?
dontusethisforwork@reddit
I used to work in media production, so lots of the facilities I worked out of were Mac workstations. I used to bring my own gasp two button & scroll wheel mouse with me so I didn't have to use the trash-ass Magic Mouse.
petrichorax@reddit
What sucks about the magic mouse is that it has some amazing features, but literally everything else about it is absolutely crap.
Ergonomically it's a nightmare. Charging it is comedically stupid.
Touch gestures on a mouse is an inspired feature though.
Xzenor@reddit
I laughed so hard about this when I first heard about that.
IndianaJoenz@reddit
I keep some Microsoft and Logitech mice around for when I need a real mouse.
IMO mice is one of the few things Apple is lousy at, but Microsoft is pretty decent at. Keyboards are kind of in that area, too (though Apple isn't quite as bad at this).
Key-Calligrapher-209@reddit
Same. The Magic Mouse has got to be a social experiment to see how sadistic of a product Apple can make before fanboys quit buying it. I'm eagerly awaiting the $5k Apple Chair with bluetooth-enabled bad dragon built into the seat.
uzlonewolf@reddit
Apple? Use something standardized and non-proprietary like Bluetooth? Never happen.
dontusethisforwork@reddit
For only $800 bucks you can put wheels on that chair!
Nattfluga@reddit
There is just one button because there's only one brain cell left in the Apple users, More than one would fry the brains
pdp10@reddit
NeXTs had two-button mice. X11 workstations all had three buttons.
DoctorOctagonapus@reddit
New Outlook for Mac has sucked for years. There's a reason I keep mine permanently set to legacy mode.
megamfs@reddit
Haha this is so true! More and more video guides made from MS employees shows mac interface while screen recording.
tom-slacker@reddit
Yup...not sure what's up with Microsoft's UX team especially for their enterprise products.
Like...just take a look at the abomination that is SCOM & SCCM.
HauntingAd6535@reddit
The File, Edit, etc., are there just need to revert to the "classic" "ribbon." Key combinations work too like ALT-F. Getting back to the word menu bar, back in the old days (late 90s) a friend was starting a business and needed to learn Office, I simply told him to click every word drop-down menu and every option they gave and just play. Years later he profusely thanked me! I was humbled.
DeptOfOne@reddit
The down fall of Office as a product began IMHO with the release of Office 2007. This was the first time MS introduced that fucked up ribbon bar. Someone tell me how after 17 years of using a basic menu layout that a group of crackhead baby turned MS developer got together decided that this was a good idea? Also just how much meth does one one have to smoke to get picked for the focus group that told MS that yeah this was a good move?
pdp10@reddit
I'm sure Microsoft genuinely thought the Ribbon was a good idea, but there were multiple motivations for it. One was that they patented the Ribbon, so it would be legally difficult for competitors to make office suites with compatible UI.
rollingviolation@reddit
patenting the ribbon so no one else could use it is the best thing I have heard about the ribbon.
PatekCollector77@reddit
Don’t forget that they still have right click for spellcheck in the subject line for some reason but left click in the body
pratttastic@reddit
This is because Microsoft has incorporated Microsoft Editor (their AI Grammarly competitor) into all their office software. It's not in Microsoft Edge by default, for some reason, but pretty much everything else has it. Presumably so they can collect as much data as possible in their continued attempts to become Google.
Jazzlike-Love-9882@reddit
I don’t have too many grievances with New Outlook, but this has to be top one yep.
(And I kid, still lots of small issues here and there that make it hard to recommend as a daily driver, my main gripe is the very poor handling of shared mailboxes)
ultramegamediocre@reddit
Microsoft can't even find installed apps in their own start menu, it's absolutely insane how terrible they've become at building anything.
chaosphere_mk@reddit
I dunno, maybe it's just me, but this kind of thing doesn't bother me at all. Like anything new... there's something I have to get used to, like left clicking instead of right clicking. What makes me more mad is when I get pressure from leadership about this kind of thing when there's nothing I can do about it and they just need to learn something simple that I can't really solve for them.
In my brain I just say, "quit crying and worry about something more important." If this is the kind of "big problem" we have, then I must be doing a pretty good job.
dvb70@reddit
The most annoying thing about New Outlook for me is drafts. It used to be you just hit esc and it said do you want to save this draft. Now you hit escape and it says do you want to discard this draft.
I use drafts as my note taking area and this boils my piss so much. Why do you change something so that a key stroke and the option it gives you now does the opposite of what it used to do? What sort of sadist UI designer does something like that?
bigbramel@reddit
You use a program made for mailing as a note taking program.
So they now changed the default to auto save instead of auto discard when closing a draft. Isn't that not an improvement for your purpose?
dvb70@reddit
It's not an improvement because I am used to the way it used to work. If we were coming at this from the perspective of I am designing a new client what might be the best way to do something that would be fine but when you change the behaviour of a client people have been using for a very long time it's annoying.
I will of course cope. It's not the biggest issue in the world it's just an annoyance I noticed very quickly when I tried to switch over to the new client.
bigbramel@reddit
However Outlook and Outlook new are not the same client. So why are you so focussed on that a new client does something a bit different? In a way that fits more your style of working than the old way. When Windows does a blue screen, at least your notes in a mailing program are saved.
illarionds@reddit
Even though you're technically correct - it's obviously a different code base - when you reuse a name, people are going to see it as "the same client".
Hell, MS are certainly intending for people to see it as the same client - an evolution, an update, rather than the half-baked do-over it currently is.
And in that context, ignoring muscle memory - in a way that leads to people accidentally discarding work - is pretty obviously a bad decision.
There are lots of ways they could have achieved the same effect, without that issue.
bigbramel@reddit
Well there are many other software which are perfectly fine with using the same name while being completely different.
However somehow when it's from Microsoft zero change should happen, while complaining about all the lagacy the same piece of software brings.
This /r/sysadmin not /r/cluelessenduser.
illarionds@reddit
No one is saying nothing should change. That's pretty obviously a straw man.
But inverting how something works, in a way that is clearly going to result in lost data, is just plain bad design - whether you're a sysadmin or a clueless end user.
dvb70@reddit
New Outlook is a continuation of Outlook. Eventually I will have to switch to New Outlook and from the perspective of switching to an updated client my personal design preference is that you don't add friction. Adoption of new clients is far easier when it's familiar. Sometimes something needs to change and people need to get used to that but for the change I am highlighting I don't see the need for the change. That's just my personal perspective.
This all started as a response to a rant and this is may particular bugbear. Many people probably won't even notice the change.
winky9827@reddit
For me, it's the handling of flagged emails. I use flagged emails to track things I need to respond to, specifically because simply leaving it marked unread doesn't assign a timeline or sense of urgency to it the way flagging one does. But (new) Outlook? Nah fam, gotta use ToDo to view those, and it's like 4 clicks and an embedded web page load away. Oh and double click to open the flagged conversation? Nope, just the one email. No find related button for that either.
The shortcomings of (new) Outlook are so vast and numerous that I can't believe they're even promoting it as a business-ready product. It's crapware in its current incarnation.
dvb70@reddit
Yep all pretty terrible. It honestly feels like whoever is in charge of UI change does not have a clue about the impact of changes for long term users and how annoying it is to change things for what feels like no real reason. I honestly have not even played around with New Outlook that much at this stage as once I saw what I they did to drafts I just switched back to old Outlook.
pdp10@reddit
They get bonuses for bringing out features, not quiet fixes.
But then the problem is that Microsoft has been like that for generations, so it's not really possible to introduce new "features" without changing something else.
dvb70@reddit
No technical reason beyond the need to make changes in order to be doing something I guess is the best way to describe it. See every Microsoft admin portal. It's great playing the where have they moved this too now game :)
dontusethisforwork@reddit
XYZ Thing Portal was deprecated on 7/10/2024, good fucking luck
pdp10@reddit
Just like the HP website since 1996.
hifiplus@reddit
Its like they looked at gmail (which is crap) and went, yeah let's do that!
Makes Apple mail look amazing
dontusethisforwork@reddit
As soon as I opened up the Rules dialog and saw how crippled they made rule creation I laughed and uninstalled that shit.
Shotokant@reddit
Copilot isn't in the dictionary. Red line. Every sodding time.
And when you sned an email and spell check it how hard can it be to get it to ignore the random letter number combination to join meetings instead of alerting me to it for a spelling mistake every dammed time.
jpStormcrow@reddit
The irony of "sned" in this comment makes me chuckle.
Save-Maker@reddit
Every time someone tyops, the errorists win.
Life_Life_4741@reddit
yse
lostalaska@reddit
I was just talking to my cow orker about this problem.
I0I0I0I@reddit
The rapey is good. Everyone should get some once in a while.
OddWriter7199@reddit
Wow, interesting
Mailerfiend@reddit
no no the bovine-ork hybrid guy
Shadw21@reddit
needs more dakka, ya git.
axonxorz@reddit
Pseudo-Muphry's Law
RBeck@reddit
Full sned!
tech2but1@reddit
But Microsoft's Android keyboard product Swiftkey by default ignores words with numbers. I think so do most spellcheckers actually.
The irony of this comment is that the only red squiggly line is under the MS product name!
recursivethought@reddit
I just add everything to my dict: MS, SysAdmin, vLAN, etc. I also add other common abbreviations I use like conf, dict, upd
Only new PCs do I realize how much of that I do. And also New Teams because they odn't have the custom dict yet.
I really want SwiftKey or GBoard or Other 3rd-party integration on PC. Having one dictionary follow you across devices, and tab-complete, would be amazing.
Abitconfusde@reddit
should be a way to share that.
uCodeSherpa@reddit
New Outlook is a total cluster fuck.
It’s utterly, insanely slow. Weird changes as you suggested. Highlighting and deleting emails no longer deletes them? It works if you use the top button I guess, but that’s dumb.
bv728@reddit
The main reason they're doing this is because they're building all the apps as web apps first now, and replacing the right click menu in the web browser is considered more "rude" for some reason.
It's a horrible change, but for some reason they decided consistency from the Web to the Desktop is more important than the other way.
kKiLnAgW@reddit
Lmfao! It’s like I’m hearing my own voice, I said the same thing. Simply the dumbest shit you could do
professionalcynic909@reddit
Spellcheckers are a disaster. I've never used one and I'm pretty much the only person in my organisation (+200 people) who can spell properly. Everyone else used spellcheckers and can't spell for shit.
Gravybees@reddit
Lol, we spell organisation differently on this side of the pond. It’s all lit up in red for me :)
pdp10@reddit
That's why locales/localisations exist in your OS. If you're using
en-caoren-au, then you get Commonwealth spellings, metric, and a dollar sign on your codepage. If you're usingen-gbthen you get the same spellings with miles and a pound sign. Order of day and month in the date will differ...bartonski@reddit
I grew up in the 70s, before spellcheck, and I beg to differ... or at least offer a different perspective. My spelling is attrocious. My usage is spot on. Before spellcheck, there was a social stigma against those who could not spell... these days, all that remains of that stigma is the inability to spot the difference between homophones... but that's never been my problem. Spellcheck evened the playing field for me. In fact, it made my spelling better because I was actually aware of when I had misspelled a word, and what the correct word was.
I envy your ability to spell, much the way musicians envy those with perfect pitch, but I don't have it, and I'm grateful for automated orthography, as imperfect as it might be.
professionalcynic909@reddit
Good point.
snyone@reddit
Personally, I'd still love it if the industry would switch to something else like maybe LibreOffice. I admit my sole desire being that I can selfishly avoid MS products while also hearing less people bitch about LibreOffice formatting "not looking right in MS Office"
Valdaraak@reddit
Can I add a small rant?
We have a naming structure for Teams channels here and that structure sometimes requires the use of a full stop in the name, such a for a project number (ex: 20.513). Old Teams was perfectly fine with this. New Teams tells us that channel names can't contain links. I have to create those channels in the Teams admin center rather than Teams proper.
robisodd@reddit
I also love that the creation of a team in Teams also creates an email address with that team name, so you can't use that email address for anything else in the future.
E.g., create a "Sales" team for the sales department, it automatically creates a "sales@domain.com email address. Now you can't create a "sales@domain.com" distribution group.
To get around this, you can either change the email address or create the team with a different name ("Team-Sales") and change the name of the team after the email address is created. Either way requires a second-step of renaming. Fun!
OpenOb@reddit
You can use M365 groups to a subdomain: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/solutions/choose-domain-to-create-groups?view=o365-worldwide
q1a2z3x4s5w6@reddit
Even I wouldnt use that validation, bravo MS
trethompson@reddit
I just submitted a bug report yesterday bitching about this exact "feature."
Coupe368@reddit
That's because new outlook is browser based and sucks.
Kiernian@reddit
Yup. All browser-based apps are shit. All of them. To a one. No exceptions.
I'm going to get downvoted, but I'm dead serious. If it's supposed to be browser code, run it in a browser. If it's an app, compile the fucker and run it native. The crossover is horrible.
BloodFeastMan@reddit
My company contracts Gmail and instructs users how to use the web interface. The normies think how awesome it is, probably because they can change the background to show their ugly grandkids. I was using Thunderbird until head of IT turned off imap. What a dick.
Kiernian@reddit
To be fair, IMAP Sucks Out Loud.
Like, it was cool when the alternative was pop3, but it's comparatively garbage by today's standards.
BloodFeastMan@reddit
unfortunately, TB will not work with Gmail. There's a plug-in for Outlook to make it work, but I don't like Outlook more than I don't like the web interface. I still use TB, but with a separate Gmail account and creative forwarding, bcc'ing, and reply-to'ing
dhgaut@reddit
Microsoft is making so many terrible choices. Each update is half-baked. Anytime you need to make a Windows tech adjustment, you have to drop into old school control panel, or select "Show More Options" because they don't bother with updating common options. It comes from disrespecting programmers and constantly creating new teams.
BloodFeastMan@reddit
If you right click and make a new folder, copy and paste:
God Mode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
into the name, that's every Windows setting in an explorer "tree" format
doesnt_use_reddit@reddit
Yeah the UX folk at Microsoft need to have their heads checked
thomasmitschke@reddit
Fuck the new Outlook ‼️
BloodFeastMan@reddit
Emojis are cool and totally professional
node808@reddit
New Outlook is a big F-U in general. Had to revert back to the original app because meeting notifications were broken causing me to be late to two meetings. Cant wait for the WebView2 version of the other apps. So fun!
IndianaJoenz@reddit
It's best to avoid Microsoft software whenever possible IMO.
Their mice are ok.
BlackwoodBear79@reddit
My Microsoft Optical Trackball has the same pedigree as my Natural Keyboard. I keep waiting/hoping for a modern version.
david_edmeades@reddit
I broke up with my Natural keyboards. I'd been hoarding them, but after trying nicer keyswitches I can't type on them anymore. And of course most of the ones I had were PS/2. I got a Keychron Q13 Pro with their tactile switches, which I find to be a great modern interpretation and upgrade from the Natural.
pdp10@reddit
Microsoft has permanently lost their interest in peripherals unless Google or Apple bring out some new one that they want to beat.
danfirst@reddit
Big fan of the natural keyboards too!
BlackwoodBear79@reddit
I've been using one of their original Natural Ergonomic Keyboard Elite models since the early 2000s.
It has seen all manner of abuse, from being a level 60+ Bard in Everquest to 12+ years of WoW.
I've yet to find its equal.
danfirst@reddit
I had one of the original natural keyboards break back in the day. I contacted MS and talked to a guy who was really into the original model too and he seemed genuinely upset that mine broke and sent me a new one but apologized profusely that the keyboard layout wasn't as good as the original. I think I have that replacement in my tech nerd storage somewhere. I still use a natural from 10+ years ago I just got a few of the black ones from work so I "upgraded". Definitely the longest lasting hardware I've ever owned that gets constant use.
Here_for_newsnp@reddit
Microsoft hasn't made one good decision in nearly a decade at this point.
GreyBeardIT@reddit
Im so fucking sick of Outlook and all the horse shit Microsoft throws into it.
jake04-20@reddit
Speaking of underlined words, practically every single word I type in MS Edge has blue scwiggly lines below it, until I get 2-3 words further in my sentence. Then it disappears. I've cancelled it out of my mind by now but it was annoying af when I first started noticing it.
TotallyNotKabr@reddit
Well, your first mistake was using the new outlook...
code_monkey_wrench@reddit
Some product manager got a bonus for this feature...
boyinawell@reddit
Old guy at the office, stubborn about changing literally anything. Uses that beautiful "used to be white but is now yellow" that uses a PS/2 port.
Computer finally dies on him. Figures he'll pull the pin, get fresh everything - if you are going to change, might as well change everything right?
Even decides to change to the new outlook - all in!
I get an email from him a few hours later full of typos and emojis asking how to go back. Thanks MS.
Chesticlesmcgee@reddit
Enshitification via change for the sake of change to make it look like progress. I see it where I work all the time. The constant churn to make it look like value is being created.
GremlinNZ@reddit
Don't use new Outlook?
I uninstall it every time I see it...
Key-Calligrapher-209@reddit
barney_re-emerges.jpg
ObsidianBreeze@reddit
Imagine having a meltdown over such a simple change.
catwiesel@reddit
and people were laughing at me when I told them "no, we dont use office or outlook, we use libreoffice and thunderbird"
not like its all roses there, but the idiocy is greatly reduced!
hifiplus@reddit
My guess is that they want (force) you to use copilot That is get AI to spell, rather than a dictionary. Surely they can just install a dictionary as part of the OS and get rid of gee I don't know. Candy crush, xbox, Skype..
megamfs@reddit
Nooo, don't remove my Xbox app packages in windows 11 enterprise that are so necessary for organizations like mine which only play video games during working hours. Are you saying that you are working on the clock and don't need Xbox apps?!
ReputationNo8889@reddit
I NEED TO PLAY HALO !?!!
pdp10@reddit
The Halo game franchise got shuffled off to some C player studio eons ago. A company the size of Microsoft is only interested in games for recurring-revenue or to provide more leverage to another part of the business, like hardware or cloud.
HotPieFactory@reddit
That is how it currently works, and has been working for a long time.
hifiplus@reddit
Aren't they referring to the removal if autocorrect? This has changed in new Outlook (mail)
TrowaB3@reddit
The idiocy is using new Outlook lol. There's no reason to as it just takes away features. There's a reason it's not a mandatory change like Teams was.
Fallingdamage@reddit
This is what happens when Gen Z decides they can code.
eastlakebikerider@reddit
I thought it was just me. Thanks for confirming my rage as well intended.
Driftqueen3000@reddit
While we are on this topic. How long do they need to fix their issue where pro devices with enterprise subscription users can't upgrade their device to enterprise bc a planned task is not working as planned? Still no fix in the newest KB. It's been three months now.
Erok2112@reddit
Outlook classic supported until 2029 because "new" outlook is such trash.
ke1v3y@reddit
Why can't I forward a calendar event to LDAP contacts in New Outlook? Shit pisses me off
obviousboy@reddit
Product team. FYI
thedamnadmin@reddit
Left click doesn't even work if you're drafting an email in the main window. Spellcheck just doesn't exist unless you're in a separate window. That's so hyper-stupid it hurts my brain.
DipShit290@reddit
My spellchecker wasn't even on by default. I searched for it. Turns out it's hidden under the privacy options.
cvc75@reddit
If the spellcheker only works online and is sending everything you type to Microsoft, that might actually be a privacy issue for some people. I know the "enhanced" spellchecker in Edge and Chrome does this, so might be the same for Outlook?
HotPieFactory@reddit
That is how it currently works, and has been working for a long time.