My hatred for you is boundless, Outlook. It is also constantly evolving, for you always surprise me with new and infuriating ways to disrupt my workflow and challenge my abilities to troubleshoot utterly ridiculous problems that you have spontaneously caused. What’s more is that I don’t use you for anything other than email. You’re an email client; the most basic function you have is to send and receive emails, and you suck at it. I avoid using your calendar, I don’t use your tasks or your shitty quasi-social media connections. Your Rules are faulty, your Categorize feature is useless, and I don’t even want to know what the fuck OneNote is. Your settings and preferences are tangled, conflicting webs nested within each other. I could fill a tractor trailer’s volume with reams of narrow-ruled loose leaf scrawled with your shortcomings and those of your MS Office bastard siblings, but none of you is worth the carpal tunnel syndrome developed by doing so. Let’s just hit your most infuriating recurring fumblings.
Your settings? You don’t want those. Let me rejigger all this stuff for you.
The only thing that makes my vitreous humour boil behind heavily furrowed brows more than you disregarding my personal settings on a whim is when you commit some sort of self-imposed paradox error to do so. 
It must pain you deeply to the brink of architectural collapse to, for instance, leave the “Show as Conversations” box checked yet not display my emails as conversations. You are showing me that my unread Inbox message headers are supposed to be bold Tahoma, but they’re light goddamn blue HurtsMyEyes. And don’t offer to apply settings to all folders or just this one if you’re not going to comply with my selection. You’re a sick masochistic creep, Outlook.
Look! I can finally organize conversations! Sometimes and selectively. At random.
Congratulations! You’re finally performing a function that should have been standard with the advent of electronic correspondence. A programmer I am not, but, compared to all the other crap you can supposedly do, it seems like a relatively simple operation to group related messages. Separate from your contradictory and meddlesome habit of adjusting the actual settings, you do a piss-poor job of GROUPING RELATED MESSAGES. They’re not in time/date order, but in some kind of bungling leapfrog assemblage that requires I scan every message in the thread to see which was last. This is less useful than not grouping messages at all. Booo. “Just look at the time stamp on the email,” you say. You’re right; that works great with today’s emails, but anything more than 24 hours old just shows the date, so fuck you.
I’m constantly screwed up, but I can repair myself. Every other goddamn day.
A self-repair tool is a great idea, Outlook, but not when you’re always in a state of decrepitude. Remember, you’re only handling my email; I let you off the hook with all other organizational tasks by using your competitors’ superior (and usually free) products. I do organize Saved E-mail with folders, but not by enacting crazy Rules, nor with a labyrinthine structure of sub-folders. How can you be broken by a message being moved from the Inbox to another folder? And why the hell does this happen so often? If you’re gonna fix the problem, fix the problem, you inoperative ninny!
Let me send that for you. Oops. Sorry, I can’t right now. Oh, and you can’t re-send. Do you mind just starting over?
This might be your finest work, you ponderous trunk of turds. I can tolerate all your other foibles without sputtering vociferous hate speech, but this one gets my goat. It is 1) stupid, 2) causes me double work, 3) makes me look like an asshole because I haven’t sent a timely response. You’re offended? No, fuck you! I’m offended! How dare you look hurt and make me out to be the insensitive goon?! And stop pretending like you don’t know what I’m talking about! I sent that batch of emails three hours ago, and they’re still sitting in the Outbox. No, no, stop pointing at the ISP; the internet’s working just fine. Whatever, let’s just send them now, for chrissakes. I guess you don’t like the Send/Receive All button, so I’ll take the extra step of reopening them individually and hitting Send again. Okay, open and… send. Send? Where’s the fucking Send button?! There’s no Send button?! You’re telling me the message hasn’t been sent and that it can’t be sent without taking another added step of forwarding my own frigging email to the original recipient? You’re a real piece of work, you are, Outlook. For birthing you into the marketplace your designers and QC team have earned admittance into an extra special alcove in Hell where they must—repeatedly for a near eternity—format a Word document in columns, embed a dynamically linked Excel table, and put the whole ungainly mishmash into a PowerPoint presentation loaded with animations and sound effects. The cruel, middling demon in charge there loves animations and sound effects. Just when these overpaid purveyors of human misery (talking about the techs) start getting an aptitude for it, the UI will be radically and nonsensically altered to the point that it seems as if they’re forced to completely relearn something they’d been doing for years. Intermittently, the Windows start-up sound is beamed directly into their heads. It’s modified to resonate with what once was the animate skull, and because each tortured soul’s head is crammed up his or her own ass (as it was in life), the vibration causes an instant loosening of the bowels. Further, because the souls’ jaws are locked open in permanent temporomandibular disorder (from decades of self-congratulatory accolades, to say nothing of servicing their original diabolical director, Bill Gates), the feculent slurry is fed back into the tract, creating an infinite recursion rivaling the madness induced by trying to print an invoice from Microsoft Office 365. Before the entire expanse of Hell implodes, the techs must render the Windows salute to halt the process, then attempt to locate the Restart option in Windows 8 before their demon overseer can initiate the unprompted install of the next Service Pack. Also, it should go without saying that it’s really fucking hot and humid there. Like, imagine the distance and climate difference between Redmond and Miami. The distance between Miami and this abyss is immeasurably greater. But all is not lost for these tormented beings. Their emailed pardon will be sent via Outlook, so there’s a chance of release—or it could be sitting in its own infernal limbo where messages are both and neither sent/unsent.
I got a little off-topic. Here’s the deal, Outlook: I use you because I must. If ever the day comes that I no longer require your pathetic services, I shall giddily eradicate your digital presence from my life. Please take forceful fistings into that gaping “O” in your logo until I tire of it. I do not bore easily.
***7-Year Anniversary Update, May 2021***
We never tire of the rageful outpouring in the comments on this post. Nothing else we’ve ever dumped here has had such long-lived interaction. There’s too much divisiveness and misplaced hatred in this world, and not enough futile anger aimed at inanimate, intangible entities. Let such impotent venting unite us without regard for borders, divisions, or distinctions!
Sadly, the screencaps are a bit outdated seven years later, but many of the gripes remain relevant—with some lovely new ones to boot. Progress.
—Ted
Have to agree 1O0% with everything you just said. Although I don’t understand all the mechanics, the context tells me you’re on the right path with this dysfunctional site that calls itself an email system! Christ, whadda joke. I wish I had seen your post before I wasted money reprinting my business cards and stationary.
Yes, the “send” button disappears. So does the “inbox” button. And .pdf files will neither print nor download, except as blanks. And if you want to read them, you must hold your finger on the mouse, or what you’re reading instantly disappears. And, yes, that light blue print is very hard on the eyes; black must be as expensive as Jed’s Texas Tea. Emails stack and compress, but you can’t untangle them at all, much less ever locate the attachments in a prior email. Then I have to spend three days dodging their crooked insistence I give them a cell phone “to increase my security”, or some stupid bullshit, or else I’m not allowed to see my mail until I do.
Whadda f-ing joke.
Years ago I had Outlook Express, which was a beautiful, reliable, failsafe system. Then greedy Bill Gates, unable to pay bills on his monthly $350 billion, scrapped it and replaced it with a newer Outlook Express, which is a complete piece of crap. And Outlook itself is ten times worse.
If that spineless coward ever finds the guts to show his face in public again, there’s going to be a lynching party shadowing him that will draw more crowds than any used in the Old West.
Microsoft and their garbage email Outlook have about driven me out of my living freaking mind. I got ahold of them the other day because my automatically attached Skype account wasn’t deleted. Plus Outlook keeps showing me as “available:. If I wanted people to know I was online Id mail out fucking announcements. Oh wait! Outlook has taken the liberty of doing that for me without asking! So come to find out, I cannot dump my Skype account (that I didnt want in the 1st place) without totally eliminating my Hotmail account which Ive had since 1994-95. WTFF? Sure I can unlink them, but that only works until I log into my Hotmail again. Microsoft has taken the liberty of not only changing my email service without my choice or permission, but now they log me on to services I haven’t chosen, I do not use, and do this all without my express consent. So really I have no clue where or when Im signed in online. The only way to stop this? Totally dump my Microsoft account and start over again. Not only do these actions leave my information and account very unsafe, but they store the info in their cloud which is made of dope smoke and glue fumes. Everyone who took basic science knows a cloud is not solid. Therefore, their cloud is not, and has proven to be as such, SECURE. Your ass is hanging around out there in the vapors. I desperately want to switch email service, but goddamit Ive had the same frickin email for like 20 years! I don’t want to change it! Somehow these actions by Microsoft have to be illegal… Im sure theyd be on me like flies on shit if I just took it upon myself to use their info whenever I damn well felt motivated. My Hotmail worked fine save a few hiccups the entire time I had it. I want it back. NOW. Microsoft can jam the rest of their Outlook shit up their ass with sand and a rotten dog dick. If I were able to Id also switch from Windows as an operating system because Ive hated that since XP phased out. They always have to fuck with something. That something usually winds up being people like you and me. DEATH TO MICROSOFT!
Preach it. Fuck Outlook, fuck it in its bloated, self congratulatory ass. This steaming pile of shit fucked me for the last time this morning. I should have never come back from Thunderbird, sure there are minor inconveniences to deal with, but at least I won’t get calls from my boss at noon wondering where I am because the email I sent at 4:50 in the morning is permanently hung up in my outbox. I want to run through the developer’s offices with a chainsaw right now. Fuck Outlook. Fuck the parties responsible for releasing this goddamned abomination into the world of otherwise competent adults. Maybe Bill and Melinda can set up a charity for those who suffer professionally because of this shit product.
Thanks Ted, its just good to know i’m not alone in hating Windows and Office 365. I’ve lost my work which was going to be written samples fro my dream job, probably wouldn’t have got said job, but now the chance/dream of trying has been denied me. god this is a shit world. The power elite always slapping down the common man. I’m gonna study the Tibetan Book of the Dead – Fucking don’t want to return to this sinister demension again
I cannot believe what a shit product Outlook is. It used to be the bench mark in email clients, in my opinion, and this has been re-inforced over the last 5 or so years, it is ABSOLUTE CRAP. Never synching properly, throwing up random errors, it is meant ot be flippin simple stuff. I’m not using it anymore, so over it. Give me a Thunderbird or something similar which is reliable and actually continually refined. So angry with Outlook once again. SHIT SHIT SHIT product. Annoys me more that I have to vent and waste my time.
Outlook why won’t you just die already. You are the worst piece of shit system ever created
I love the hate and discontent this has inspired. Keep it up, my 7 readers!
Outlook 2016 unbeknownst to me apparently deleted my pst file in favor of an “ost” file which does not include most of my saved emails from the original pst. DECADES of my work appears to be gone. Well at least Microsoft wallows in unaccountable nirvana with there trillions of ill gotten $ completely indifferent to the lives and businesses they’ve suckered in only to be subsequently ruined at a later date. I’ll be happy to ditch OL forever but I don’t think I can until I hopefully retrieve my life’s work from a miraculously recovered remnant of my original pst file. Shit fuck MS bastards for all eternity.
Microsoft went money hungry with all the …give me all your personal information or you get no service. I’m locked out of my account and can no longer access my account, ever. I made an alias account to recover, gave my cell number. Did that work, hell no. Got locked out of my alias account. Macroshit want’s an address i don’t have and locked me out of my third account, 42 times. As a result, the easy access apps on my Samsung are not accessible. Where’s the competition? Macroshit want’s an email account to make my computer work, WTF? It’s all about money and selling information. Who or whom did MacroShit sell out to? What other operating systems are available. I want out, completely from MacroShit.
i think microsoft was invented by nerds with sticks up their arses. sticks so long they exit the top of their skulls, causing the entire body to stiffen up to a board. macintosh will overtake microsoft in the near future because it is easier and more intuitive to use. the fact that people are willing to spend more money on a product that is more child-like and basic says it all. MS should stop hiring lawyers and physicists as their developers and start using every-day end-users to design their apps. keep it simple stupid. i can’t even open an account in outlook it’s so counter-intuitive.
If I were given one free murder, it would be a draw between Bill Gates and Donald Trump. Both are the Babe Ruth of rotting, filthy liars fucking things up.
Still feel this way about Trump?
Nicely stated. My very, very own Outlook piss-off is the ever present “pst” file, and the “automatic archive” feature. Really? By default, every email more than six months old is silently deleted? The “pst” file must mean “pisset off” … yes?
Clunky, slow, maddeningly slow … and ever worse with each release, Outlook 2007, Outlook 2010, Outlook 2013, … maddeningly slow; and, whatever you do, watch out that your impenetrable binary “pst” file is carefully “backed up”.
Really?
Why corporate IT departments continue to use this anachronistic piece of crap is entirely beyond my comprehension.
SLOW is a motherfucking understatement. Watching the dottie circlespin around and around (sometimes up to 5 minutes), all the while saying its “starting…” “still working on it…” and at last, “almost there!” gives me a nasty vision of what it must be like to fuck some geezer with a serious case of ED who got his hands on some viagra. Im almost thinking od having a fuckton of winged rats, er, I mean homing pigeons, delivered to the Microdick HQ. Anyone know where to get a semi load of live pigeons? Hehehehe!!!
I hate that Outlook was forced upon users and that the option to change back to Hotmail has been removed. I hate how long it take for the page to load and how the piece of shit lags and slows down my computer nearly to the point of ctrl+alt+del. Piece of shit. I hardly use it anymore.
Microshit only got into the position they are in today, because in the early days they gave their crapware away for almost free, and this is part of the reason we are still stuck using it today, they recognised that market share was far more important than profit, at that time. Now they have the monopoly, they act like pricks and have been for some time now.
I totally agree on the whole UI change thing everytime the wind blows, and this is coming from someone who works as a technician (Sorry if we cause misery, try to image how we feel, dealing with this shit day in day out, constantly, forever). If Microsoft made cars, every new release we would see the steering wheel, brake, accelerator, clutch etc, moved around into difficult to find places in order to justify itself as a new thing.
I’ve never understood how outlook can go wrong, so often, and so spectaculary. How the fuck does an OST get corrupted? I have yet to see a valid explanation that doesn’t include blaming some external cause.
As for windows 10, well, how can anyone take a software company seriously, when they include candy crush as a game, preinstalled, by default. I think that sums up microshit to a tee
Agreed with everything being said here. Outlook turned into a steaming pile of horseshit and best thing is, I CANT F*CKING GET BACK MY OLD HOTMAIL account which worked perfectly fine.
No, i’m stuck to this brainless and pathetic platform they call an email service and i am forced to use it since my email account is know by so many companies for correspondence en by all of my friends and relatives.
Can barely fucking find any send or received mails after having to wait for ages for this pile of crap to start up. It does not automatically save email addresses previously used and all submenu’s are folded and takes to many freaking point and click actions to get access to.
I hate the letter type used, i hate the background themes you can choose from , i hate the way adding new maps work and i hate the way you can change only a few settings and i hate the whole cumbersome and clunky mechanics and general design. Fuck MS and fuck their 360 system that they want to force you through your throat. Fuck this webbased email service and give us back a dedicated email service as Hotmail used to be!
Fucking Fuck!
Find yourself a way to fix your junk mail folder settings. No matter what I do it just will not work.
Thanks for entertaining me through my tantrum. Flying lessons for my poor iPad would’ve proved to be Stupid. I just wanted to delete outlook but you can check out any time you want but you can never leave.
Stop fucking around with my Hotmail email! Outlook sucks and the SOB will now not open. Please stop helping us and spend your time getting a fucking life! Now get my old system back!
Notice I am not using hotmail addresses, I want to rid myself of any “official” things on hotmail as the whole F88KING SHAMBLES OF MSN TOTALLY STINKS!! TAKES FOREVER TO OPEN AN EMAIL, FOREVER TO LOG OFF, ITS A DISASTER!!! GOOD RIDDANCE TO msn AND HOTMAIL!!! iAM RUNNING ALL GOOGLE GMAILS NOW WITH NEVER A PROBLEM, JAM UPS, DELAYS, FREEZES, ITS WONDERFUL – NO WONDER GOOGLE IS TAKING OVER THE COMPUTER WORLD!! AFTER A LONG TIME WITH HOTMAIL (WHEN IT WORKED FINE) ITS NOW A HEAP OF SHIT THAT I DREAD,UTTERLY DREAD TO EVEN OPEN UP!!! MR. L WILBY IN ENGLAND AND EUROPE
looks like microFUCKINGsoft just love to torture all there stupid customers
THANK YOU FOR VENTING THIS! The entire system is just mind boggling idiotic.
I found this by googling ‘why is outlook a pile of shit?’
It took me 20 minutes to send an attachment. Your rant has saved both my laptop and window. Outlook already took my sanity.
Instructions:
1) Use an alternative, like Thunderbird, or Apple Mail.
2) Stop whining.
YUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!!!! One-hundred billion-trillion-quadrillion% agree, yoooou suck Outlook developers!!!
Thank you thank you thank you. I just wanted to update: Outlook is exactly the same useless piece of shit overburdened with options no one wants while lacking any modicum of intuitive process that it was three years ago when you wrote this.
How do I …? Well hit the options icon and then go to layout … or maybe the calendar, and … no, wait, click on your user name and *then* hit the … um, which version are you using? We create a new version every thirteen days and each one locates the commands in a different sub-sub-sub-menu. You don’t know?? How is it possible you don’t know what version you’re using. Ok, so go to the outlook icon at the top left of the second page underneath the bell icon and …
What, you’ve finally accepted Focused and Other arbitrarily splitting your mail into two relatively similar folders, making it take twice as long to find anything? Well fuck you, it’s not available. no wait, it is. No … it isn’t. It is. Isn’t. Sweep, the only useful feature ever introduced? Well maybe. Maybe not. It’s there. It’s gone. It’s there. Maybe only half the crap. Depends, is it a Tuesday? Just for funsies, if you’ve flagged any mail as important and then you have the temerity to cancel Focused/Other, it will disappear. Entirely. Forever. Goodbye $200 in southwest Luv Bucks, have a nice day.
What’s that, you can’t remember your password? Well we can’t let you into your own email you accessed yesterday until we can call you on the phone you originally registered with nine years ago which is currently at the bottom of Lake Michigan. No. No. No. Oohhhh, Oooo kayyyy … maybe we will let you in. Give us the location of the birthmarks on your dog – no not your *current* dog, idiot, the one you had when you were 12. Nope, not right. Sorry, you’ll have to wait A MONTH before you can get in. To Your Email. Not your bank info or your social security documentation, your fucking EMAIL. A MONTH.
Right now it’s just so insanely slow I’ve had time to compose this masterpiece while waiting for the “create rules” menu to come up. Marvelous.
Outlook 2016 is a crock of complete shit. I run 6 email accounts on Outlook – mostly IMAP/SMPT whatever that means – and moved some storage folders from one account to another. The folders moved OK (Are you sure you want to move the folders? – Yes..) but without warning Outlook deleted all the emails in the folders! Gone, over a years worth of emails with over 20 clients, without so much as a ‘if you do this you may lose all the emails in these folders’. OUTLOOK 2016 – IS A CROCK OF COMPLETE SHIT!
Who is this “Ted” clown? He sounds like some old troll who’s trying desperately to justify why he doesn’t want to expend any effort at providing Customer Service.
IN RE: Outlook: Since my first post nearly two years ago, I’ve noticed they’ve changed, maybe for the better. I was so afraid of losing everything, I learned to type very slowly and gingerly whenever using their dysfunctional site, so as not to upset anything held together by Outlook’s illiterate techs, rubber cement and popsicle sticks.
Only difference is now they’re bundling random emails into a separate category, making me open the goddamned thing twice. And they’re still welding the damned messages together so they can’t be accessed a second time.
Fucking assholes…!
Somewhere there’s a hot seat in hell for Bill Gates, so that spineless, gutless feral scum can burn and rot in peace.
Right now Gates is doubling down with his “save the world with my vaccines” propaganda. Obviously is not deep enough into hades and seeks the hotter regions.
Not a scientist, nor a disease expert, cant even keep viruses out of his own creations but insists that his heavy metal and chemical laden injections somehow will save us from a virus with an official (inflated has anyone died of the flu or other bronchial infections since ths whole sh!tshow started) death rate of 0.2%
Meanwhile those of us awake to this one world control agenda (thats where its going folks) are ridiculed by sheeple who are that dumbed down by fluoride in damn near everything, glyphosate in everything else and mercury and or aluminium in vaccines that are being pushed on us and our children in insane amounts.
Work is making me learn Outlook. As if I didn’t have enough to do and my hours for my people are being squeezed. Also short a few bodies, so more work for everyone (that’s still here)!
I tried this morning but I got s**t to do and places to go and it was on my own dime. Also the video courses are narrated by United Kingdom English speakers, and I really dislike non-rhotic dialects.
As Bill once said, “Ah feel yourah pain.”.
High Court them off the seat they think they own they are what you call Chancer`s, asking for a battle, or get another account that is private and cant phone you when your on the pan having a pleasant dump, who care`s bud Smile Your dealing with a Company Of losser`s
Use your own power and susspend them who you may ask there is a little Troll behind Microsoft a pussy that run`s like a headless chicken when you rattle his cage a man in a skirt get right into them and he will appear like the candy man saying I`m so so sorry
Its all in your head mate delete the shyte or High Court If you read this Its our product that says it all our product not your ours mines me me me I own it Me and my you get the idea your dealing with a little squirt behind the the Big picture yup a little dummy tit sucker runs Microsoft like the wizard of Oz movie kid Its all Trash so delete it from your Nut we all feel your pain dont let the Bastards grind you down
High Court Judge, this is the greatest comment ever made on this site. Thank you for summarizing everyone’s feelings with such succinct elegance. Cheers!
Just upgraded to the latest version of outlook 2016. It is now unable to connect to the office 365 server it has always connected to. went through the exercise of a clean win 10 pro install and a clean install of office 365. still no joy. BTW thunderbird, and the free win 10 email program have no problem connecting to the account. there is no longer any option to manually configure things like servers or connection parameters. If outlook can’t figure it out you’re screwed
Yeah I don’t get it, and I 100% belive that they (microsoft) try to make everything as annoying and unusable as possible and make it look like shit! It’s the only explanation. The 2010 outlook is user friendly and (kinda) intuitive, nice separation between the different areas and a good color scheme. The new one (the one with the blue color scheme) has got to be the worst program in existence!! It looks like shit! Everything is all cluttered together, no separation between anything just this blue ugly square of shit, with random crap all over. If they force me to use this shit at work I’m gonna resign, simple as that! God I’d like to to meet whoever thought this crap was an improvement over the 2010 version in a dark alley with no witnesses. Can’t wait bill gates to drop dead so I can go piss on his grave!
I have to agree. Outlook sucks, especially with the “focused” bullshit, which I’m not sure what they are “focusing” on. Every “update” brings more inane infuriating “improvements”. I’m a curmudgeon, and have used Microsoft since (before) its infancy. Unfortunately it is now more infantile than those early days. Please stop trying to please everybody, stop trying to be Apple, and just do your effing job!
Yeah, it won’t open half the time, and if I DO get it to run, and compose an EMAIL, it usually crashes FAILING TO SAVE MY LENGTHY DETAILED EMAIL AS A DRAFT!!
..I Tried running the repair tool (did the full featured online version). After a LONG time, the tool FOR OUTLOOK came back with a “not for this product” message. ??????
Followed by a path to the diagnostic files, and a message that I need to contact Microsoft PAID support! with those files. ..and this right AFTER I just paid a fortune for an O365 SUBSCRIPTION?!?!?!??!??!? WTF????
You only have Bill Gates to hunt down and blame. He created all that great stuff, only to discover it won’t make him any more money bc it never breaks down! So, he creates all these methods for it to collapse, so he can get fools like US to pay him to fix it! FUCK this asshole. If this spineless cocksucker ever came onto my property, I’d spread his crooked, lying face out like a dog’s breakfast and crap in his eyeballs.
I’ve been trying for an hour to find “Create Rules” for control direction of in coming emails – so they will go to certain folder. microsoft’s/Outlook’s directions are completely false.
Microsoft says, “Go to Home Tab, and they “Create Rule.” Another MS page also reads “Go to home navigation.” Exactly what is the Home Tabs and what is the Home navigation? After scouring through both and then combing though the side nave where by folders are, there is no “Creating Rules” option. It seems deliberate, as thy don’t really want to use the feature. I’ve owned mini technical devices which have way better technical writers than the misleading dishonest directions from Outlook. What a blatant screwjob by Outlook. Once I figure out where the “Create Rule” function is, I guarantee you that I can wring a clearer, better set of instructions on how to create rules to direct email to appropriate boxes. Thank you Microsoft for deliberately misleading users – and lying – yes lying about how to perform important functionality! This is dishonest business.
@ted – you NAILED it. I can still used office 2000 or openoffice better and faster than any of this terrible sewage microsoft has published the last year. As for OneNote – I’ve been forced by my team lead to start using this refuse — it doesn’t EVEN HAVE FIND+REPLACE functionality!? It’s 2019, and ever webpage/app/program/device I’ve used is a shadow of what once was. I wish I could live on a farm. — Signed, x-gadget geek/EE
One of my favourites is that focused inbox ‘feature’.
As far as I can tell, this is where Outlook, by default, hides all my messages until I can be bothered to go looking for them. I’m sure it’s supposed to do something useful, but… whatever.
Turning it off entails clicking “SHOW FOCUSED INBOX”, with the visible effect of the toggle being the indicator of the current mode.
The mobile Outlook app is worse. Flipping the toggle does nothing, and I must hunt down the setting to completely disable the ‘feature’ before my emails become visible.
AND it keeps adding self-advertising signatures to my emails even after I’ve switched them off (it has re-established its own signature multiple times in the last year, apparently upon receiving a major update).
The lack of an ‘unfuck’ feature in the mobile app means uninstalling and re-installing (then disabling focused inbox and unwanted email signature) from scratch with irksome frequency, also.
It’s enough to make me hate emails even more.
OUtlook sucks. Period.
The rules DONT fucking work.
They dont fucking work man.
yes but its consistent
everything else doen’t work just as good
so message to microsoft:-
” OUTLOOK IS A PILE OF SHITE
Oh, so, so right. All I want, now that my GoDaddy has, in their wisdom, converted to Outlook for email…which conversion took several wasted hours of my time, plus over an hour in tandem with one of their staffers…to get it set up so that my mail would flow from the GoDaddy server to Outlook…now all I want in this ever loving blue eyed world, is to be able to see the graphics embedded in the inbound e-mails. Every reference starts ‘Click file’. There is no file button, text, or other similar link that I can see. I have looked for the mythical ‘Trust Center’ without success. I can see the graphics if I click forward on the e-mail, creating a draft, but was unable to respond to AAA on a tow experience because it was an embedded form…Gahhh! Thank you Ted, your profane analysis of Microsofts shortcomings in general and Outlook in particular made me feel as if I’m not alone in my suffering.
This argument requires some illusion of authority. This disappears when people pluralize traffic, deer, mail or similar nouns with an S. :-/
Touche!
I sent an email to myself from my phone almost twelve hours ago!
Wait for it… wait for it… Beuller…Beuller………
And yes. Their phone ap sucks as well. Really sucks. As a matter of fact the whole IT world is about as unintuitive as it can get. IMHO it’s about as unstable and susceptible [to crashing, hacking] to breaking down, more than any other technical or mechanical function of “industry” to date. The built in obsolescence allows the consumer to be the guinea pig for their own R & D at the consumer’s expense. Updates, redesigns, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, in a matter of months. after you’ve purchased and adjusted to the last system. It’s like being a rat in a maze.
Thank you for your consideration!
And how do I edit my “spew” on this thing without replying to myself over and over again?
See what I mean?
and from one baboon to another ‘ OUTLOOK IS A PILE OF SHITE ‘
I worked out the stuck in outbox with no send button issue some years ago, drag those emails into the drafts then whenyou open them up, one by one of course, there is a send button. Good luck.
I came here looking for help with the P.O.S. Signature editor as I updated the image I have in my signature, now its frekin huge, it has convenient drag squares on the corner and side that dont bludy work, I tried scrolling down to the ones on the bottom corner but the image disappears leaving the drag squares which still dont work.
Every other html-ish editor you replace a picture it automatically resizes to the original how nice but outlook signature editor is standing there like a proud toddler that has painted his room with feces!!! Its small, wont do anything its told and thinks he’s just done the most outstanding thing evar!!
Opened a new email (compose in actual terms), signature automatically there with huge picture.
Resized it in the message and hit CTRL C
went to options found the signature editor, highlighted the picture that was too big, pasted with CTRL V
now its perfect Microsoft so you deserve the CTRL V (ie the first 2 fingers in a V) as thats just a totally retarded solution that works
Spent about an hour trying to setup one of our companies email accounts on an employees Iphone in Outlook, that has gmail accounts etc already setup
Setup failed is all I got, settings were right, our server (remote hosted) uses standard Imap over SSL and SMTP ports. Tried letting it autodetect, tried advanced, even specified ports as suggested by an online 3rd party website still no dice!!! I just love typing autogenerated passwords over and over again into a stupid 6″ iPhone to be told no that doesnt work with no feckun reason given.
Gave up opened the inbuilt mail app and was done in about 60 seconds.
Seven years later and it’s still essentially useless. And getting Outlook calendar to work with your Mail is clearly too hard for the idiots. MSFT…where innovation goes to die. And to think the overpaid employees go home each night thinking they’re geniuses. *smh*
Old thread I know, but I came here after being forced to use Outlook by my college. That’s fine on its own I suppose, but they created a school email for me, and Outlook doesn’t acknowledge it as a real account, so I can’t link it to Outlook on my phone or anything, meaning I don’t get notifications. So god forbid I get something time sensitive in an email from the people I’m paying thousands of dollars to, because I’ll only know I got it once I log on through the school’s slow ass portal and check. That’s assuming that an email would show up of course, since sometimes Outlook just decides that it doesn’t want to put new emails at the top of my inbox. Fucking Christ what a garbage system.
I agree with 99.9% but you could have simplified it by saying that Outlook and hotmail is a complete piece of shit. Nevertheless I find this to be the issue with most of Microsoft products they are actually on the whole shit.
I recently had to start using Outlook for school, after using Hotmail then later GMail for all my personal and professional e-mail before then.
It. Fucking. Sucks.
Reading your rant was cathartic (though a bit sad that it is, was, and likely ever will be unusable trash). Thank you.
So I just changed institutions, and needed to send an email from my new workplace Exchange account to my esteemed colleague at my old one. He even sent me emails previously and recently, so Outlook should have had his name/email all queued up. Nope, would only search my new enterprise Directory. Ok, well, I’ll go find those emails, make an Outlook contact out of him, and then surely Outlook can find him right, from its own goddamned list of contacts? Right? Right? Beuller? Beuller?
FUCKING NO. FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT GODDAMNED CRAP OUTLOOK GARBAGE.
I so agree with you. god I fucking hate outlook. and microsoft. and google. and fucking whatsapp. everything is evolving into a pile of steaming shit. it’s getting worse and worse, it’s makiing decisions for me that I WANT TO MAKE MYSELF. I’m not a fucking 5-year old who is in need of an adult to decide their life. what the fucking fuck you fuckers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it looks like right now, it has decided to change the look of the GUI and i’m missing the File tab. also, it seems like i can no longer STOP IT FROM FUCKING “CORRECTING” AND UNDERLINING MY ALLEGED MISTAKES! I write my e-mails in 4 different languages and this piece of goat shit assumes it’s all english. NO IT IS NOT, YOU MORON. same shit with google. i want search in 7 languages. it accepts it in ONE now. I want to turn off outlook’s fucking red underlines and i can no longer find that option. everything is starting to suck so hard it’s insupportable! whatsapp brought updates! now i can follow people, sure, let me just accept and follow zuckerbag! fucking whatsapp is a messaging client. like outlook is supposed to be a simple e-mail client. I do not everything to become the same. whatsapp does not need to become fucking tiktok. I’m not 12 years old, I do not need to FOLLOW idiots to decide how I’m gonna live my life! I HATE these developments with such a passion, I’m actually feeling so much anger in my body right now. I don’t need your answer. but it’s good to know i’m not the only one who hates this piece of shit.
Microsoft which could have easily dominated a perfect email has totally fuxted up again. Ever notice how long it take their servers to load live.com hotmail or outlook emails? It takes so long because MS is serving themselves first accessing as much information from its users as it possibly can. Where you are accessing your mail, tapping into your PC, phone or tablet and sucking up as much information on you including if you you took a dump in their name that day. Can you spell T H U N D ER B I R D ? ( https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/ ) Perhaps you may consider switching to a alternative email solutions that is actually more robust and does not infringe on your personal property and uses encryption. F*CK WOKE MS!
amen brother. I’d go to a church every week that preached this sermon.
I don’t know where to begin…. This was just drop dead hilarious and so spot on I can’t breathe yet from laughing so hard. I’m just surprised I haven’t encountered this before, as often as I’ve typed in whatever browser I’m hating the least at the time “How do I undo the FUCKING _______ {fill in blank} microsoft did to ______ {fill in the program} for the past 30+ years. Tonight is was the POS app-search field they added to outlook! Arrrrggghhhh!! and of course they don’t offer any way to turn it off or move it or make it actually fucking useful… It just never ends!!
Seriously, I have been using PCs almost daily since 1986, starting w/ Dos 3.11 (Wordstar, DB3, and Lotus 123 v 2.01). I learned to manage a Novell network as admin in ’93 (which was its own brand of agony), and in ’95, the place I worked was using OS2 with WordPerfect for Windows and Novell Groupwise! Now that was an epic horror story, especially since at the time I was a genuine WP5 guru, and had to learn how to work WP in windows, AND THEN! they switched to MS office…. . Then in ’99, I took over an ISP and had to learn Linux and Cisco routers, etc. Now that was a not-real-fun experience. Linux is fine and I still use a version of it with my NAS, but I’m tired, tired, tired, tired, tired of being a guinea pig. Really.
The point of which, I guess, is that as much as I genuinely hate what MS has become, there have been high points. Windows ’97 was a gem, and other versions have been good too (but not 2K or 8), to be sure. Of course, I’ve invested a great deal of time learning how to get around MS stupid programmer tricks so that it _literally_ takes me about two weeks to configure a new PC the way I want it (turn off EVERYTHING, never-ever sign into MS, block all automatic updates in the registry, make Edge brain-dead, cripple Chrome some, and so on). In fact, I use Open shell menu configured to look and act like classic menus. Etc.
But to your rant and everyone else’s complaints, I would offer this somewhat provocative thought: Microsoft was always a little tone deaf when it came to users, but it wasn’t until the big switch in Windows and Office from Object Oriented Programming (icons, buttons, configurable display colors, etc) to XML that MS started to take a dictatorial approach (and created that Gawd-awful, truly stupid-fucking ‘clippy’). Basically, since then, it’s been “we know what’s best for you and we’re going to make changes no matter what you all want.” Which is not really an American business model and was seen by quite a few people as potentially business damaging, and problematic at best. But, as I was told by a person I’d reason to trust, there was in the mad Y2K-fix rush years a sea change of personnel in leadership positions w/ people from different nations and cultures earning a more prominent role in the org. Suffice to say, in many cultures, say India for example, educated people in positions of leadership are deferred to a lot more than was the standard here.
–And you can see where this is going I suspect… so I’ll cut to the chase:
The culture at MS and many other multinationals has morphed into something not so much ‘woke’ as truly transnational, and has accordingly become less ‘American’ in its customer-focused attitudes. In India and Indonesia, for example, customers (and most citizens, for that matter) are expected to just accept without complaint what they are given by the people in positions of power (and if they do complain, they’re generally ignored anyway). The result is why I suspect your original rant is even more topical than it was in 2014. Not that understanding makes it any more palatable! I well and truly resent and despise MS for how consistently it manages to fuck things up, and I find myself routinely praying to the gods of well-intentioned programmers that they are all given some kind of dengue-like plague.
But I do like standardization, and I like not having to figure out how to print to this particular off brand of machine, and e-mail is indeed mostly encrypted now, which was hardly ever the case w/ the sendmail mail servers used at least up until 2000, which is why the FBI was able to read everyone’s e-mail if they could just access the servers…. and so on.
I guess in the end, it’s a hate-love relationship. I like being productive, I like all the things I can do now with computers and the internet, but I truly hate the sorry immature assholes who just can’t stop tinkering with stuff that works and making me have to spend time unfucking their latest brain-fart ideas–like the damned app-search box in outlook!
If that was incoherent, I’m sorry. It just feel like it needed to be said, whatever ‘it’ was…..
Cheers,
SM
In terms of property-development tasks go, it’s not the level of your adjustments that you make.
Rather, the determining factor should be the impact that may be created.
With this attitude, you need not invest thousands of dollars to help make an Dewalt 1/2 impact 20v.
This handpicked variety of home-improvement guidelines would work for all sorts of assignments.
I quit smoking a few months ago, for like the 4th time.
I went back to it because the amount of stress and anger I feel troubleshooting Outlook and Micros*ft issues on a daily basis is far more detrimental to my health than the Marlboros ever could be, even if I started smoking one every 15-30 minutes until I was too nauseous and dizzy to function as a human being.
I’ve dealt with Microsoft support themselves, their technicians are equally as competent and informed as the average end-user trying to figure out what caused “Sorry, that didn’t work” or “We encountered an issue” to appear on their screen.
If Microsoft ever got to the point where they could legally certify doctors, the only diagnosis Microsoft Hospital would ever give out is “Health problem”, anything else too specific wouldn’t be allowed. Every patient’s chart would look say “Patient has issue with unspecified health problem”
In summary, Microfail Outlook, or should I say “Out-on-a-bender” could nearly be classified as a malicious program. Basically Ransomware. It currently has _MY_ accounts on around 25 or so platforms being held hostage. I’M FUCKED. Bill Gates is a slimy rotting shitbag with a team of mentally challenged autistic apes spewing out spaghetti code into a public toilet they call Microsoft.
“Can we fix it?”
“No, but we can pretend!”
on target!!!!!
My email account was transferred over to Microsoft365 crapware by Godaddy as one of a wave of something like 10 or 18 million small business account transfer. (Coincidently? Right around 2019-2021)
Then, I notice, since Microsoft bought and owns LinkedIn – they’ve decided, without my permission for sure – to merge my linkedin data on a profile card and associate that publicly with my email address – my calling card, without permission – not wanted.
> Not sure when that happened, but I have gone in and first gutted then closed LinkedIn and hope you will do the same – because we see where this is going, right? Can you say ‘social credit’ China-style?
Next up, recently co-pilot AI (because lord forbid you should think) was force rolled out. Without my permission, there is now some kind of Microsoft 365 profile and all of my email has been crawled and is in one easy to read text formatted page! Along with other profiling elements! Gee! How nice! And a note not to worry only I can see it!!
(Please, if you haven’t had your SS, bank info, CC info, genetic info, and on an on, stolen, God blesses you – you are special indeed.)
Next – recently SMTP was quietly disabled – like for one of my old clients, last week.
So basically, there has to be at least of subset of older smaller business site out there now with a broke form. The tricky part? Looks like it’s working on the stats tracker side, so we only figured it out because someone followed up after a form fail.
So – seems to me – this all works out so very conveniently for doing some more destruction on 2 fronts – hurts small businesses and destruction of privacy.
I am using PRIVATE SWISS BASED EMAIL now in addition to the outlook365 crapware and my email transfer tool is working well, so I’m going to be able to gut and go.
OMG – my other email – a simple clean interface that I can actually read!! In 365, my eyes friggin bleed at all the retardo icons and the tiniest text and then the actual mail is either too big or too small, etc etc
And MICROSOFT – STOP FUCKING SPONSORING DEV SPAM YOU WAGE KILLING FUCKERS (20+ years of DEAR SIR DO YOU KNOW YOUR SITE SEO SUCKS? still coming thru in 2025 on outlook and hotmail)
FUCK YOU MICROSOFT and your invasive data whoring spyware you oligopolistic POS that needs to DIE. Long live capitalism – and no Microshit you ain’t in that club.
You are being way to nice. Seriously.