Review: The new Outlook for Windows

Outlook is asking for my feedback. I went to the bother to type it up, so I'm posting it here as well to get as much mileage out of my effort as possible. I don't trust Microsoft in general to read feedback, but I think that the Outlook team does.

Likelihood to recommend: 1/5

Why?

The feedback

I am a programmer, not a suit. Outlook's strength is in coordinating meetings. My job doesn't require many meetings.

I have to use Outlook because my company does. The features I would look for in an email client:

• Plain-text email
• Markdown support
• HTML editing
• Keyboard-based navigation
• Scripting capabilities

I do appreciate that Outlook now allows me to check email headers.

I find Microsoft 365's Ctrl+Backspace behavior idiosyncratic and unhelpful--except that it works properly in this feedback box, which is nice.

I actively disable any sort of smart tooling, even spelling autocorrection, and definitely including Copilot. I don't use Copilot to draft emails because it would be simpler just to send the prompt. I don't use Copilot to summarize emails because I don't read emails that need summarized.

Outlook and Teams have all these buttons I will never use and care about, but I still get a reminder for a recurring meeting every day at the default time even though I changed the reminder time. The notification comes up fifteen minutes before the meeting. The little drop-down box says "10 minutes before", which is what I selected. It is most amusing.

The "Upload to OneDrive" button

1. I go to attach a file to an email.
2. The file is too big, so I drop it onto the button for "Upload to OneDrive and send link".
3. I send the email.
4. The recipient emails me back to tell me that he can't access the file at the link I sent.

What good is a link that the recipient can't access? If I am attempting to email a file, can we not assume that I wish the recipient to be able to read it? Why can't the "Upload to OneDrive" button make the file accessible by the recipient of the email? Or at least provide a quick way to do that?

I feel as though the assumption is that I will mostly send files to others within the company. But I do nearly all my internal communication through Teams. So if I send a file by email, then I am almost certainly sending it outside the organization.

(Unless I am sending a script that isn't in the Git repo. If I send new versions by Teams, then Teams will increment the file name of each version. This increment will include a space character, forcing the recipient either to rename the file after downloading it or to quote the file name when he types it into the terminal. So I might send the script by email to avoid having the file automatically renamed. But I digress.)