Do you agree that products always have room for improvement?
"Every day there are little things in software that we find annoying. Some write books about it, like Annoyances.org, but I thought this site would be more constructive.
BetterSoftwareSuggestions.com is proudly maintained by myself and the developers at SSW."
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
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
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 WednesdayFigure: The same event (correctly) shows as Monday to Thursday when opened
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
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
‘Ignore Conversation’ moves to the ‘Deleted Items’ folder. That folder is stuff I know I deleted.
I think that it should default to a new folder ‘Deleted – Ignored’
Figure: ‘Ignored’ conversations are currently moved to ‘deleted’ folder
I’m on a long flight right now traveling from the USA to Australia doing emails. It would be great to have a feature that made you need to use Microsoft’s iOS app over the build it Apple mail app. I have one that would make me always use it!
I’m forgetful so when I get an email and think “I’ll call them back” or “I’ll add the to the VSTS backlog later” or “Speak to my girls at home” etc
I find I too often forget.
I’d love tags “To call”… “Add to backlog”… “My girls” etc.
Any +1’s on this? Or do you have a better system than your memory?
Figure: Microsoft’s iOS mail app needs custom Tags
Figure: Apple’s iOS mail app does not have custom Tags
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