I agree with your aggravation. I can’t believe the developers can’t just add the conveniences of having Outlook automatically move your Deleted imap messages to a trash folder. That lame line through the messages are so confusing to many users. Using the hide deleted messages is even more confusing. The user’s mailboxes grows to large oversizes and they don’t understand why when they don’t see them.

It’s sad that we might have to wait another 3 or four years for another version in hopes that they will finally wake up and fix this flaw.

Another bug is for it to default to checking all your imap folders and subfolders for new mail everything you login. The program should have sense to realize your inbox is the folder for new mail. Only check the inbox. Leave the other folders to be addressed by the user when he wants to address them.

I have sorted subfolders of my emails from as far back as 98, of which is organized by the year. I have gigs of email references that I can review if a need arises. These subfolders will never have new mail. On each new install of Outlook I have to manually go in and stop it from searching those folders. Outlook will lockup every time if I forget to remove that flaw. It reeks havoc on the mail server when many people are using Outlook.

– L. James

—————–
L. D. James
ljames@apollo3.com
http://www.apollo3.com/~ljames

Actually Thunderbird with the Lightning extension shows a LOT of promise right now. Even at release 0.3, I prefer it to Outlook, any version.
See
hxxp://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/

Outlook 2007 is a disaster, overall. I installed it yesterday with Office 2007 Enterprise. Today, it’s all coming back off. I have to get back to work. Just google “outlook 2007 slow” and SEE the crap that MS has done to everyone. Back to my prior version of outlook, which actually WORKED.

ouch. been using thunderbird for a while now, but really missing being able to sync contacts / calendar with my pocket pc – has anyone actually found a decent easy-enough solution for this?

mucked about with a few but never really had much luck…

okay try birdiesync, seems to work just great so far! NO MORE OUTLOOK =D

Microsoft only, really, cares about Microsoft Outlook with Microsoft Exchange. Everything else it does outside of this is quite basic.

“Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore!”

Our company recently evaluated Office 2007 and were horrified at the extensive redesign of the user interface. No, not all was bad. But tasks that normally took mere seconds to perform in Office 2003 stretched out into half-hour long safarri expeditions trying to find the equivalent features or commands we were familiar with in 2003. Options and settings were all moved and reshunted here and there. Customization was severely limited, and many dialog boxes were inconsistent. Macro security evolved into the Gestapo (ok, maybe that’s pushing it). And why throw out the menu system? Why not revamp it to make it more intuitive, like Lotus WordPro? And doesn’t that Office menu borrow from the Mac’s old Apple menu?

The “Ribbon”, by the way, is nothing new. In fact, it is a throwback to the old DOS days. The Ribbon first appeared in Microsoft Word for DOS back in the 1980’s. At that time, the Ribbon was very useful, easy to use, and saved time. The new Ribbon has evolved from starfish to dinosaur. And it takes up screen real estate. I found myself spending more time investigating the ribbon for the right command or item to insert than actually getting my work done. Too much user interface friction for my taste.

Oh, and those dialog boxes. Very inconsistent implementation. In Excel, why 2003 dialogs for some formatting tasks and 2007 dialogs for other tasks and objects – when a common dialog could have been used? Right clicking also brings up nasty surprises – you expect something, but the feature is not there (so you are lead to believe).

Another shocking discovery – our Microsoft Access 2003 database front-end no longer worked. Despite following guidelines for writting good VB code, we would have had to re-write entire VB modules and rebuild our forms and subforms to get them to work in Access 2007 (the forms have criteria fields that rely on SQL statements).

In terms of productivity and efficiency, Office 2007 was a big disappointment. The whole suite would have required all our staff, both inexperienced and advanced users, to relearn the entire suite. We could only imagine the frustration users would endure, not to mention frightening users from using most of the feature for fear of destroying documents. Ok, that sounds drastic. As an advanced user, I know I can handle new upgrades and learn new ways of doing things. But for inexperienced users? Ouch.

The cost of the upgrade, plus the cost of retraining all our staff (including experience users), not to mention the time required to retrain users, etc., and the UI redesign made us decide not to upgrade to Office 2007. We will continue using Office 2003 for a while longer. We like 2003.

We are not opposed to new features or ways of doing things. So, to be fair, it’s good to see Microsoft trying something new, and I’m not suggesting the Ribbon is a bad thing. But the user interface must be designed with very little or no user interface friction. Office 2007 seems more like an experiment. And the forthcoming Mac version doesn’t look any rosier.

Rupertsland,
Canada

Over the last few months I have had the misery of having to use the worst software ever created – Office 2007. What has been done to Excel is horrible. It’s almost impossible to create a good graph, unless you are creating something for the kindergarten level. 2007’s artificial “intelligence” dumbs down everything and makes it impossible to create accurate graphs for scientific purposes. The program is insane. Fortunately, I still have my Mac with Office 2003. Hopefully, Apple will improve I-work so that it will have a better spreadsheet than it does now.

This is the worst POS software ever. If you can avoid installing it or using it, you should. Office 2003 is a decent program. O-2007 is a disaster. This a major blunder on MS’s part. I will never purchase anything from MS again as it is obvious with O-07 that they have no idea what they are doing anymore. I am telling everyone I know to avoid O-07 and consider purchasing a Mac!

This is a great opportunity for another company to fill a seriously weak spot in spreadsheet software. The people at MS seem to be drinking to much Kool-aid lately.

I would recommend Lotus Symphony (free) and Lotus Notes (not free). I’m still using Office 2000!

I had high hopes for 2007 when I upgraded. Indeed for the first day or two I thought “Ya, this is pretty good”

Then I had to get some work done.

I’ve toughed it out for a month and a half now. No more. Once I get back from the road, off it comes. I’ve had enough of stalls, crashes, hunting incessantly for some reasonably common feature buried under some cryptic ribbonbar subgrouping icon, assuming of course I find it in the first place. Pop ups when I left click, right click, heck when my pen clicks I think. Loss of simple editing features like, selecting more that one picture to cut and paste. Mouse behaviors that seem unpredictable, resulting in selections I never intended, commands I never wanted.

High hopes for SmartArt and Quickparts, but they are pretty unimaginative and limited in applicability (I’ve yet to actually use a smartart, and not for the lack of trying), not particularly varied and damn near impossible to use in any resonable volume.

MSFT, thanks for trying a new twist on the MMI, really I mean that, but this should never have seen the light of day. I cant imagine any experienced user really warming up to the interface. Its just to damn hard to use.

I wanted to love 2007, I really did. But its unloveable. And unuseable. And for someone who needs to get work done, just unacceptable.

Foggy.

I usually read more than I post but this topic is right on. Funny how it was right on months ago from the previous post and in ‘09 it is still relevant. I would like to take it a step further. For the end user Office leaves much to be desired but to the admin who had to maintain the exchange server, he is feeling the pain in a different way. installing new software from MS seems to follow the same pattern.

1.) upgrade -> troubleshoot -> wipe -> fresh install (see #2)
2.) Fresh Install -> troubleshoot driver issues -> wipe OS -> re-install
3.) install unrelated program -> troubleshoot -> wipe -> re-insrtall o/s

Every piece of software mid-high level seems to follow the same pattern. If ‘bill’ wasn’t so rich, I would swear none of their stuff would sell, but apparently there are no easy alternatives. Come on IT men we have work to do!

Thanks for your coments hopefully more pepole will read this and be saved a ton of grief.
You are so right, I like the part “I liked it till I had to get some work done” wow how true.
I was attempting to do some very simple tasks today in word (well they used to be simple), but hey but now you need pulisher to do it!! What garbage this is!
I am using it to evauate it for our org. (one of may guys in IT that are)
They will get an ear full from this IT guy!!!!
I have been using this mess for nearly two years and it still a time sink, I still have issues with finding how to do tasks. Today another 20min on the web, finding somthing I can do in office XP in less than one min. and in exactly half the steps!
Today was the last straw I am uninstalling this mess in the am and reinstalling office XP (I have a VL for this).
Thanks M$ for another fine produdct in the ME tradtion.

dang where are my blood pressure meds

Rodney

Actually believe it or not I love Word 2007 and Excel 2007. I just think Outlook 2007 is horrible. It is just Outlook 2003 with a new theme and same old problems.

I think Excel 2007 is horrible. The extra mouse clicks will make me long for my old software every time I change a border. Me thinks that Microsoft wants to look different from OpenOffice which is free by the way.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HP100804201033.aspx
Outlook 2007 works acceptable with IMAP

I read all the posts, see some angry but fair responses. In my case it is not only that I am used to Outlook but also that I sync one MS Exchange account, one Hotmail account, and one MobileMe IMAP account. Exchange works like a charm (doh), Outlook connector could definitely use some improvement. But Mobile Me is a pain in the ass. Even if I configure the purge option (see Anders link above) the fact that my deleted messages don’t go to the deleted messages folder but instead are lost forever is not cool at all.