8 ms·

Interesting timing. 2 days ago a place I'm at switched us from Google mail + calendar + meet to Microsoft outlook + calendar + teams. I almost can't believe a

by nickjj 3y ago

Interesting timing. 2 days ago a place I'm at switched us from Google mail + calendar + meet to Microsoft outlook + calendar + teams. I almost can't believe at how good Google's suite of tools are compared to Microsoft. I never used any of MS' office tools until a few days ago. Outlook's web app doesn't even let you click into an email to mark it as read. You have to explicitly click the mark as read button. It also doesn't intuitively support filters with emails that have + in their name (each email ends up being unique instead of Google doing the more expected thing of letting the filter match all + variants). It also doesn't update its title bar with a count of emails in your inbox. That's things I discovered after using it for about 10 minutes. Microsoft's calendar is designed so poorly, there's so many quality of life things that aren't there vs Google. There's too many to list but the biggest one is not being able to see the calendar details of team mates when inviting them to an event. All you see is a blocked out amount of time, you can't see their exact schedules even if they shared their calendar with you. This removes a huge human element to scheduling meetings because often times I'll avoid scheduling meetings when folks are just getting out of a long meeting, or I'll buffer it by 15-30 minutes depending on who is doing what beforehand. I'm not not looking forward to the day when we'll need to use all of MS' tools to replace Google docs + spreadsheet and Slack.

HeavyStorm 3y ago
Agree with some of the points, but why would the + in the email name be considered anything else than part of the name? This is a Gmail feature, not part of any RFC that I know of...or are you talking about something else, perhaps?
themoop 3y ago
I think most things you describe are just getting used to product difference / configuration options. Clicking an email definitely marks it as read. The calendar schedule not being revealed is a just a privacy option, each person must opt-in to share the exact meeting details. Having used both gsuite and office I find that they both get job done fairly well
- nickjj 3y ago
  > The calendar schedule not being revealed is a just a privacy option, each person must opt-in to share the exact meeting details. We've done this as far as I know. We also added each other to our directory. I can see the details of other team mate's calendars in the full view but this does not show up in the mini-view when you add a guest to an event. With Google, when you create a new event and put in a user's email as a guest it immediately showed you a full list of their exact events with times and whether or not they accepted an optional meeting (an outlined or filled circle). It was great to see at a glance while you're in the process of creating the event. With MS' calendar all you see is a red block of color around the times they are not available. > Clicking an email definitely marks it as read. It doesn't for me when using Chrome. When I click into an email the title remains bold and the inbox count doesn't decrease. Keep in mind this is the web app. I didn't install the dedicated app, but I also used the web version of all of Google's tools too.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    > With MS' calendar all you see is a red block of color around the times they are not available. Only by default, which I believe your org can change. You have complete control over this for your calendar, as does everyone else. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/share-your-calendar-in-outlook-2fcf4f4f-8d46-4d8b-ae79-5d94549e531b https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/share-your-calend... > When I click into an email the title remains bold and the inbox count doesn't decrease. Also configurable.
    - dabluecaboose 3y ago
      >> When I click into an email the title remains bold and the inbox count doesn't decrease. >Also configurable. Bless you! I had been angsting over this at work for years. I can't believe I didn't think to check the settings.
    - nickjj 3y ago
xaerise 3y ago
It is marked as read when you are reading it. When you are switching to another mail, it displays it as read. No need to manually mark it as read. *EDIT* Just noticed that there is a setting for this: Under Options in the webmail you can switch this between: * Mark as read as soon it has been choosen * Mark as read after delay in seconds * Mark as read after selection changes * Do not mark as read automatically
- dghughes 3y ago
  Oh web outlook ugh. People where I work hate Outlook web. It's not intuitive. Shared mailboxes in web Outlook are a pain they dont show on the left sidebar they need to be opened in a separate tab. Terrible for efficiency. Except "out of office" which for shared mailboxes it can't be disabled in non-web Outlook you have to do it in web. My day and job are based on Microsoft weirdness.
- nickjj 3y ago
  Thanks. That was the issue in my case. The default configuration is: * Mark as read after selection changes Which in my opinion is really weird. I've been using email for 20 years and no other client I've used works this way. It's so inefficient since you need to click into a previously read email to mark a different email as read. But, I did switch things to mark it as read when chosen which fixes it.
- 1980phipsi 3y ago
  One big annoying thing is that when you mark an email as unread in Outlook on mobile, the default is to mark the entire email chain as unread. So if you have a long email chain, all of sudden there will be like 20-30 unread messages in your inbox. It should have the ability to mark unread from here or something like that.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
metalliqaz 3y ago
Purely my subjective experience but the MS tools seem designed to keep the users that have been using Outlook on the desktop for decades. I get ornery when it doesn't work the way I'm used to.
- tolciho 3y ago
  I spent some time dinking around in Outlook once trying to find where some feature had been moved to. Ended up apologizing to the user... they were due to retire soon, and who knows where some UI twizzle had put the whatever in that manifestation of the mediocre malware.
bearjaws 3y ago
The web experience of Word, Power Point and Excel, are appalling. Laggy, resource hogs. Excel & Power Point are damn near unusable on anything complicated.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  They're nice in a pinch, but I advise folks to think of them primarily as viewers. In my experience, for any serious work you'll want to use the native apps.
  - dustedcodes 3y ago
    > In my experience, for any serious work you'll want to use the native apps. Don't you see how absurd that is in 2023? It's like me saying "Online shops are nice in a pinch, but I advise folks to think of them primarily as viewing goods. In my experience, for any serious shopping you'll want to visit the bricks and mortar shop"
    - ubermonkey 3y ago
      That's an absurd comparison. Web tools are always going to be weak vs. locally executing tools. I've never seen one that I prefer to a native equivalent.
      - dustedcodes 3y ago
        > Web tools are always going to be weak vs. locally executing tools. I've never seen one that I prefer to a native equivalent. Sure, that's a fact which I don't dispute, but that doesn't mean that writing a word document in your browser should be such a bad experience that you really just want to use the web version for viewing documents, which is the absurd thing to which I responded. See, what you say is true, but that doesn't necessarily negate my point if you can agree? Word is not Photoshop, I expect the web version to be powerful enough to get serious writing done via it.
        3y ago
mats852 3y ago
I think the worst part is their authentication, for some reason I have a personal account that was invited as a guest in an organization to use Teams. I can only access the Teams workspace if I click through a link in my emails and I have to login twice. It only works on the web version, I can't login the app at all. But once you're in Teams, everything is so much worse, it's like using a hacked version of MS Word to chat. But where Slack actually shines is around the workflows, automation and bots, I don't think Teams has much of that. @geerlingguy had a way worse experience recently.
- foepys 3y ago
  The only thing MS Teams has going for it is that it is included in Office 365 subscriptions. That's it. It's a garbage product that's slowing even the fastest computers down to a crawl. And don't get me started on all the bugs. Horrible.
  - mats852 3y ago
    Then again, the calendar/video call is great, but once I'm back in Teams, I can't video call someone on the web version.
ubermonkey 3y ago
>All you see is a blocked out amount of time You CAN share your calendar details, but most people don't want to. I see this as a feature.
ajmurmann 3y ago
IMO outlook calendar has the fundamental design flaw that it uses email to share (at least some) state, rather than entries in a central server. Things like inviting someone to a meeting I rejected are super hard to impossible. Group meetings while the host is out are a disaster.
Kwpolska 3y ago
> not being able to see the calendar details of team mates when inviting them to an event. All you see is a blocked out amount of time, you can't see their exact schedules even if they shared their calendar with you. This removes a huge human element to scheduling meetings because often times I'll avoid scheduling meetings when folks are just getting out of a long meeting, or I'll buffer it by 15-30 minutes depending on who is doing what beforehand. This is configurable, you can make your calendars public and convince your teammates (and potentially the rest of the company) to do so as well.
vxNsr 3y ago
Let me preface this by saying, I don’t work for Microsoft but have used their suite for a long time. Nearly everything you’re complaining about can be changed in settings. Either by you or the IT Admin.
- PascLeRasc 3y ago
  Do you know what setting I need to use to enable deleting emails without first archiving and un-archiving them?
  - vxNsr 3y ago
    That sounds like something your admin enabled. I’ve never seen that.
snarfy 3y ago
> I never used any of MS' office tools until a few days ago. and then > Outlook's web app doesn't even let you click into an email to mark it as read. Did it occur to you that maybe a few days of use isn't enough for you to understand how to use office? Everything you complained about works fine, even if you don't understand how to do it.
coffeeling 3y ago
> Outlook's web app doesn't even let you click into an email to mark it as read. It absolutely does let you do that. I use OWA as my daily driver and that is the behaviour at least on my end. Settings->Mail->Message Handling should have the options you want.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by nickjj 3y ago

HeavyStorm 3y ago

Agree with some of the points, but why would the + in the email name be considered anything else than part of the name? This is a Gmail feature, not part of any RFC that I know of...or are you talking about something else, perhaps?

themoop 3y ago

I think most things you describe are just getting used to product difference / configuration options. Clicking an email definitely marks it as read. The calendar schedule not being revealed is a just a privacy option, each person must opt-in to share the exact meeting details. Having used both gsuite and office I find that they both get job done fairly well

nickjj 3y ago
> The calendar schedule not being revealed is a just a privacy option, each person must opt-in to share the exact meeting details. We've done this as far as I know. We also added each other to our directory. I can see the details of other team mate's calendars in the full view but this does not show up in the mini-view when you add a guest to an event. With Google, when you create a new event and put in a user's email as a guest it immediately showed you a full list of their exact events with times and whether or not they accepted an optional meeting (an outlined or filled circle). It was great to see at a glance while you're in the process of creating the event. With MS' calendar all you see is a red block of color around the times they are not available. > Clicking an email definitely marks it as read. It doesn't for me when using Chrome. When I click into an email the title remains bold and the inbox count doesn't decrease. Keep in mind this is the web app. I didn't install the dedicated app, but I also used the web version of all of Google's tools too.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- CharlesW 3y ago
  > With MS' calendar all you see is a red block of color around the times they are not available. Only by default, which I believe your org can change. You have complete control over this for your calendar, as does everyone else. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/share-your-calendar-in-outlook-2fcf4f4f-8d46-4d8b-ae79-5d94549e531b https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/share-your-calend... > When I click into an email the title remains bold and the inbox count doesn't decrease. Also configurable.
  - dabluecaboose 3y ago
    >> When I click into an email the title remains bold and the inbox count doesn't decrease. >Also configurable. Bless you! I had been angsting over this at work for years. I can't believe I didn't think to check the settings.
  - nickjj 3y ago

xaerise 3y ago

It is marked as read when you are reading it. When you are switching to another mail, it displays it as read. No need to manually mark it as read. *EDIT* Just noticed that there is a setting for this: Under Options in the webmail you can switch this between: * Mark as read as soon it has been choosen * Mark as read after delay in seconds * Mark as read after selection changes * Do not mark as read automatically

dghughes 3y ago
Oh web outlook ugh. People where I work hate Outlook web. It's not intuitive. Shared mailboxes in web Outlook are a pain they dont show on the left sidebar they need to be opened in a separate tab. Terrible for efficiency. Except "out of office" which for shared mailboxes it can't be disabled in non-web Outlook you have to do it in web. My day and job are based on Microsoft weirdness.
nickjj 3y ago
Thanks. That was the issue in my case. The default configuration is: * Mark as read after selection changes Which in my opinion is really weird. I've been using email for 20 years and no other client I've used works this way. It's so inefficient since you need to click into a previously read email to mark a different email as read. But, I did switch things to mark it as read when chosen which fixes it.
1980phipsi 3y ago
One big annoying thing is that when you mark an email as unread in Outlook on mobile, the default is to mark the entire email chain as unread. So if you have a long email chain, all of sudden there will be like 20-30 unread messages in your inbox. It should have the ability to mark unread from here or something like that.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

metalliqaz 3y ago

Purely my subjective experience but the MS tools seem designed to keep the users that have been using Outlook on the desktop for decades. I get ornery when it doesn't work the way I'm used to.

tolciho 3y ago
I spent some time dinking around in Outlook once trying to find where some feature had been moved to. Ended up apologizing to the user... they were due to retire soon, and who knows where some UI twizzle had put the whatever in that manifestation of the mediocre malware.

bearjaws 3y ago

The web experience of Word, Power Point and Excel, are appalling. Laggy, resource hogs. Excel & Power Point are damn near unusable on anything complicated.

CharlesW 3y ago
They're nice in a pinch, but I advise folks to think of them primarily as viewers. In my experience, for any serious work you'll want to use the native apps.
- dustedcodes 3y ago
  > In my experience, for any serious work you'll want to use the native apps. Don't you see how absurd that is in 2023? It's like me saying "Online shops are nice in a pinch, but I advise folks to think of them primarily as viewing goods. In my experience, for any serious shopping you'll want to visit the bricks and mortar shop"
  - ubermonkey 3y ago
    That's an absurd comparison. Web tools are always going to be weak vs. locally executing tools. I've never seen one that I prefer to a native equivalent.
    - dustedcodes 3y ago
      > Web tools are always going to be weak vs. locally executing tools. I've never seen one that I prefer to a native equivalent. Sure, that's a fact which I don't dispute, but that doesn't mean that writing a word document in your browser should be such a bad experience that you really just want to use the web version for viewing documents, which is the absurd thing to which I responded. See, what you say is true, but that doesn't necessarily negate my point if you can agree? Word is not Photoshop, I expect the web version to be powerful enough to get serious writing done via it.
      - 3y ago

mats852 3y ago

I think the worst part is their authentication, for some reason I have a personal account that was invited as a guest in an organization to use Teams. I can only access the Teams workspace if I click through a link in my emails and I have to login twice. It only works on the web version, I can't login the app at all. But once you're in Teams, everything is so much worse, it's like using a hacked version of MS Word to chat. But where Slack actually shines is around the workflows, automation and bots, I don't think Teams has much of that. @geerlingguy had a way worse experience recently.

foepys 3y ago
The only thing MS Teams has going for it is that it is included in Office 365 subscriptions. That's it. It's a garbage product that's slowing even the fastest computers down to a crawl. And don't get me started on all the bugs. Horrible.
- mats852 3y ago
  Then again, the calendar/video call is great, but once I'm back in Teams, I can't video call someone on the web version.

ubermonkey 3y ago

>All you see is a blocked out amount of time You CAN share your calendar details, but most people don't want to. I see this as a feature.

ajmurmann 3y ago

IMO outlook calendar has the fundamental design flaw that it uses email to share (at least some) state, rather than entries in a central server. Things like inviting someone to a meeting I rejected are super hard to impossible. Group meetings while the host is out are a disaster.

Kwpolska 3y ago

> not being able to see the calendar details of team mates when inviting them to an event. All you see is a blocked out amount of time, you can't see their exact schedules even if they shared their calendar with you. This removes a huge human element to scheduling meetings because often times I'll avoid scheduling meetings when folks are just getting out of a long meeting, or I'll buffer it by 15-30 minutes depending on who is doing what beforehand. This is configurable, you can make your calendars public and convince your teammates (and potentially the rest of the company) to do so as well.

vxNsr 3y ago

Let me preface this by saying, I don’t work for Microsoft but have used their suite for a long time. Nearly everything you’re complaining about can be changed in settings. Either by you or the IT Admin.

PascLeRasc 3y ago
Do you know what setting I need to use to enable deleting emails without first archiving and un-archiving them?
- vxNsr 3y ago
  That sounds like something your admin enabled. I’ve never seen that.

snarfy 3y ago

> I never used any of MS' office tools until a few days ago. and then > Outlook's web app doesn't even let you click into an email to mark it as read. Did it occur to you that maybe a few days of use isn't enough for you to understand how to use office? Everything you complained about works fine, even if you don't understand how to do it.

coffeeling 3y ago

> Outlook's web app doesn't even let you click into an email to mark it as read. It absolutely does let you do that. I use OWA as my daily driver and that is the behaviour at least on my end. Settings->Mail->Message Handling should have the options you want.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]