Outlook Makes me Feel Stupid
It’s not often that software has this kind of power over me, but Outlook really makes me feel stupid sometimes.
My wife and I share an email account. We have this unwritten protocol where one of us might reply to an email and leave the original one in the InBox for the other’s information. Outlook screws up this workflow because of a small bug.
My wife likes to open emails in a separate window and then reply from there. She often leaves the email window open. What happens then or, rather, what doesn’t happen then is Outlook doesn’t update the email shown in the InBox with the new status. In other words, the email in the main Outlook window doesn’t get marked with the “Replied” graphic until the email window is closed. When I come and look at the email, it looks like no reply has been sent.
Naturally, I reply.
If my wife and I said the same thing, I feel mildly stupid. But, if we say contradictory things, I feel like a complete idiot.
Thanks, Microsoft Outlook!
July 16th, 2006 at 11:52 am
Um, why don’t you try what Morey & I do - ask if the other one has read/responded to the email in question.
July 16th, 2006 at 6:00 pm
That defeats the whole point of technology!
July 16th, 2006 at 6:26 pm
Switch to Mozilla Thunderbird, it handles your workflow correctly. I’ve been using it for a while now with three different email accounts and I really like it. And its built-in spam filter actually works.
July 16th, 2006 at 8:11 pm
Hmm. Last time I tried Thunderbird, it only supported one account. I’ll take another look at it.
July 17th, 2006 at 7:59 pm
I’m using 1.5.0.4 and it definitely supports multiple accounts. In fact it reminds me a lot of Apple Mail but a bit more featured.
July 18th, 2006 at 7:23 am
I use Thunderbird for my home e-mail, it is quite good. Multiple accounts work great, but I am using IMAP not POP3. No reason to believe it would behave differently for POP3…