Ok I wrote above that I had said all there was to be said regarding this & will say no more. As I had nothing new to add. But a small new thought below just occurred to me.
I’ve a theory about what’s happening here. Microsoft doesn’t care about old legacy features like these. They’re probably allocating cheapest engineering resources for maintenance of old legacy (basic) features like these. No big demand from what’s considered their topmost prima donna engineering for working on maintaining old legacy features like this.
Microsoft cares more about things like adding Bing AI search in Outlook. That’s the kind of stuff they’re pouring their money into right now.
I can’t speak for everyone. But speaking for myself: I don’t care about any Bing AI search in Outlook & will probably never use it. I just want the most basic boring & old legacy feature like this to work. If even such basic functionality doesn’t work, for me it’s a showstopper.