Chris Pirillo » microsoft-office

How Do You Define Bloatware?

Chris Pirillo — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 19:07:32 +0000

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A caller the other night asked simply: “What is Bloatware?” That’s actually an easy one to answer! Bloatware is when you have a piece of software that should be a certain size. However, due to several unnecessary things being added in, the size of the software increases dramatically. Heck, sometimes companies add so much crap in that the original software ends up being buggy and laggy making it not work properly.

There are some types of software that you can turn off the unneeded services and installed applications. When installing a new piece of software, make sure you actually pay attention and read everything during installation. I recommend never just “clicking through” repeatedly. There are a lot of things that will get installed without your consent… all of which are enabled by default. For example, there are types of software that will automatically install various toolbars unless you tell it not to.

Some people claim that things such as Microsoft Office are bloatware due to the sheer number of features inside. You may want just a good text editor (Word), but instead you’re going to have to install a ton of other things just to get that.

My best advice is just to pay attention to what you’re installing. Make sure you are aware of what comes bundled with each piece of software when deciding what to buy, even. Choose something that works well for your needs and comes with the least amount of “extras.”

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How Do You Define Bloatware?

Productivity on the iPad

Chris Pirillo — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 03:47:03 +0000

Productivity on the iPad

You only have to wait a few more days, my impatient friends. Your iPad will soon arrive, and you’ll be able to play to your heart’s content. In order to help keep you occupied, I have found a few videos that showcase some of the features and apps built in to the device. Productivity is important, and many nay-sayers are adamant that the iPad won’t be usable for any type of work. How wrong they are.

Keynote is a very powerful presentation application, and was built from the ground up specifically for the iPad. You can create beautiful presentations from photos, charts and animations. You can use a template to create a new presentation, or bring in an existing document from your Mac or from PowerPoint. The large disply on the iPad will give you a good view of whatever you’re working on.

Pages is a word processor made for the mobile device. It can create newsletters, reports and other documents with a few flicks of a finger. When you rotate the iPad, your page fills the screen. Pages tracks what you type, so it can suggest words, correct your spelling, and insert punctuation automatically. It can even tell when you’re creating a list, and format it for you while you’re typing.

Numbers is the spreadsheet application from iWork that you’re already used to, and it’s powerful on the iPad. It’s easy to work with tables, charts and graphics on a canvas that you can use just by touching. You can again use one of the preset templates to get started, or import an Excel spreadsheet from Microsoft Office.

Who says you can’t be productive on an iPad? These built-in applications would suggest otherwise. While the iPad may not be suitable to be your “main” computer, I think it will do nicely when you’re on the go and need to get some work done.

Productivity on the iPad

Caption This Video of Dancing Microsoft Office Icons

Chris Pirillo — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:46:14 +0000

Caption This Video of Dancing Microsoft Office Icons

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Don’t ask me why, but for some reason Microsoft Office icons were not allowed to use the restroom at Macworld. They were forced to “dance” it off. Unfortunately, this made quite a mess. The Microsoft Office for Windows icons could pee anytime they wanted, which leads me to believe that someone there is playing favorites.

Go ahead – caption this video! Remix it, add captions or other funny things to it, and upload it as a video response to the video (or here on the blog). Get creative and have fun! Just… remember to keep it clean!

Thanks to kevoc2008 for capturing this video for us!

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Caption This Video of Dancing Microsoft Office Icons

Microsoft Coupons & Deals

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Microsoft Coupons & Deals

Word Document Compatibility

Chris Pirillo — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 06:45:12 +0000

Word Document Compatibility

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http://live.pirillo.com/ – A word processing application allows you to write some text and save it. A question came in about compatibilities between different version of Microsoft Word, and other word processing programs in general.

Word to your mother! Excel to your father. Powerpoint for your sister! And uhm, Access to your brother? Yeah, anyway…

My first word processing ‘appliction’ was an electric typewriter. Yes, I remember those days well. Slow to start, slow to respond. Kind of gave a whole new meaning to the term “rough draft”. Do teachers still use that in school? No matter. On with the answer!

It’s actually easy to make old Microsoft Word documents compatible with the new version of Word 2007. The problem is in going in the opposite direction. It’s not always so simple to save a document in Word 2007 and then open it in an older version. There are many new features in Word 2007, and several plug-ins you can obtain to make the cross-compatibility easier on yourself. But to save a document in Word 2007 and then open it in another program altogether? Not so easy.

My recommendation is to save your documents in the .rtf (Rich Text Format) format. If you’re not doing much other than simple text, maybe some bold or underlining… this is the way to go. Saving a document this way assures you that you will be able open it using other programs, or older/newer versions of Microsoft Word easily. Of course, if you have a lot of formatting or design in your document, this option won’t work. Another good reason to save your documents in .rtf format is that they are much less likely to be hit by a virus.

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Word Document Compatibility

Microsoft Office for Mac 2008: Delayed

Chris Pirillo — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 09:24:45 +0000

Microsoft Office for Mac 2008: Delayed

A neighbor (and new friend) Jason sent me the link to Microsoft to delay Office for Mac 2008. I started to compose a personal reply, but then decided to bring the discussion points here, instead.

Can’t say that I’m surprised by this move. Seems that many of these large companies have been experiencing setbacks with software development (as they can’t always “release early, release often”). I also can’t say that I’m really all that heartbroken about the delay of Mac Office, either. There are plenty of alternatives out there – plenty.

I’d just as soon use Keynote than PowerPoint, and most of my spreadsheet and document needs are handled well enough through Google. Just about the only time I ever open Word is when I want to view a complex document (rarely). There’s virtually no point to having Office around – other than to have it around. The only part of Office I really care about is Outlook.

However, I’ve already decided that we’ll be switching to a hosted Exchange environment, which virtually eliminates any degree of reliance on a desktop client. Knowing that anybody could run a Windows version of Office on the Mac and be equally (if not more) satisfied with the feature-set, and… this deadline pushback is a non-event for users.

Microsoft Office is losing ground, intentionally – and that’ll catch up with them, eventually. If and WHEN they move the suite online, platform will be even less of an issue. I’m trying my best to move my life and data to trusted Internet resources, but it’s still an incredible challenge. Too many hurdles stand in our way, with every vendor not wanting to play nicely with other vendors.

Gee, I wonder why they say that Open Source is going to win?

Microsoft Office for Mac 2008: Delayed

Does Microsoft Price Gouge Europe?

Chris Pirillo — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 20:07:26 +0000

Does Microsoft Price Gouge Europe?

Lockergnome subscriber Anthony Down is of the opinion that Microsoft is gouging its European customers. I’m seeking clarification on his assertions, hoping that someone from Microsoft’s European division can clarify the situation – as I’d only assume this is a mathematical error:

I am and have been a subscriber to Lockergnome and Tech News Watch for several years, albeit here, over the “pond” in Europe. I enjoy the mags and have gained a great deal from them, thanks and keep up the good work.

My purpose in mailing you is to draw your attention to the fact, and ask why is it that Microsoft policy appears to be directly involved in gouging their European customers for more than 100% on product prices.

Microsoft advertise Office Professional for $412.00 (Download) in the US. The same product again downloaded (From the Microsoft catalogue, not a third party retailer) to European customers is Euro 615.00. When the exchange rate is calculated, this makes the price of the package $824.00. Whilst we are used to just seeing the currency sign changed ($412.00 becomes Euro 412.00), this blatant ripping off is the very thing that encourages individuals to commit acts of piracy, as we see that Microsoft is involved in an alternative form of piracy on a huge scale.

I had decided to purchase a copy, and whilst the actual price is somewhat high, that fact alone did not immediately deter me, but when I saw the US price, I decided that perhaps it is time to investigate other options. I am not a “Microsoft Basher” (well until now!) but this makes me feel that it may well be time to completely review options available from O/S up, which for me is sad, as I feel that they are quality products.

Does Microsoft Price Gouge Europe?

Office 2003 vs Office 2007

Chris Pirillo — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 21:16:49 +0000

Office 2003 vs Office 2007

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http://live.pirillo.com/ – What’s the difference between Office 2003 and Office 2007?

The biggest difference – and the only difference most users are going to notice – is the ribbon, which is a replacement for the traditional menu system. The ribbon is supposed to make it easier for people to discover features that are already present in the office suite.

There really isn’t a huge difference for the average user: if you just type away then the difference between the two is negligible. for the power users, they’ll notice some slight tweaks and differences, along with a major speed boost in Outlook 2007.

Should you get Office 2007? Well, if you already have a version of Office that works fine, then don’t spend the money (and it is a lot of money).

If you don’t have Office and you want the suite, then try to find the bheapest price and buy it. Or, you could try Office alternatives, like OpenOffice.org, whish is a free open-source alternative to Office.

OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute.

Microsoft owns the market for office applications today: but it won’t be like that in the future.

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Office 2003 vs Office 2007

OpenOffice vs. Microsoft Office

Chris Pirillo — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 03:13:11 +0000

OpenOffice vs. Microsoft Office

This afternoon, Ponzi asked me to install Office on one of our laptops so that we could use Excel and Word on it. Easy enough to do, right? All I had to do was find the CD, right? Well, I couldn’t find it – and I’m pretty certain all of my Office activations have been used up, anyway (especially now that I no longer have access to an MSDN account).

As I was digging through my software drawer, I started to think… do I really need to use Microsoft Office – or will OpenOffice do just fine for desktop productivity? Let’s think about this for a moment. OpenOffice.org is free software:

you may download OpenOffice.org completely free of any license fees
install it on as many PCs as you like
use it for any purpose – private, educational, government and public administration, commercial…
pass on copies free of charge to family, friends, students, employees, etc.

Writer, for the most part, is like Word – and Calc, for the most part, is like Excel. That’s all I really need on this laptop. Guess I can kiss Microsoft Office on ancillary machines good-bye? Forget about limited editions and 60-day timeouts, man. I don’t know if I could live my life on the desktop without Microsoft Office at this point (especially with Outlook playing such a pivotal role)… what about you?

OpenOffice vs. Microsoft Office

I’m Using Microsoft Outlook 2007

Chris Pirillo — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 00:15:30 +0000

I’m Using Microsoft Outlook 2007

Stop the presses – I’ve finally moved from Outlook 2000 to Outlook 2007! Granted, I didn’t have much choice in the matter. The decision was reached after I tried using Outlook 2000 on Windows Vista – and that experience was painful, at best. Then again, my Windows Vista experience has been nothing short of “so-so” to this point (far too many ghosts in the machine).

I’m still getting used to Outlook’s haphazard UI, but at least most of the speed issues with it have disappeared. Search is only as good as the last time the index was updated, however – which is frustrating if a message has just arrived and I can’t find it again by keyword. I’ll miss Net Folders, too.

Despite leaping to the new version, my outlook on Outlook remains the same; Microsoft needs to overhaul their PIM. And don’t even get me going on the mess that’s Windows Mail – as opposed to the slightly-more usable Windows Live Mail Desktop. Thunderbird kicks their respective digital asses (though none of ‘em are true personal information managers).

I’m Using Microsoft Outlook 2007

Is Microsoft’s Outlook Team on Crack?

Chris Pirillo — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 00:09:22 +0000

Is Microsoft’s Outlook Team on Crack?

I’ve been playing with Outlook 2007 for a few weeks now, trying to get over the fact that it falls short of “impressive” in nearly every way. I wasn’t sure why HTML email messages were looking as though they had fallen out of the ugly tree – until I read this Campaign Monitor post that claims Microsoft takes email design back 5 years:

Previously you could send a HTML email in the comfort that the majority of your recipients would have very good CSS support. Other email clients were also catching up. Thunderbird uses the Firefox rendering engine, the new Yahoo! Mail beta has great CSS support. Things were looking good for us CSS based email designers. Unfortunately, that all goes down the toilet now.

What goes in the toilet – HTML email newsletters in general, or Microsoft Outlook? Not sure why people are so surprised about this turn of events; I’ve been telling you that every release of Outlook (beyond the 2000 client) has been craptacular. Then again, maybe Microsoft completely agrees with my “email is dead” argument? The jury is still out on this one.

Is Microsoft’s Outlook Team on Crack?

The Outlook on Outlook 2007

Chris Pirillo — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 22:31:31 +0000

The Outlook on Outlook 2007

The UI still has a ways to go before I’ll be completely satisifed, but Outlook 2007 is shaping up to be a smart upgrade from Outlook 2000 as an Internet PIM. I was proven 100% correct on the suckitude of Oulook 2002 and 2003, as the 2007 team has de-merged Exchange and Internet environments (as it was in Outook 2000). From there, I’m able to move forward and consider Outlook 2007 as a viable upgrade.

I was cautiously optimistic when I watched Hank Leukart’s Outlook 2007 Calendar sneak preview. Separately, Jessica Arnold give Scoble a more general Outlook 2007 overview before Beta 2 was released. Both videos are worth watching if you work with Outlook on any level, if only to discover what’s changed. Most concerning to me, however, is how each Microsoft interviewee dismissed two issues which both interviewers raised independent of one another!

You can’t (yet) publish your calendar to your own server from within Outlook. Instead, you’re “forced” to push it to Office Online. It’s not like Microsoft can’t let you put your data elsewhere – it’s just that Office doesn’t make a lot of money, so it has to make up for lost revenue elsewhere. Whatever.
You can’t easily copy an item from a remote calendar to your own. Instead, you have to manually drag and drop from one time slot to another – introducing potential PEBKAC mousing errors. Moreover, if you try to set a reminder on a remote calendar – you’re told that you can’t do it, and asked: “Is that okay?” No solution is actually provided by the error dialog.

I’m happy to be able to share calendars easily from within Outlook 2007, but I’ll miss the being able to edit external calendars like I can do with Net Folders in Outlook 2000. It’s certainly looking like I’ll migrate to the new version once it’s gone gold. My biggest beefs with Outlook 2007 so far?

Fonts. Tahoma needs to be eliminated from Office, wholesale. Segoe UI is the new standard – even though the Windows Vista team didn’t get that memo.
Corners. Around some elements, like Calendar entries, I see rounded corners. Surrounding other elements, like informational “bubbles” inside email messages, I see sharp corners. One or the other, folks – not both.
Flashing. Too often, I’ll watch a window pane redraw itself. This is painfully obvious when you switch views in Outlook, or when you try to resize a pane. My video card has much more than 4MB of RAM, ya know? I’m trying to use Outlook, not a bowl of Jell-o.
Headers. Why can’t I customize the message header? I don’t want a gigantic font for the message subject and sender in the preview pane. I want it to look like it does when I open a message in a separate window. Moreover, the headers in the preview pane for the calendar are rendered differently, too. Make up your mind!
Toolbars. Are you using the ribbon, or what? I realize that the Outlook client is fundamentally different than Word, PowerPoint, and Excel – but you just can’t keep those old toolbars in place. And please, for God’s sake, don’t employ the craptacular Windows Vista styled toolbars?!

What disturbs me most is how Outlook 2007 – a single program – looks and acts differently throughout. Much like the whole of Windows Vista, Outlook 2007 feels somewhat schizophrenic. Spacing is haphazard, controls are varied, and elements (again) are inexcusabily dissimilar. That said, Outlook 2007 seems to be faster than 2002 and 2003. We’ll see what they do with the UI in these remaining months.

The Outlook on Outlook 2007

65 Reasons Why Outlook 2007 Will Suck

Chris Pirillo — Fri, 26 May 2006 09:24:42 +0000

65 Reasons Why Outlook 2007 Will Suck

It started with a small list of Outlook look-outs. But the closer I look at Outlook 2007′s second beta, the more I’m starting to worry. It’s worse than I thought. I know many people disagreed with my assessment of Outlook 2003 (what, with it sucking – though not sucking as much as Outlook XP). However, I’ve been partially vindicated.

The major shortcoming of Outlook XP/2003 was in combining the Exchange and Internet code into a single experience. The good news is: the team has rectified the situation in Outlook 2007 by enabling separate Exchange / Internet environments. Still, they’re not even close to being out of the “Approved by Pirillo” forest. Many of the items on the following list may seem superficial, but it’s obvious that nobody is paying attention to these details that (when added up) make for a disappointing ride that isn’t as good as one would come to expect from the second-most profitable area of Microsoft. I hold the entire Outlook team responsible for these usability nightmares and interface inconsistencies.

Remember, this list is an extended addendum to my original assessment of Outlook 2007 (and initial bug reports). I stopped at 65 this time because that’s how old I turned after compiling this list.

Doesn’t render certain types of mail messages properly (like those sent from my blog). Seems to be Content-Type: text/plain; charset=”UTF-8″ that’s throwing it off. However, when I select the Options for that message, change nothing, then close the dialog, it tells me the message has changed and updates the window accordingly – showing proper hyperlinks.
I appreciate the tooltips when you hover over a hyperlink, but why did you get rid of the status bar notification as well – that’s the way a browser works, ya know (with the hover’ed URL in the status bar).
Why is there a 1px orange border surrounding the preview pane?
Why is the distance between the Navigational Pane / Message List & Preview Pane, and the Message List / Preview Pane… completely different than the distance between the left-edge of the Navigational Pane and the edge of the window, the edge between the status bar and the lower part of the Navigational Pane / Preview Pane, etc.? If you’re going to pad stuff, at least pad consistently.
“Type a contact to find” – shouldn’t that be “Enter a contact to find?”
The drop-down arrow for the “Search Inbox” field is completely different from the drop-down arrow in the Views selection box and the Contact find selection box. Why? Fix it.
Why is the border above the “Search Inbox” field thinner than the area below it? Fix it.
Even with a blue background, the blue magnifying glass (with a plus next to it) has a crappy white border around it – like someone’s using a 256-color GIF with lousy transparency.
I like the way the “Search Inbox” area drop-down fields work and look. Truly. You hover over an area that isn’t really marked, then it shows you that you can do something with it by changing the color of the button area to orange. Why not do this throughout the rest of Outlook – and if not, why not? And if you can’t do it anywhere else, for goodness sake – don’t do it here. The selection fields in other areas of Outlook are in sore need of updating – and you could do yourself a lot of UI cleaning-up if you applied this style throughout the entire client (including the New item windows).
To-Do Bar should not have an X. I’ve hit it too many times on accident.
To-Do Bar calendar isn’t middle-aligned.
No easy way to recover from spam bin when using IMAP.
Will there be a TweakOL available?
Something in the engine is re-rendering my plain text, even though I’ve turned that “feature” off. Kill that feature entirely!
Please make those orange bubbles less obtrusive. You have all this wasted space everywhere else, why must you waste that space, too? Can’t you just make it one of those side fadey tool tip things like what happens when you select text and then hover over it?
Can you please make a setting that allows me to view the preview pane header like the message pane header?!
Do I have to tell you every single time I receive an email that it’s okay to let the graphics load? Can I turn off that annoying feature?
There’s already massive border padding in Windows, why are you adding even more padding in both the primary Outlook window as well as the individual message window?
Sometimes I see the orange bubble, then it disappears quickly – but not so quick that I didn’t notice it!
Oh man, the Quick Access toolbar customization is dumb. DUMB, DUMB, DUMB. I like the feature, but the implementation of customization is completely half-assed. You’re telling me that (a) I can only separate the items with an ugly separator instead of having the option for a clean space break, (b) I can’t drag & drop components from one side to the other, nor can I click and drag them up or down!? Come on, people – USE YOUR PRODUCT INSTEAD OF JUST CODING IT.
You can hide some of the header information, but not all (the subject still stays, and there’s no place to tweak that font used). I like how the line disappears – there shouldn’t be a line there in the first place. However, the line reappears with other system messages (“Report Rendering Problem”). Is it on or is it off? What are you doing here, people?
Any chance you could hire someone talented and give us a new set of icons to choose from? Not talking about most of the visible interface – those icons look fine. I’m talking in the customize icon area. And while I’m at it, why don’t you freakin’ hook into my default ICO application on the system for editing?! Pixel by pixel is fine – IF YOU’RE LIVING IN 1988!
Why don’t the Junk mail options work well in an IMAP folder? You deleted a message, but I can’t unmark it as “not junk.”
The translation plugin is freakin’ amazing. Why doesn’t a dictionary/thesaurus setting for US English?
Clicking on help produces a browser window with the inspid IE information bar.
The new configuration windows / options panel isn’t as smart as the rest of Office/Outlook. I can’t hover over every option to get an idea as to what it’ll do if I toggle it. It’s annoying to see it on some, and not on others – especially when I don’t know what the hell one thing does over the other.
Why can I only choose black or blue for my interface – where’s a color/saturation/hue slider?! Don’t tell me you don’t have one. FWIW, the blue skin makes the interface much more tolerable. The black reaaaaaaally needs some work. Still, why aren’t either colors translucent like the rest of Windows. Oh, I remember – because Outlook thinks their UI rocks. :P
Sometimes, a vertical scrollbar appears in a message / preview pane, when there’s no ability to scroll up or down.
If Firefox is my default browser, I can’t use the updates feature. :(
Why can’t I mark more than one message as spam – at one time? Why do you assume that it’s just a domain or specific email address that I’m trying to block? There’s obviously more telling information in a message – and some messages won’t allow me to add them as safe because they don’t have what Outlook believes they need. Again, Outlook is showing its ineffectiveness in regards to spam blocking. You want a good program to base yours on? Take a look at SpamBayes – it’s open source, don’t worry.
When replying to a message, why must you insist on placing more padding on top of the HR dividing the response area with the message being responded to? If you really, truly have graphic designers on this team – they need to go back to school. This is just inexcusable. If you don’t have true graphic designers on this team, hire them stat.
Can you please “Favicon” the RSS feed folders for usability reasons!?
When selecting a range of items, one should be able to see the most recently selected item in the preview pane – not stick on the first one’s preview.
Love the vertical fade in HTML messages (between emails). Again, why isn’t this color configurable? That, and why doesn’t it include the —-Original Message—- part, too? :P If you’re going to do it, do it – don’t just do part of it.
If you want to talk about great reformatting features, take a look at OE-QuoteFix – and make it happen in this version of Outlook. Color code text, man – but for heaven’s sake, don’t base it on your lametastic text word-wrap feature. http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/
When sending messages in text, is it possible for you not to break a line that contains a lengthy URL past the minimum word wrap length? Sure would save the world some frustration when trying to click on broken hyperlinks.
I’m experiencing the same weird random lockups as I experienced in Outlook 2003. This should never happen again. Ever. EVER. The entire Outlook client will freeze – stop working – and I have to wait at least a few seconds before gaining control again. If you don’t FIX this PROBLEM, there is no way in HELL I’m going to upgrade or recommend anybody else upgrade. This is absolutely inexcusable window behavior – especially when I’m not doing anything when it locks up!
I really hate to say it, but the more I dig into this version of Outlook, the more I see the same old crap that I’ve been complaining about for years. Outlook 2000 may not be as pretty as Outlook 2007, but it’s also not smothered with all of these inconsistencies and fundamental flaws. I’m tired of talking to a brick wall here. And don’t feel bad – the Windows Mail team has made more leaps backwards than you have.
Any chance of detecting text-based messages and JUST wrapping the broken URLs without wrapping (poorly) the entire message?
Sometimes dialogs with toggles allow me to turn off the feature permanently – yet others don’t. Why? Why are you doing it in some instances and not for others? Do you have something against uniformity? For example, the first time I use CTRL+Enter to send a message, you ask me if I want to do that from now on (duh), and let me toggle that setting without having to dig for it. Yet, when I keep deleting items in a folder, you ask me to confirm that I want to delete everything without also giving me the option to never see that dialog again. Consistency, people – consistency. And don’t tell me that you just don’t have time for it – how long has it been since the last version, and who the hell is doing QA with this?
Why is Outlook still not threaded to the point where I can be deleting a folder over there, and still typing a message over here. Uh… can’t we do that? And if not, why not. I’m not expecting a miracle, I’m just expecting for this to happen in this version.
Where’s the “find and replace” icon in the ribbon? I can’t find it, ironically enough. :P [15 minutes later] There it is, on the Format ribbon. Because that’s what I think of when I’m thinking I want to find something – that I want to format it. Yeah, it makes sense – IN MY VERSION OF BIZZARO OUTLOOK.
If I correct a misspelling by right-clicking on the misspelled word and correcting it, why doesn’t it add that correction to the autocorrect database? Wouldn’t that make sense, huh? I know you have the AutoCorrect menu, but that’s not as convenient as the first correction area.
Enough with the warnings about switching between HTML, Text, and Rich – I get it already. Let me turn that damn prompt off. And while I’m at it, why does that warning dialog look different from all the rest?
Using the phrase “Payload Sharing” in Outlook is a bad idea. Viruses and worms have “Payloads.”
Okay, you’re separating each section of the Nav pane with a collapsible header – not bad. So, why aren’t you allowing the bottom section to be collapsible as well? Get rid of the DAMN horizontal rule, man – especially when you’re handling sections differently elsewhere in the same freakin’ space!
Subject / Location / Start Time / End Time labels are not vertically aligned properly in respect to the corresponding fields. This is in a new Calendar Event window.
Why, in the Calendar Event window, are the drop-down arrows in the buttons (for location, for example) somehow larger than the down arrow in the scroll-bar. Why are they different sizes? Who thought of that?!
For some odd reason, the Note still looks like it did in Outlook 2000 – even the icon is from Outlook 2000. LOL!
Why don’t you have my Internet FAX vendor available in your list? I’ve been using them for years. “Webley” works just fine as an Internet FAX, yet… they’re not meeting some invisible set of criteria? If this is a pay-to-be-listed service, then please remove it from the version of Outlook I’ve already paid for. I’ve got my vendor, and either you don’t want to work with them, they don’t want to work with you, you don’t know about them and I can’t add them, or there’s something else happening here.
Why are the To / CC / BCC buttons center-aligned, when no other button in Outlook’s new item window is? If you feel you’re wasting space, then make the buttons shorter – but be consistent, please.
Why do you place more padding before the right edge of a button in a new item window than you do on the left – the left padding is non-existent, which looks sloppy.
The “Subject” label in a new email message window isn’t properly (vertically) aligned with its respective field.
Is that an old stopwatch icon in the new Journal Entry window?
Changing the Status in a new Task to “Waiting on som…” I don’t know what comes next, as it’s completely truncated – with no earthly way of discovering what it is you’re waiting on. “Waiting on som… place to call my own?” Perhaps it’s “Waiting on som…. ebody else to fix this problem.”
Why are the divisions between areas in a new Contact window different from the divisions in a new Task window? Tasks use blue in between, and Contacts use gray on the same line as the section name. Uh, consistency.
Why do inner-window elements flash when I resize a window? It’s happening all over Outlook, in just about any window that can be resized. “What’s that flashing?”
In the primary window’s title bar, you call it “Microsoft Outlook.” That’s fine, but then when I try to close a window, the title bar for that dialog claims it’s “Microsoft Office Outlook.” Which is it, folks? What am I using here – Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Office Outlook or Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 Edition Pro Plus Bonus Inconsistency Edition?
Why does one dialog tie up the rest of Outlook? Seriously, sometimes those confirmation dialogs get hidden / lost / buried – causing me frustration in trying to surface the damn thing before I can move on with my routine. Can’t tell you how many times Ponzi’s called me over to her computer to fix this PROBLEM. So, are you going to FIX this problem?
Shouldn’t the thumbnail in the tooltip for the Office clipboard be true to what’s on the clipboard?
Why is the Search button in the Research panel still XPish and green? Shouldn’t that be a blue boob of sorts?
Are you considering issuing a usability / UI service pack along with your security service pack? If not, why not – do you think this is just good enough, or is nobody else expecting you to be better than you think you already are? Sorry for being so crass, but I’ve been complaining about these things for over half a decade now. I’m not even asking for that many new features – just fix the ones you already have!
In a Contact window, Asking for an “IM address” is rather shortsighted. Don’t you know I’m on MSN, Skype, Yahoo!, Google Talk, Gizmo, Jabber, and AIM? Where are the other fields?
In a Contact window, why is it okay to intercap “Business Card,” but not “Web page address” or “Phone numbers.” If you’re going to do it for one, do it for all others.
In searching for contact information, the window that pops up (with no information in it) contains both a vertical and horizontal (!) scroll bar, though there’s nothing to scroll to – and resizing the window retains the scroll bars.

I’m not even going to bother continuing this list until I know the points I’ve made over the past few days have been witnessed, filed, and opened as reports to-be-addressed before RTM. I’m not going to let Microsoft’s Outlook team get away with ruining their own potential. Instead of waiting for competition to bite ‘em in the ass, why don’t they just listen to their customers? I may be one of Outlook’s most outspoken supporters, but if I didn’t care – I wouldn’t bother to say anything at all. Remember: just because you think a new version is better than older versions, doesn’t make the product anywhere near great.

65 Reasons Why Outlook 2007 Will Suck

Chris Pirillo » microsoft-office

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65 Reasons Why Outlook 2007 Will Suck