Microsoft have now released Office 2010 as a public beta. So I decided to download it and give it a go. The user interface has generally improved in Word, but Outlook 2010 is the one application I had great hopes for and, to be quite frank, am the most disapointed in.
The major issue I have had with Outlook since the last millennium has been that it always top posts. That is to say, it produces an effect similar to this:
Dear Mr. Drake,
You are quite right, we will give you £25,000,000 to fund the Top Quoting Is Brilliant! Institute.
Yours lovingly,
Microsoft
– Original Message –
From: Mr. Top Posting Genius <topposting@microsoft.com>
To: Outlook Team at Microsoft <flurglemumblings@microsoft.com>
Subject: We’ve got to give this guy money!
See below!
– Forwarded Message –
From: Martyn Drake <contactme@drake.org.uk>
To: Microsoft <welovetoppostingandwillnotchangeitwhateveryousay@microsoft.com>
Subject: Money needed for important project!
Date: 19th November, 2009
Dear Microsoft,
Please can I have some money to fund an institute dedicated to annoying people by only ever allowing top posting in emails. Bottom posting/trimming replies is a complete waste of time. I mean, everybody has oodles of bandwidth and nobody has any time to sit and trim their email replies. So it’s top posting all the way!
Kind regards,
Martyn Drake
Almost every other email client, including the more popular web mail systems (ESPECIALLY Gmail), allows for free choice. Some even allow you to rewrap the quoted text so that it doesn’t turn out like a bunch of horrible mess when you come to reply to the reply. The best you can do with Microsoft Outlook, even in 2010, is this:
From: Martyn Drake <contactme@drake.org.uk>
Date: 19th November, 2009
> Dear Microsoft,
> Wibble Wibble Wibble
Message body goes here.
Whereas what I WANT is this:
On 19th November, 2009, Martyn Drake wrote:
> Wibble Wibble Wibble
Message body goes here.
Without using third party macros for Outlook 2007, and without disabling a whole bunch of stuff, and using signatures to hold templates for certain variables, can you do the type of quoting above. It’s a hack job.
Microsoft could fix this, but despite feedback, they STILL choose not to do so. WHEN, Microsoft, will Outlook get proper quality quoting? I’ll bet we’ll never see it implemented.
