Outlook search bar moved to the title!?

meegjaZT,

Thank you for providing the link.

Microsoft quickly turned off comments after 1639 comments saying the new search technology was horrible and incredibly incompetent work.

As a technologist who has spent decades developing and supporting software I am continuously amazed at the incompetence of Microsoft.  I remember going to a Microsoft Windows Server developers conference at Microsoft's Redmond location years ago.  The thing that just amazed me was just how incompetent Microsoft employees are.  There is some issue of detachment from real-world common sense that pervades Microsoft's culture.  I accidentally walked into the wrong conference room for a presentation and before I realized what I had done I found out I was listening to the Microsoft employee responsible for the Windows data and image backup application.  He was very young and had only been working in the US and for Microsoft for a short time... but, he was the most intelligent Microsoft employee I ever met.  All the most politically connected Microsoft employees were assigned to Microsoft Virtual Server and they ranged from complete idiots to barely competent.

Obviously the secret, unidentified Microsoft representative who wrote the explanation regarding the current search-technology was too embarrassed and/or afraid for his/her personal safety to identify her/his self.  That person is obviously completely incompetent and provides reasoning that is completely irrational.  If I was in a responsible position at Microsoft I would immediately terminate the employment of everyone involved with the search travesty.  They truly must be incompetent.

Maybe they Microsoft is thinking they are copying Apple design and therefore it can't be a completely stupid idea?

It is extremely important to note that although Excel has put the new search-technology in its title-bar, Excel continues to maintain the original Excel-search-function.  There must be somebody on the Excel design/support organization that knows how stupid the new search idea is.

"While our search success data is showing that the majority of users are having more success"

I'd love to see that data. Maybe they get more data, more search results.

But it doesn't account for the huge difference in how it works (having to enter before it searches) and the other downsides.

I work with data too. More results doesn't guarantee a better experience or a happier customer.

I've solved it!

I uninstalled Windows from all my devices and installed Linux Mint. Everything now works perfectly, much quicker and more reliably than previously, and I no longer get stupid updates lasting hours. And the search in Thunderbird works exactly how Outlook should.

All the bloatware has gone. And so has that stupid irritating Cortana thing! I've swapped my Microsoft 365 subscription for a 2tb Dropbox account and everything in my life is now rosy.

Bye Microsoft!

Over here also looking into Thunderbird. Not sure yet if that will connect with the mailserver.

Also looking at Apache OpenOffice. My brother uses that and it works really great and is free. And it's use is logical, not the confusing , user unfriendly mess Outlook (and Office 365 in general) has become :(

I tried it all out on an old laptop for a couple of weeks to make sure. It was a bit of a leap of faith but I'm glad I've done it and am now free from the shackles of Micro$oft.

The first thing I noticed was that a 7 year old budget Asus laptop was out-performing a relatively new high-spec Dell, by a long way. You press the power button and it's there, instantly. Click Thunderbird and same again. I've written several emails in the time it takes the other PC to boot up.

If your mail server supports standard connections such as IMAP/Pop etc, it should work fine. I don't know if it connects to an Outlook Exchange account, but I've got my own web/mail servers so I prefer using IMAP. Gmail and Hotmail also work fine on it.

Linux Mint comes with LibreOffice pre-installed. And that suits my purposes just fine. I may give Apache Office a try sometime though.

My only concern was that I use Paint Shop Pro, and Gimp always looked dreadful to me. But the latest version, 2.10 works really well. It's just got a bit of a learning curve. And I'm actually starting to prefer it.

I was also concerned about some other apps like Reaper (music studio software) but the Linux version of that works just fine. And all the device drivers work on my setup except for my fingerprint scanner, which I'm told they are working on and should be available soon.

Linux Mint 20 has just been released and it's a big improvement. Definitely recommended for people looking to convert (or should I say upgrade) from Windows.

OneDrive and Google Drive are a bit clunky, but there are apps that deal with it. Dropbox works perfectly. And so do things like Zoom.

I've had no issues with it whatsoever. Just a few Google searches looking for a few drivers and a bit of guidance on how to do some installs. It does help if you know a bit of Linux command line stuff, which I do because all my web servers are Linux based, but it's not absolutely necessary. 

And nearly everything is free or donations-based.

I'm happy! :)