Sorting Emails in The New Outlook

Anonymous

Hello,

I went out of my way to come here and share this after having spent a couple of precious hours navigating the "New" Outlook.

This is the version it says under settings that I have:

You have Microsoft Outlook Version1.2023.927.100*(Production). Client Version is*20230929003.10

Despite the neat and clean look and feel, I cannot wrap my head around something very basic that I (and I'm sure countless others) have become so accustomed to on the legacy Outlook, but let's call that the 'normal' Outlook, except that it simply vanished from the new edition.

I used to be able to sort emails by "From" and then start typing the name of the sender WITHOUT using the Search bar. This was a massive convenience as the way the results appear is different than how they appear when using the Search bar. Let's say I am searching for emails from 'Michael Lee' in this way. I will click Filter > Arrange By > From and immediately type the sender's name. Outlook would simply re-sort (not search) all the emails and the results will show emails from Michael Lee grouped under Michael Lee and sorted date-wise. If you got the spelling wrong, no biggie, simply collapse all the name groups so scrolling down is super quick. This was fantastic and something I thought would carry on to the New Outlook except that there is no such function there and this is bothering me to no end.

If this is the case, my question here is, why still have the Filter by Name function when a user can neither pull up the name they want nor collapse the name groups. Same for sorting by Subject. Once it is sorted by Subject, there is nothing one can do except to scroll down randomly.

As I manage the company's email accounts as an admin, I was on the phone with the MS365 representative and inquired whether the New Outlook I switched to is a fully launched product or still in beta, he confirmed it is fully operational and I am not using a sneak peek version of something under development. He also flatly suggested I can revert back to the normal Outlook. I know Microsoft is getting ready to remove Mail soon and one day down the line we all will be forced to use this New Outlook.

The annoying thing about the legacy Outlook is that the Red Flag button and the Delete Email icon are super close to each other. (see screenshot below)

Sorry to say this but apparently this is how it got approved by the Microsoft product leadership levels. That the distance between the email you want to trash and a super important one should be less than a cursor space. So that important email can be accidentally deleted! The New Outlook made a modest improvement in placement of the Flag and Trash bin icons (and increased distance between them to about two cursors lol) but then the sort feature is a major dealbreaker. My question is also, if ever there was any forum/platform Microsoft used to consult with users on how they use Outlook before deciding to do away with certain features that many consider to be in the DNA of Outlook?

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Anonymous

2024-07-23T21:46:58+00:00

Absolutely! When you selected an email in the "Old Outlook" and then selected [Sort by Sender] the left pane would stay on the same email but show all the other emails from that person before and after that mail. So annoying they've got rid of that!

Also, I used to set my new emails to be in a RED font so could quickly see at a glance which ones I had misssed. That function is now gone.

Also gone is the function on the top to show either read or unread emails.

This new Outlook is a shambles and they don't seem to want to do anything about it. - Its been 9 months according to some posts and nothing done yet to resolve any of the above.
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Anonymous

2024-07-24T19:06:04+00:00

I absolutely agree that this significantly hinders organizing and finding emails. Both the inherent find when you start typing characters with the From column selected to sort by AND the email remaining selected when clicking on the column headers to sort are key features that should have been kept in the new Outlook. It's not clear at all why Microsoft developers/reviewers thought these features weren't important enough to keep in the new version.
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Anonymous

2024-07-25T11:08:08+00:00
I'm increasingly angry that I just went ahead and installed the New Outlook but was encouraged by an MS agent to do so - latest problems are the Search facility in both Calendar and Contacts doesn't find entries. Example I couldn't remember when I was due to go to a concert - I knew it was in my calendar but searching on 'Springsteen' 'Bruce', Bruce Springsteen' just returned a 'Cannot Find that' message. I tried a few others with similar results. I opened a day in my calendar with an annual recurring entry to remind me of a friend's birthday. There it is, plain at the top of the day's page. Typed in the person's name into Search box - first, surname, and both - same issue 'Not Found'. BUT I'M LOOKING AT IT MICROSOFT!!!!

Add to that Email management is all over the place. Examples
- I read some emails and despite not beginning a reply, they become marked as 'draft' in my inbox.
- Emails written and sent vanish. They are not in the Sent folder, nor in Drafts, Nor in Deleted/Spam or anything else and the recipients haven't received them - this is a REAL issue as time sensitive matters have been compromised and it makes me look like I am ignoring something, or worse.
- Mid-thread exchange messages return a message of 'This message cannot be delivered' (or similar text).
- Searching for a particular mail message, or its sender, doesn't work every time. Yet if I open a web browser and do the same I can find it.
Can't speak to anyone at MS - only their on-line chat facility, taking hours to get a response and then nothing that helps . Just requests for more information, screen shots, videos etc.

I did see in a response that MS is aware of the vanishing emails problem. Well, great. In the meantime clearly I am not the only one with problems (even if we just talk about this stupid search facility in Mail). Being reminded that this version of Outlook is not fully released is no help - it's an excuse, but to not just release it partly and to actively encourage people to install it, should mean it's been tested to the nth degree for normal use. I could accept the odd bug and a quick patch being released - but as is evident by this thread Microsoft don't appear to be interested in pulling their fingers out and fixing what is now blighting a once great and robust product.

I've lost many hours on finding, fixing, re-writing and on lien with MS 'Help' and I'm sick of it.
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Anonymous

2024-07-25T12:56:59+00:00

I have this problem daily!!!! "Searching for a particular mail message, or its sender, doesn't work every time. Yet if I open a web browser and do the same I can find it."

Or it finds the document say a pdf for example but doesn't list the actual email it was originally attached to... so I can't respond.....

I also get the "draft" email issue.
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Anonymous

2024-07-31T20:36:15+00:00

Seeing a group of emails flagged as "Due Today" and below a group of all new/unflagged emails... Is it such a big task for you, Microsoft?
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