Hotmail.com / Outlook.com Problems.
TL:DR – The new format is an huge step backwards for the Microsoft Legacy, and I have some performance suggestions at the end.
Let me Start by saying my apologies for the length, trying to address multiple points.
It’s clear this was not sufficiently tested, OR it’s actually designed to drive people away.
Before you dispute points read the whole thing. I’ve tested it on 3 PC based OS’s (Several versions), 6 different Windows PC’s, 7 different mobile Devices and 3 different Mobile OS’s (Several revisions)
Opening:
I’ve called, emailed or IM’ed with Microsoft support multiple times, wasting more than 10 hours interacting with them. As a rule I am shocked how bad the support is, especially for one of the rare “paying” customers for my Hotmail account.
My Account was moved to the new Platform in June and every day that passes I’m getting closer to closing my “Pride and Joy”, an ironically old/Legacy email account I’ve managed to keep for decades.
I use the work Erratic allot, but to be honest that’s the best description to use.
Navigation:
Exhaustive testing was not done, you can’t tell me it was…
-The browser is trying to load ALL of my messages at once every time I Open, Navigate, delete etc a message.
This kills performance, and in a couple instances (Will cover later) causes hard locks of devices or software hangs. I’ve been using Hotmail for 10+ years, have about 1,000 messages in my inbox and thousands and thousands in folders.
Trying to scroll through the inbox is Painful at best as It lags, attempting to refresh the data below and above at the same time.
-Message selection is inconsistent:
When trying to open messages, select them for deletion or move. Selection multiple messages is currently flawed, at least 1/10 times after 2 or 3 messages are selected the browser
starts acting erratically, because it can’t handle the new incoming message and the selected
messages.
-Opening a message is Erratic:
I can select it, it will open but often enough to be frustrating I will have to click inside the “window” a second or 3^rd^ time to allow scrolling of the message itself. Once a message is opened, about 1/4^th^ of the time
hitting “delete”, or any other keyboard keys does nothing. Same for Mouse shortcuts, requiring the message to be selected again.
-Often mid process the window will “refresh” causing serious issues mid-message:
Trying to move or delete an object, etc. Will sometimes end up moving items to the wrong container, randomly delete messages or create “Drafts”.
-Top Menu Bar redesign is flawed:
Moving the “Mark As”, Flag and Importance to submenu’s is inefficient.
The majority of the tools have been moved.
Bottom tools is not optimal IMHO, and some critical features (Priority) are now buried in menus.
-Undo or “Control-Z” fails to “undo” the last task performed roughly a third of the time:
I’ll move 2 messages at once, undo and one returns. I’ll delete 3 messages singly, hit undo and one random message will return. Often I’ll hit undo and NOTHING happens. Forcing me to manually hunt for the message Outlook flubbed the handling
of.
Once in a while the “Undo” returns an entirely different messages, sometimes from a day or more before.
-Moving Messages due to the Erratic and unstable nature of the Interface is difficult:
Additionally the “Move” dropdown requires additional clicks, where before during a session it would remember opened subfolders, now it forces me to navigate and open the whole tree each and every time.
And don’t bother pointing out the “most oftenly used folder” feature. That would be great if I didn’t have hundreds of subfolders because I’m an organized individual, it is not a sufficient trade off.
-Maybe as a suggestion, because of the problem mentioned above, add the option to “Pin” or Favorite several folders?
-Messages responded to no long display the sent response until clicked on:
Previously if I sorted my email by conversation it would display my response(s) on the top. Now I understand there is an “icon” to show you have, but the lost feature has caused some confusion, especially on mobile devices that don’t display the icons.
-Frequent “Flickering” seen on multiple browsers and OS’s at the main Inbox.:
Not sure what it’s linked to, but it seems to happen when pulling new data.
-Button placement in the main navigation menu on the messages is less than perfect.:
As a FPS gamer I have a “nice” mouse and overall solid control of my navigation, however I still find myself accidently deleting messages vs. Marking them as unread. Add in the problem with “Undo” often does not work and it creates a very frustrating
design flaw.
-Quick “Cut and Paste” of email address no longer an option (Same problem in “People”):
Not sure if someone thought this was a good idea or an accident.
How many online forms, other email addresses, etc. require or ask for secondary contacts, or if you’re sending a gift the opportunity to notify the receiver.
It seems a step backwards.
-Erratic Operation:
On multiple browsers and platforms I’ve done the “morning check-in”, reading, moving, deleting messages.
I’ll return 30 minutes later to find “stragglers” that were moved or deleted, back in the Inbox. It’s not a new message, for some reason either Outlook could not handle the requests and “choked” on the request and even though it showed it processed on the
Web Interface it didn’t or it reverted them.
Rarely I’ll return after an couple hours or a day later and find an entire page or two of deleted / moved messages back in the Inbox.
Another issue is from time to time it won’t load all the messages in a time period, I think it’s related to the above issue.
I’ll login / refresh the webpage, start bulk deleting or moving messages, refresh the page (becoming a habit due to the bugs) and find 2 previously un-displayed messages between others.
I’m not missing them on my first review of the page, they were not displayed. This doesn’t consistently happen, but it’s a problem.
Occasionally the wrong message will start to open, “flashs” then correct message opens.
Process example, I delete a message from AMC Theatres without opening it, double click on the next message (from family member), the AMC Theatres message starts to open (I can see the movie notes), the browser flashes and the correct message finishes loading
and opens. Seems linked to the rest of the erratic behavior.
Message Format:
Overall it’s a serious step backwards, the relocated buttons are Unintuitive and problematic. (Repeated I know)
-Opening a message:
Reply options moved to the Far right corner, away from the top menu, using a keyboard and mouse atleast a third of the time the “Collapse Message” registers the hit instead of “reply”
-New Messages are inefficient:
Send moved to the bottom, next to Discard, additionally at the top.
All of the formatting options also moved to the bottom of the message, which is very inconvenient.
Importance is moved into a submenu, ironically on the top, but not clear until you click around, and even then it’s a pain.
Clicking out of the menu’s when you select them doesn’t work effectively either, 1/3 of the time canceling the message, 1/3 of the time moving back out of the menu and a 1/3 of the time moving back to the mailbox.
-Reply / Forward should still be stickied to the top Left Corner:
Who thought it would be a good idea to embed it into the message? If I have a long email scrolling all the way BACK to the top to be able to forward a message (or reply) is ridiculous.
Opening an attachment (or Just clicking on it by mistake):
Seriously, give us back the “Save or Open” as a default…. STOP FORCING IT TO OPEN AN ATTACHMENT INSIDE THE BROWSER WINDOW. For all of the other reasons I’ve listed this is a huge problem, and browsers barely able to function under the burden you’re placed
on them with the additional plugins and it is often cause of a seriously hiccup or crash when I try to click on a PDF to download it. I’ve had multiple mobile devices hard lock and require a reboot due to what appears to be a flawed and poorly implemented
feature.
GIVE US A CONFIGURATION OPTION to control how attachments are handled, and where to set the default save location. This has been a core feature of Microsoft for a decade, why are you
moving away from this now?
I know there are Registry hacks for the IE Browser, but the majority of the day is on workstations with Enterprise controlled settings for the OS.
Searching:
If you’ve not tried it, please do… It’s bad…
Besides suffering from poor performance (see a trend?) I can’t do logical shortcuts inside it (Please don’t tell me to change the default accepted shortcuts, I tried)..
“Escape” does not take you back a menu (Unless you scriptblock), “Backspace” sometimes deletes a message (pretty random) and the advanced search features are just missing.
Manually clicking on the “Exit Search” Twice seems to be inefficient, previously (and other platforms) allow for clicking on the “mail” icon to quick exit, but this seems disabled.
OneDrive/Adding Attachments:
Stop Forcing Onedrive, I don’t want it, the fact I can’t deselect as a default option is more than infuriating, it’s a huge waste of time, and on semi-secure network bogs down the interface as it tries to connect to Onedrive and Fails. Was this tested outside
of a lab?
If you want to be helpful then make it an option, which can be disabled.
Junk Filtering:
Seriously you’re filtering eBay now? And only one of the 20 messages I received from them (No, I didn’t flag it, you guys did)…
Wait, your also moving people in my contacts to the Junk folder also? Really?
An Email FROM MY WIFE, IN MY CONTACTS, should not be in my Junk folder.
Incorrectly Identified “Junk”:
Constantly I am having one or more email addresses added Daily to the junk folder I mark as not junk. Maybe be smart about this and once something is marked as “Not Junk” it gets Whitelisted? I mean that’s what most other email services have been doing since
the mid 2000’s….
“WhiteListed” Addresses (Or should be):
Emails from major, established businesses marked as Junk.
An Email from USAJobs.gov should not be in my Junk folder.
An Email from ebay.com, who I frequently use, should not be in my junk folder.
“Safe Sender” / Blocked Sender inefficiency :
No convenient way to add someone to the safe senders list short of going into the menu structure or adding them as a contact. I can no longer right click on the email address and make the modification.
I’m even seeing “Contacts” have their email’s moved to the Junk folder.
“Outlook People” aka Contacts:
-Removing the “Company” or Business header as an auto-sort option was “flawed”.
Ok…. Besides the ongoing performance issues covered over and over… The fact it doesn’t sort the way it says it does is kind of odd.
I click “Sort First / Last”…. And I see about 30 telephone numbers, no longer properly linked to contacts, because you all decided it would be smart to remove that option… If I click on them I can see the “notes” but otherwise I can’t bloody search for XXXX
business because you guys don’t recognize the names any longer.
Forced Skype Integration is a terrible idea:
Will be covered more below, but causing duplicates, cleaning them doesn’t help, and it creates performance issues.
My Browser should not sit “loading” as I try to scroll through 2 pages of contacts to get to the 3^rd^ page… Again how did you test this?
Searches through the GUI will sometimes return ZERO results:
Try the search again by “First Name” (impossible to misspell, don’t try that, the Agent I spoke with about it clearly thought I was an idiot) and it still returns ZERO results…
… Scroll down however, and the person is there.
Try again after a few hours, magically it can find them.
-Searches through the GUI will sometimes return erratic results:
Example… I searched for “Judy XXXXX”… Needed my mother in laws address and returned “Bob XXXXXX”.
Bob does not have “Judy” in this contact card at all, not in notes, email or address.
Quick “Cut and Paste” of email address no longer an option (Same Problem in Mail):
Seriously, who thought this was a good idea?
How many online forms, other email addresses, etc. require or ask for secondary contacts, or if you’re sending a gift the opportunity to notify the receiver.
It is unconscionable to remove this option, and frankly stupid.
Forced Skype Integration:
I question if this was tested properly, especially for Enterprise environments.
It causes Serious performance issues when trying to access anything linked to it (example, addressbook or adding a contact to a message) and causing significant problems on semi-secure platforms where Skype by default is blocked, but the Browser is trying
to pull data from it.
Performance Improvements/hacks that help:
Most of you may already have one, but if you don’t use it, download a good “Script Blocker”… This is handy when surfing the web, but can be a pain one some websites.
Configure to Prompt to use or Block the following to actually get reasonable performance
-Office 365.com
-Skype
-Onerm-Staging.Azurewebsites.net
Regarding Comments from Technicians and “helpful” individuals about Updating your Browser:
- This is a flawed default approach, as many of us in the real world have limits on Browser choices and revisions, especially working in Enterprise Environments.
- The problems persist in the “suggested” browsers…
- Edge is less than awesome IMHO.
Platform Based Exception:
iPhone 6s Plus – IOS 9.3x:
-Safari & Dolphin: Initially unstable, after a couple months the format is now the corrected “mobile” style. It’s actually handling the messages properly.It’s the is the only format so far that functions correctly.
Platforms, Devices and Versions:
iPhone 5 IOS 8.x
iPad 2 IOS 9.x
iPad 2 IOS 10.x
iPad 4 IOS 10.x
iPad Mini IOS 9.x
iPad Mini 2 IOS 9.x
Multiple Android Devices and versions.
Windows 7 x64 Enterprise
Windows 7 x64 Pro
Windows 10 x64 Pro
Windows 7 x32 Enterprise
Firefox versions 36.x – 48.x
Chrome Versions 54.x
Internet Explorer versions 10 – 11.672
Microsoft Edge version xxxx - 25
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