Microsoft Outlook – Help me understand when emails are from other mailboxes

By Adam Cogan in Outlook 0 Comment

A cool feature of Outlook is when somebody is on holidays, you can access their mailboxes. An uncool feature is in the UX, it combines all emails when you are using the view of “Show as Conversations”.

For example, in the UX, a thread groups all emails from different mailboxes, regardless of who the email was sent to. This causes confusion as you assume the email was sent to you.

Suggestion: Microsoft Outlook should change its logic and not include the emails from other mailboxes in the Conversation view.

❌Bad Example – Outlook groups an email from Stephan’s mailbox into Jimmy’s conversation

Help me use full screen mode in Outlook

By Adam Cogan in Excel, Microsoft, Outlook, Word 0 Comment

When screen sharing in Teams or other applications, you want to be able to reduce noise as much as possible. One way to do this is by using full screen mode.

✅ Chrome – F11 works

✅ Edge – F11 works

❌ Outlook new email – F11 doesn’t work (does nothing)

❌ Word – F11 doesn’t work (does nothing)

❌ Excel – F11 doesn’t work (goes to Charts)

❌ Figure: F11 key goes to Charts in Excel
✅ Figure: Full screen in Edge with F11

Outlook – All-Day Events from another time zone do not display consistently

By Chris Schultz in Outlook 0 Comment

If I view an all-day event in my Outlook calendar that:

  • Was created in a different time zone
  • Goes for multiple days
  • Has all-day event ticked

The event will show as one day shorter than the actual event. The hover preview shows the same (incorrect) number of days. If I open the event, it displays correctly.

Please fix this inconsistency.

Figure: Test event, created in a different time zone for Monday to Thursday – shows as Monday to Wednesday
Figure: The same event (correctly) shows as Monday to Thursday when opened

Help me make sense of Outlook Search

By Adam Cogan in Outlook 0 Comment

If I search “Current Folder” and there are no items…. Then I don’t want to see items.

You are welcome to show a link “Do you want to see items from other folders?”

Please change this terrible default behaviour. 🔥 

Figure: With the new changes it looks like there are items in my “Current Folder”

Help me use indentation in OWA by adding shortcuts

By Luke Parker in Outlook on the Web (Office 365) 0 Comment

There are a few shortcuts on the OWA web app, like bold (Ctrl + B).

One thing I find myself commonly missing is the shortcut to indent/outdent text.

Tab of course will not work because it will be handled by the browser to focus on elements.

I suggest using Ctrl + ] and Ctrl + [ to indent and outdent respectively.

There are many other actions that do not have shortcuts, all the actions on the bottom of the email composer should have a shortcut, but for now this feature would be great.

Figure: Currently there is no shortcut to indent text in OWA

Help me understand how ‘Delay Send’ works

By Adam Cogan in Outlook 0 Comment

I often have problems giving specific feedback on Microsoft products and this example in Microsoft Outlook is an example.

Delay Send has been a feature I have used since I think the first version back in 1996.

Today I am sending emails to a co-worker at SSW on a Saturday and I see this cool new feature.

I think WOW! And I use it and think this Insight work Microsoft has done is super cool. ⭐

So I wonder how this works and look at “Delivery Options” and then I see this field is out of sync…

  • I think to myself that the old feature I use is client side.
  • I guess the new feature I am trying is server side.
Figure: BTW if I check off that check box “Do not delivery before” it sends the email immediately BAD BUG!!!

So I read the help and am not enlightened. ☹️

Figure: I’d love an “Advanced Help” link to the Microsoft Doc article. If a lot of people are clicking “Advanced Help” it might indicate that the help isn’t quite enough

So let’s tell Microsoft I didn’t like it.

I click “Not useful” and nothing obvious happens (see below image) 

Suggestions:

  • I expect to see a red icon and a text field appear
  • I expect to be able to tell Microsoft why it is not useful.
  • I expect to get a URL that I can track the issue. This could be a nice integration point into Microsoft Rewards
Figure: If giving negative feedback, I would feel more heard if the down thumb went red. At least resize the icon to 3 times bigger so I know it was clicked