Why Microsoft Outlook 2010 Sucks
Version 0.5

This article lists the frustrations I have personally experienced when moving from Outlook Express to Outlook 2010

After I purchase Microsoft Office Home & Business, I thought it was time to revisit Outlook 2010. I had a bad experience with Outlook 2003 which I hoped Microsoft would have cleared after about 7 years in development

Importing From Outlook Express A Big Headache

With Outlook 2010, you can't directly import from Outlook Express if you have installed it on a fresh installation. What's more, Windows 7 comes with Windows Live Mail which uses a different format to store its mail.

The working method to import Outlook Express mail to Outlook 2010 is as follows: Import it to Windows Live. Then install Outlook Freeware and point it to the folder where Windows Live has stored the EML files for your mails. The reason I did not use Windows Live's or Outlook's Import/Export function is that the to fields/headers/dates were not imported correctly to Outlook

Can't do a "Find Next"

You have to do a Find All to retrieve all matching messages. Outlook Express finds the first instance of the message and opens the e-mail immediately in the preview pane. Simply hit F3 in Outlook Express to find the next message

If I need to find all messages, Outlook Express provides that option. In Outlook 2010, you are forced to use the Find All function which goes through a process of searching the whole folder.

However, I have to give praise to its near instant searching speed as compared to Outlook Express.

Opening a Message takes more time than in Outlook Express

I am sure you have noticed this. There is a noticeable lag when opening a message in Outlook 2010 in the preview pane

This gets more and more noticeable as your PST (the Outlook database format) file grows.

With the below registry hack increasing the size of each message to by as much as three times, you can expect your PST file to grow faster than ever

Getting the headers of a message requires registry hack

If I need to submit the message to a spam reporter, Outlook 2010 provides no way to extract the full message source, you can only extract message headers on its own without the message itself. It requires a registry hack. With that hack, messages now take up to THREE times the original space required.

If you don't believe me, try sending a mail to yourself and compare the size difference of the received mail and the sent item mail size with the SaveAllMIMENotJustHeaders registry hack above.

All Newsgroup messages imported from Outlook Express Newsgroup Sent Items lose their 'To' field.

Take note that you will lose all To fields on messages imported from Outlook Express. When I tried to import back to Outlook Express, the To fields were all blank. So do keep your Outlook Express folders and don't delete them in case you want to move back to Outlook Express

No One-Click button to disable Preview

A minor issue. Outlook Express allows you to enable/disable the preview by just clicking a button. You have to add the button to the Outlook Express toolbar for this to work.

No Easy Way to Edit HTML When Composing Mail

There are many ways around it. None easy and most of them don't work with the 2010 version. Microsoft doesn't seem to like anyone having access to the raw HTML code in Outlook

A workaround I have resorted is to copy and paste the HTML from Dreamweaver's Live view, or copying and pasting it from a browser should work as well. This way, the formatting is retained somewhat.

No Integrated Newsgroup Reader

A common complaint ever since Microsoft Outlook was born. Till now, it uses Outlook Express for its news reader, storing all the sent posts in Outlook Express's folders.

Things I Wish Outlook Would Implement

Here are some suggestions to Microsoft

• Allow setting of multiple reminders for a event
• Store headers of a message together with the message so as not to waste time. Headers are needed for reporting spam and tracking how an e-mail has travelled.
• Implement a keyboard shortcut to open a new message when it appears in the preview notification
• Have an option to reply to all mails using HTML format
• Allow editing HTML code when composing mails

What Rocks

• Mail Notification with Preview
• Find follow-ups to a particular mail (but it appears to search with subject, and some of my mails share the same subject line)
• Customizability - Grid Lines, font, etc
• Junk Mail Filter - Though I do not use it, I create rules manually that move mails to that folder
• Simultaneously checking multiple e-mail accounts, Outlook Express checks one account at a time

As you can see, the cons are about the same at Outlook 2003 article I published earlier.

Sooner or later, I wonder whether I would be downgrading to Outlook Express.

Last Updated 4 February 2013

Errors? Omissions? Need Help? Know something? Post your queries in the comments below.

This document is Copyright(©) 2013 by G.Ganesh. Visit Bootstrike.Com (http://bootstrike.com).