

Microsoft Outlook ruins my evening - Niten
http://markshroyer.com/2010/12/outlook-ruins-evening/

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rryyan
The key part that's worth knowing about:

> _I did some googling and the pieces slowly began falling into place. It
> turns out there’s a horrific bug in recent Outlook versions’ handling of
> read receipts: unread messages deleted from an IMAP folder can send a “not
> read” MDN, even if you’ve explicitly configured Outlook not to do so._

Yikes, that's annoying.

~~~
eli
Outlook support for IMAP is extremely poor. It always has been.

I'm truly not one for conspiracy theories, but the fact that IMAP is barely
compatible with Outlook certainly can't be hurting Exchange server sales.

~~~
xpaulbettsx
It doesn't help that IMAP servers are banned inside Microsoft, so absolutely
nobody uses it (you could still connect to external IMAP servers from inside
MS, but I don't know anyone who does it)

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theBobMcCormick
Outlook just sucks in general. What's most laughable is it's incredibly piss-
poor search capabilities.

~~~
torme
I agree with this, but I will say that Outlook 2010's search is a vast
improvement over the previous versions.

~~~
theBobMcCormick
Agreed, they _are_ improving, but frankly they didn't have much of anywhere to
go _but_ up.

I find Xobni helps a _lot_ to find lost stuff in Outlook, although the latest
update to Xobni seems to have made it a bit of a CPU pig. :-(

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kurtsiegfried
Could this be a case for stripping the: X-Confirm-Reading-To: Disposition-
Notification-To: or Return-Receipt-To:, lines out of the message header? It
seems like this is something a SPAM gateway could handle.

~~~
Niten
I think it's a good idea to strip read receipt request headers from mailing
list messages; they just don't make any sense in that context.

But more generally, MDNs and DSNs do serve a useful purpose when used
conscientiously, and I don't think it makes sense to block them for all
messages. The real problem isn't the notification requests themselves, but
email clients that implement the notifications badly.

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sjs
49 points? People have been having problems with Outlook for well over a
decade. This isn't news, and anyone still using Outlook has Stockholm syndrome
(or needs to find a new job).

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psadauskas
Isn't that what the Magic Eight-Ball says?

 _Outlook not so good_

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recoiledsnake
>As much as it has improved over the years, I think this proves Outlook 2010
is still entirely untrustworthy as an email client. Avoid using it if at all
possible.

Those are some needless harsh words.Outlook shines when matched with Exchange,
not IMAP. It's hands down the best email server-client combination in the
market.

~~~
dandinu
I believe you are dismissing Chrome+Gmail too fast. With Google Gears, i think
it´s as competitive.

~~~
rubyrescue
not if you have a lot of meetings - gmail's calendar integration just isn't as
good.

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ditojim
do you care to elaborate on this statement? what about the integration isn't
good when you have "a lot" of meetings? how many is a lot, btw?

~~~
rubyrescue
OK, good point. Exchange + Outlook is much better for calendar management even
when you have few meetings.

Exchange + Outlook are good about combining the information about your
schedule based on the meeting requests you've received and not just the items
on you calendar. Further, Outlook allows most email operations from your
calendar (Reply/Forward/etc), and converts the calendar item into an email
when needed so the user experience is much more seamless than using Gmail +
Google Calendar.

~~~
ditojim
hey google apps does that, too! :) i can create a calendar event right in an
email, or click "create an event" to take me to google calendar. google
calendar then populates data from the email and tries to guess the date and
time...it actually gets it right sometimes, too. conversely, you can email
attendees to a calendar event right from google calendar. not only that, you
can select groups of people to email based on their response status. the
integration between gmail and google calendar is very tight.

