SSW Microsoft Outlook Suggestions

Show number of related messages left in your inbox and their subfolders

When I am processing an email in my inbox, I want to complete it and its related messages. Currently, Outlook 2007 only gives you the "Related" button and it works very slowly and poorly because Outlook needs to search the related emails in all folders.

• Add a checkbox in Tools | Options "Show number of related messages left and their subfolders".
• Add a red bar to alert "There are N related messages left and their subfolders".

Figure: Find related message

Make the closing down of outlook more reliable

The problem I find with Outlook 2007 (also occurs in Outlook 2003) is that I often close down Outlook, wait a short while then shut down Vista... yet invariably when I start up again, it says the data files weren't closed properly. I can only presume this has something to do with the fact that it seems to keep receiving mail even when it's shut down. I have had the Outlook OST file so corrupted it was impossible to recover it, so I had to re-synchronize > 10+ GB of mails.

I use two laptops (both Vista) and I would say that at least 60% of the time I start up Outlook 2007 on one, it says the file was not closed properly. I don't know what is causing it, but it just adds to the many pain points of Outlook 2007.
The likely cause of this is that some "3rd party" application is keeping Outlook running.

Adding "Created By" and "Updated By" fields for contact information

I want to know who created this contact and who updated the information for this contact, it should have "Created By" and "Updated By" fields.

Figures: Contact information

Suggestion: Adding "Created By" and "Updated By" fields for contact information, and automatic save the logon user to the fields after a contact information was created or updated.

We have a rule better to interfaces about this, please see Data Entry Forms - The way to develop Data Entry Forms - Created/Last Updated By Fields

Outlook needs to have a better model to develop plugins

The current object model does not make for nice and easy plugin development. Some issues include:

Setting the title of the COM addin in the options page:

Figure: It takes a lot of effort to change the name of the tab in options

To set the title using VSTO you have to have code like this, which is rather unnatural:

[System.Runtime.InteropServices.DispId(-518)]
public string Caption 
{
	get {return "SSW eXtreme Emails";}
}

Throw out backwards compatibility and start a fresh. For example, you should be able to inherit the contacts page and change the way it looks and add extra functionality to it.

Bad Outlook Programming Model: No Outlook.Item exposed!

Item Enumeration

Outlook (probably for backward compatibility reasons) doesn't have a default Outlook.Item object as the parent of the various Outlook.Items (Outlook.MailItem, PostItem, AppointmentItem).  This means code like this wouldn't work:

dim oItem as Outlook.MailItem
for each oItem in Outlook.ActiveExplorer.Selection
' you get errors for any items (like PostItem), that isn't an 
MailItem in your inbox
MsgBox oItem.Subject
next
		    

Figure: Example of incorrect code

dim oItem as Object
for each oItem in Outlook.ActiveExplorer.Selection
' this will work, because every type of Outlook Item has the subject property... 
' but we're relying on reflection (late binding) here and 
' intellisense doesn't help us when we write code,
' compiler doesn't tell us if we made a typo,
' late binding is slower...
MsgBox oItem.Subject
next
			

Figure: Example of correct code

Bad Outlook Programming Model: Cached Exchange Mode Limitations

Cached Items in Outlook

When "Cached Exchange Mode" is enabled, items which have been cached locally will have some unexpected behaviour. This feature allows one to work with your personal folders, as well as selected public folder contents even when they're disconnected from the Exchange Server.

However, once that feature is enabled, if you attempt to access the Parent.FolderPath property, you will be returned an inaccurate folder path. To see this bug in action, select an item in a subfolder of the folder which you have added to Favorites. Now press Alt+F11 to bring up the Visual Basic editor, followed by Ctrl+G to bring up the Immediate window.

Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1).Parent.FolderPath

This will return

'\\Public Folders\Favorites\ImmediateParentFolder'

One would assume it would return

'\\Public Folders\Favorites\ParentFolder\ImmediateParentFolder'

but that's not the case. If you disable "Download Public Folder Favorites", then the above code would return the correct canonical path of the folder.

'\\Public Folders\All Public Folders\ParentFolder\ImmediateParentFolder'

In our product SSW eXtremeEmails!, it prevents the Incident screen from obtaining a valid URL for the email item.

Figure: CDO object model failed to retrieve Outlook Web Access URL.

As a work around, the "Download Public Folder Favorites" settings should be disabled. If you wish to see correct URLs in your personal folders, "Cached Exchanged Mode" must be disabled all together.

Figure: Disabling Cached Exchange Mode as a work around to invalid item properties.

I hope this would be fixed in the next version of Outlook. Items in folders added to Favorites should provide the canonical path to aid Outlook 'smart client' plug-ins with Offline functionality, even when "Download Public Folder Favorites" is enabled.

Corrupt .PST and .OST Files

We need something better than a .pst file. I would prefer a SQL/MSDE database file that has less chance of going corrupt. I have seen this message box too many times and the tools scanpst.exe and scanost.exe do not fix it.

Figure: There should be something better that .PST files

Need to lose Redemption

There should be some way that it is not needed to create plugins for Outlook.

Outlook should support treating Emails as Tasks

We believe that email is at it's most effective when you're using your inbox as a task list. If you need to ask someone a question it's usually a better option to use the phone. If you are asking someone to do something however, email works really well, because you then have a record of the task - with the date and time as well. Outlook should encourage you using your email as a task tracking system, and provide a way you can see the status of emails.

When you send an email there should be a field 'Action' with these choices:

• Task - Action Required (default)
• FYI - email is for information purposes only, no action required.

Please add a status combo field to emails (should appear by default in sent items):

1. N/A was a FYI
2. N/A by Adam on 21/9/2005
3. Replied Not Resolved
4. Not Replied in \\Tim\inbox
5. Not Replied deleted from \\Tim\inbox

Corrupt mail on bounce-resend

This error occurs when you send an email and it bounces, then you hit send again. For some reason it sends a whole lot of rubbish.

Figure: An email has bounced for some reason

Figure: Sending the email again...

Figure: For some reason the email body becomes corrupted.

Google Toolbar in Emails

Often I want to search emails for certain words. It would be nice to have the functionality of the Google toolbar available when writing emails.

I would like to have this functionality in other office applications also. Details

Figure: It would be nice to have the google toolbar in emails

Add Filter to context menu

The context menus for the grids in in Outlook should have all of the filtering features found in Access.

Figure: Context menu in Outlook

Figure: Context menu in Access

Can attachments be listed in a reply?

Figure: Can attachments be listed in a reply?

There needs to be a 'Compress Email' option

Depending on the editor used to create an email (eg Word vs. Outlook), size can vary dramatically. Unfortunately, which editor the sender uses can not always be controlled. There should be a 'Compress Email' option to optimize emails using the default editor.

Figure: Put 'Compress Email' option here.

When editing an email in HTML format there should be an HTML view

Users should be able to access the HTML like in Internet Explorer with View > Source. This could be implemented like Frontpage with a HTML tab at the bottom of the window.

Figure: FrontPage provides an HTML view of the content.

Calendar entries should support HTML formatting

Our observations suggest that all calendar entries created with Microsoft Outlook are in Rich Text format. Seeing this has a message size overhead and is less supported by all mail clients, we'd like to see an option for HTML formatting. From what we can tell, the iCalendar format that Outlook makes use of does not have any requirements for rich text.

Figure: An option for calendar formatting could be found around the iCalendar-relevant data on this screen.

Calendar - Missing an edit button

We need an 'Edit' button.

Figure: When someone else adds an item to your calendar (like a PA), you will see this email. There should be an Edit button.

Calendar - Help me Print my Monthly Calendar without certain appointments showing

Figure: There should be a way of setting some appointments to low importance (eg. Daily Standup) and not printing it

Figure: What we need is 2 more checkboxes under this one.

[x] Don't print anything for 'Private' appointments
[x] Don't print anything for 'Low Importance' appointments

Calendar Items - Need a country/time zone combo

When I am in Sydney and want to make a 9am appointment (New York time) it should be as simple as choosing [9am] [New York] Currently I have to work it backwards and enter it in Sydney time. All I need is a "Time Zone" combo. The crazy thing is if you cycle through the properties of a calendar item the "Time Zone" value is there - it is just not exposed on the UI. Even when I reply to an appointment I can see both time zones! As an example I get:

Webinar:    .NET Enterprise Services Essentials
Time:       Thursday, April 17, 2003, 11:00 a.m. PDT (2:00 p.m. EST)
Duration:   One hour, including a Q&A

Figure: Add a "Time Zone" combo box here.

Newsgroups

Yes, it would be nice not to have to switch to Outlook Express to use newsgroups. And although I would like to see the functionality in Outlook, I am of the belief that there are so many other things that the Outlook team needs to do, that it just cant be justified.

Newsgroups are not used by average Jo. The Outlook team should stick to core issues.

Give Outlook better spam filtering.(Thank you. Fixed in Outlook 2003 Beta 2)

The current Junk Mail/Adult Content filters do nothing more than highlight messages in the Inbox. And the filtering mechanism itself isn't particularly good. Sure, third-party products like SpamNet work with Outlook. But Microsoft ought to be able to a better job itself.

Autocomplete Email addresses

This autocomplete feature is very useful however when I move to a new PC and setup my outlook with my old Outlook Data File (.pst) I lose all my history of email addresses. Very disappointing.

If we want to keep it Microsoft expect us to figure out NK2 files or something

In addition this file appears to be binary, instead of XML, so we cant work with them eg. I want to combine 2 files together from different PCs.

Figure: AutoComplete feature in use.

Status bar in HTML emails

Where is the status bar, as in Internet Explorer?

When you receive HTML email, you want to be able to see the URL when you hover over a hyperlink.

Figure: No status bar when reading emails in Outlook.

Making Read Receipts useful

When you send an email you could have a flag "Requires Action" or "FYI".

When you look in your sent items there should be a column showing the status:

• Not received
• Received - read
• Received - unread
• Replied
• Forwarded
• Deleted
• Recalled

Note: This isn't a normal Outlook feature, it requires Exchange Server.

Figure: Mail item properties dialog.

Limitation on Sort Method

While developing our product SSW eXtreme Emails! we wanted to add a feature that sends an email with history. We wanted it to simulate how Outlook keeps the history on an email. So by code we wanted to:

• Go to Sent Items
• Find the last email sent with that subject (sort by DateSent)

However you can't sort on the Sent field. It seems totally crazy to me that the sort method cannot be used on the sent field.

This is a primary field I would want to sort on!

By the way: The DateModified has a sort method.

Conflict errors and Conflict Resolver

We need field level replication and a Conflicit Resolver like SQL Server.
When two users make offline modifications to the same public folder entry, then they get conflict errors.

This has similar issues to SQL Server Replication but more because:

It works at an entire email level, not a field level like SQL.

The conflict resolver doesnt even point out the differences you have to look through them manually.

Cannot Edit Mail Folder Name Directly (Fixed in Outlook 2007, the textbox is disabled)

In the folder properties dialog, a text-box containing the name of the folder appears. The text-box is not disabled, yet its contents cannot be edited. To change the mail folder name, the user must click the Customize button.

This is illogical and confusing. Microsoft should either allow editing of the name without having to click Customize or disable the text-box altogether.

Figure: Outlook's mail folder properties dialog

Replied Mails aren't in the same group

When I click "Subject" I would expect that the yellow items are grouped together. The replied mails should be in the same group as the original mails, even if they have the prefix "Re:" or "Fwd:" in their subjects.

Figure: The yellow items should be in the same group

And other ones along the same lines - these 3 should be together

Figure:  Screen capture from Outlook 2003 Beta 2

When in conversation thread view in Outlook, why cant these two be threaded together?

Figure: Outlook won't thread the two messages together.

Outlook data files

Why call it Microsoft Outlook Personal Folders File (.pst)?

Microsoft please change it to Microsoft Outlook 2003 Personal Folders File (.pst)?

Note: And NO I dont believe the file format will never change again

Figure: No consistency and no forward thinking by Microsoft here

Move To Folder list

I love the Move To Folder?option and use it every day. However I run my PC at a resolution of 1400x1050 and this list is not long enough. Please increase the length by 3 times.

Figure: The list is too short at 1400x1050 screen resolution

Items disappear when moved into a folder with a home page

If you drag an item into a folder which has a home page (for example, the root of the Inbox, which has Outlook Today), there is no way to access the item, except by disabling the folder's home page. The setting to disable the home page is buried in the Folder Properties, and many users may not know where to find it.

Outlook should display a warning that the item will not be visible if you attempt to move an item into a folder which has a home page.

There should be a way to send a specific item immediately

It is useful to turn off the "Send immediately when connected" option in Outlook so you can go back to messages before sending them. However, sometimes you want to send a single message immediately without emptying the entire Outbox. You should be able to Ctrl+Click the send button on a message to force it to send immediately, without doing a full Send/Receive.

There should be a 'Move to CC' option on right click in OWA

It would be useful to have a 'Move to CC' option on right click in Outlook Web Access

Figure: It would be good to have 'Move to CC' option on right click

Have a delete button on draft emails

I often store things in my Drafts folder in Outlook, but there is no X (delete) button, so I have to locate the email in my drafts folder and delete it manually.

Figure: Where is the delete button on this draft email?

Figure: We need a delete button on drafts like in this normal Inbox email

Add full path the the location field

The location field should have the full path viewable. I use the Lookout Tool a lot and want to know which folder an email is in.

Figure: List the folder in the location field

Bad UI in Send/Receive Settings window

I want to work offline - but have everything sync every 5 minutes (EXCEPT my Outbox - I will do that manually)

1) So I choose File | Work Offline

Figure: Select Work Offline

2) Select Define Send/Receive Groups

Figure: Select Define Send/Receive Groups

3) Tick the checkbox - Schedule an automatic send/receive every 5 minutes, then edit 'All Accounts'.

Figure: Send/Receive Groups

4) Then check off "Send mail items"
However it keeps sending emails because the Outbox is selected in the tree control The Outbox should show as Strikethrough when that checkbox is off

Figure: Bad UI in Send/Receive Settings, the Outbox should show as strikethrough.

Remove one of the dumbest defaults in history

How many times have you create a meeting request - saved and sent it - then realised you forgot to put the time and date.
You reopen it and fix it - but the other person still receives the original email with an "Updated: xxxxx"

Why would the assumption be every meeting is going to be for the next 30 minutes?

Microsoft, please default it to zero - or give an option in Tools Options to turn it off

Figure: Microsoft Outlook assumes every meeting is going to be for the next 30 minutes.

Working with Favorites Folder

You are not allowed to create new folders under Favorites.
When you are adding to Favorites, dont just add single Project Folder.
But add the entire hierarchy making sure that all sub folders are included.

Figure: creating new folder under favorites.

Spam folder should have a "Spam" field like Spam Bayes does

Figure: Spam Bayes' spam folder

Outlook progress difficult to see

When the Send/Receive button is clicked in Outlook a progress window is shown. Using the words "Completed" and "Processing" can have a nasty side effect of not being able to easily see which messages are still to be processed. A better Solution would be to change the word "Completed" by the word "Done".

Figure: Outlook progress window

Remove RTF as an option or explain when it is a good choice

Figure: Change "HTML" to "HTML (recommended)" and remove Rich Text

Add the ability to have a contents page added to an email

Figure: Table of Contents functionality in MS Word 2007

Add the status for the progress bar

Figure: Send/receive progress form in outlook

Paly a sound at the end of send/receive process

Figure: (Supposed) adding a check box for playing a sound at the end of send/receive progress

Hide the progress bar at the end of send/receive process

Figure: The progress bar will be hidden at the end of send/receive progress

Add options on the names in To field in OWA

Add another right click option on names in the To field.

Figure: Add options on the names in To field in OWA

Image Size

When I put pictures into an Outlook HTML email, they are much less quality and significantly larger, even though Outlook reports that they are 100%

Check if Active Sync is active before closing down

People close Outlook and they will notice it continues to check for new mail after they think Outlook is closed!
Really what do they do? They close Outlook and they still see (surprisingly some time later) an envelope appear in their system tray and a popup appearing showing the mail that has just arrived.

The basic issue is that Outlook hasn’t really shut down even though you intended for it to shut down. The most likely cause of this is that some "3rd party" application is keeping Outlook running.

The most common one I see is Active Sync - and now you have Outlook running with no visible windows. We suggest:

1. Never ever have the situation that Outlook is running without any visible windows
2. Show which client is keeping Outlook alive
3. Specifically check for ActiveSync. ActiveSync is so common Microsoft should pop a message box: "You have ActiveSync running, please close that down first and then try exiting Outlook again."

Have a smart tag that shows "Create calendar appointment" by intelligently parsing the text

Then the user can use the right click menu to create a calendar appointment.

Figure: Have a smart tag that shows "Create calendar appointment"

Name Intellisense - shortcuts names should be stored with the PST/OST

These shortcuts names should be stored with the PST/OST so that customers won't lose these when they create a new profile.

Figure: shortcut names should not be lost while users create new profiles.

Name Intellisense - add one more option to check for more names

Have one more option at the bottom of the shortcut name list " - Check for more Names - "

Reason #1: not many users know the shortcut "Control+K"
Reason #2: users they should not have to pick up the mouse to click the "Check Names" button

Figure: users should not always have to click this button to check more names.

Name Intellisense - should be referred to the suggeset names checkbox in advanced email options

The Name Intellisense (or 'auto suggest names', 'smart shortlist', etc) should be referred to the suggeset names checkbox in advanced Email options so people use it consistently

Figure: It will be referred to in the 2nd last checkbox.

Remove RTF Option

In Outlook, the size of an email in RTF format is much larger than that in HTML format.

Figure: The different size of the same mail in two formats.

So we suggest: remove the RTF option in the message format to save space and make emails faster.

Figure: Here to select the message format.

Show display picture from MSN Messenger

When viewing an email, Outlook 2007 shows an image of the sender. Currently this only works if the sender is already in your contact list and has an image assigned to the contact card. Although this is a really nice feature, inserting the picture to each contact is time consuming and if you have hundreds of contacts, you definitely don't want to go through each one of them.

Outlook has been providing a nice integration with MSN Messenger for a while. It is capable of showing the status of email recipients marked with a little color icon indicating their status (green if available, red if busy, etc).

In a similar fashion, Outlook should be able to make use of the display picture from MSN Messenger and show it on the email message should the sender cannot be found in the contact list.

Figure 1: Outlook 2007 now shows the image of the sender

Figure 2: Contact card with image attached

Figure 3: MSN Messenger already has Display Picture capability

Quick Templates for Outlook

Add-in Quick Templates for Outlook is designed for fast insertion of text templates into Microsoft Outlook 2000,2002(XP),2003 mail messages. It will help you with entering frequently repeated text fragments, save the time you spend on message writing, and you will have no more misprints in your messages. Quick Templates plugin is a very useful tool for technical support officers, sales personnel and all other people who make an extensive use of email in their work.

You will have to write and format your text only once and then you can insert it in mail messages of any type (HTML, RTF, plain text) repeatedly. the Quick Templates keeps all the text parameters and formatting unchanged, which allows you to create lots of various headings, signatures, phrases, or any other text blocks, lines, or words you use frequently in your correspondence.

With the Quick Templates plugin you can create a template list and insert the text from template into a message by a single mouse click or through a hotkey you can set for each template individually.

Figure 1: Quick Templates for Outlook

Figure 2: Edit text of the template

Figure 3: Toolbar in MS Word (when Word is used as an email editor)

Figure 4: Templates menu in Outlook

Send Fax and SMS

1. By default you should be able to type in a phone number and have it send a fax.
2. By default you should be able to type in a mobile number and have it send a SMS.

Figure: Send Fax and SMS by filling in the number.

Allow you to fix the Conversation Threading

When someone replies to an email with an incompatible mail client eg. Blackberry, outlook express you loose your threading inside Outlook. Please:

1. Add a button to the toolbar “Merge into one Thread?
2. Also allow you to drag it into that conversation.

Figure: Add a button “Merge into one thread?

Outlook /OWA should support templates

Anastasia, our accountant keeps a bunch of text documents on her desktop which she copies and pastes into emails. It would be a great feature if Outlook and OWA supported creating and inserting templates into new emails. If the new email UI had a drop down list to insert templates then this would make outlook a more powerful tool.

There are already some third party plugins that do this in Outlook:

1. Quick Text Hotkey
2. Quick Templates for Outlook

But there are no tools to do this in OWA.

Add a way to search the current folder and subfolders

See the last option group in the search options, we also need a "Search current folder and subfolders".

Figure: Need "Current Folder and subfolders" in the last "Instant Search Pane" group

Allow me to resize or maximize Reminders Form

It is bad that you are not allowed to resize or maximize the reminders form when you are in the situation showed below.

Figure: Reminders Form

Open a reminder on a seperate thread

Please make a reminder open on a separate thread. When you have a lot the Inbox UI does not respond.

Figure: Many Inbox Reminders

Search results could benefit from 3 improvements

• Use strikethrough for the deleted items. See our Rules To Better Interfaces for more information.
• Use blue with italics for the outbox
• When you select an Outbox item -- do not change it back to normal from italics

Figure: Search Results

OWA should support pasting images into the email content.

It will be greate to support pasting image in OWA. Now the OWA only allow us to add the images to attachments. This will affect reading and the attachments are easily lost while responding.

Figure: The editor supports pasting images.

Outlook should add 'Configure' button to 'Indexing Status...' form.

Add a 'Configure' button to 'Indexing Status...' form:

Figure: This Indexing Status form needs a 'Configure' button to take you to the below form

That takes you to 'Indexing Options' form:

Figure: You need to be able to easy to get to the 'Indexing Options' form from Outlook

Appointments should be able to store images

Well actually they can add images as same as emails. but because they are stored as RTF (instead of HTML like normal email messages) so they convert to 4-5MB attachments.

The worst thing is the syncing problems with Windows Mobile devices.

PS: I think it should be easier to insert Live maps (or google maps) for directions.

Figure: The Appointment with large image

Please add an 'Undo' button on Reminders

For example, I open an appointment and reply all to it, then close the appointment.
It has been updated, so it moves to the top, but I have already pressed Dismiss and so the wrong message was dismissed!

Figure: Add Undo button at here

Outlook need validate for no subject

I think it would be great to never receive another email from a person without a subject!

Figure: Bad example - No Validation when sending an email

Figure: Good example - Validation when sending an appointment

Send/Receive Progress

Sometimes you just want to sync quickly (eg. over GPRS) and one big, fat and unexpected 10MB email is coming without you knowing and without a way to skip it. So please improve this dialog, so you can see if you have a bottleneck and give an option to skip the email.

Figure: My UI suggestion would be to show the top 5 emails in size (sorted descending) with a button on each row "Skip for now"

Looking up a contact

Be aware that people create new email addresses all the time and for all types of reasons, eg. for mailing lists.

Figure: Looking up the address' contact

When looking up a contact and the email address does not exist. This message box is not good enough. It should say "Here are a list of suggestions that have email addresses that are very close."

Figure: This dialog is not good enough

Need 'Open folder' on right click menu

Need add 'Open folder' menu item on right click menu in the search results.

Figure: Right click menu needs 'Open folder' or 'Open email location' if you want to be consistent with Vista Search like below

Figure: Outlook needs this 'Open file location' in their search results

Give a drill through option for Categories

Figure: Add a right click option "Open All 'SharePoint' (12 items)"

Figure: The drill-though menu would open like this

OWA 2007 should supports FormatBrush

OWA 2007 should add a FormatBrush button to copy the format from one place to other places, which also make it consistent with Outlook like other buttons.

OWA 2007 need add Refresh Option

OWA 2007 should add a Refresh button on the right click menu:

Figure: Need add Refresh button on the menu.

Search - Add "Type" to the "Criteria" combo

Make it easy to find all the appointments in your inbox (that you have not accepted or declined).

Eg. I want to say something like "Type: Calendar" or "Type: Appointment" however neither one works.

Figure: Add option "Type" to allow you to find appointments

Figure: Search help needs a list of all options you can manually type (that is not in the "Criteria" dropdown)

Add a note on deleted record

When you add a contact and it is the same name, then it offers to merge the contacts (and if you say ‘yes’ it deletes it). Can you please add a note on the deleted record “This record was deleted by the Contact Merge Tool”.

Figure: Contacts with the same name

Figure: Contacts details

Outlook Appointments - Make the Reminders Visible and changeable as when you receive them

When you get an appointment in your inbox, they often have a Reminders in them, you can't see them, but they are there. The main issue is that I don't want the reminder going off later.

• Can you make the reminder visible
• Can you add a button "Accept without reminder"
• Can you add a button "Accept and edit the reminder"

Figure: The Appointment's reminder information, needs to be visible and changable

Add 'Find' to the right click menu of the 'Contacts' folder

It's more efficient to have a 'Find' option in the right click menu of the 'Contacts' folder. With it we can look for certain contacts easily.

Figure: 'Find' option is needed.

Check Names Improvement

If I get more than one contacts with the same email address when checking the names, I'd like to know which is in my Local Contacts and which in the Exchange User List. So please add a column to identify this.

For instance, if I know the one in my Local Contacts is the latest and the first one is identified as Local Contacts, I can select it easily without checking details of these two.

Figure: No column idetifies where contacts are from

All unhandled errors (aka crashes) should take your email

All unhandled errors (aka crashes) will take your email...

And inform you when a hot fix/service pack resolves that issue

(I choose Outlook as the first application to implement this, as that is what I get the most crashes)

Figure: All crashes will take your email

Outlook should support SMS (and sync my SMSes)

I am going to flash my TyTnII.

All my data is synced Except my SMSes Grrrrrrr.

Refresh Conversation ID after changing the subject

I don't think subjects should be changed today, because those use the threading in Outlook, the thread is now ruined. However people do, so I wish Outlook gave the functionality to change a subject and then use "Tools | Refresh Conversation ID" to change the Conversation ID.
PS: Better still just refresh the Conversation ID after you change a subject

Figure: Need an option "Tools | Refresh Conversation ID" for use after you change a subject

Outlook should warn of deleted emails on the server

Here is my sad story...

1. Exchange goes corrupt.... be frightened of running out of space with virtualization :-)
2. We go back to a backup a 3-4 days old :-(
3. Outlook (the 'smart' client) connects.... it sees that the server doesnt have the emails that it has... so it proceeds to quickly and violently delete hundreds of emails, from the last few days.
4. Everybody is not happy

Why doesn't Outlook not work better? It could say.

    Since you last connected, 356 emails have been deleted from 'Inbox' on the server.

    Do you want these emails to deleted on your PC? [DELETE]

    Do you want to put your emails onto the server? [UPLOAD]

Is there a downside to this? I cant think of anything....

(with this feature, outlook would not just be a copy, it could be included into disaster recovery plans)

Exchange Proxy UI + get settings from the server

The "Connection" tab needs reordering as a minimum change.

The first two sections are hardly ever touched (Being "Connection" and "Modem").

However the "Outlook Anywhere" is used a lot, so that should be the first section.

PS: On the "Microsoft Exchange Proxy Settings" form, we need button under the first textbox "Populate Settings From Mail Server"(or is there a security reason this could not be done).

Figure: Settings are hardly ever touched

Provide the possibility to add a signature in appointments like in Mail messages

It is better to add a signature in Appointments like in Mail messages

Figure: There is no possibility to have a default signature for new appointments (Try File --> New appointment in Outlook)

Please add 2 properties to an appointment

Please add who created this (see yellow) in the UI... or at least on the Properties of the email

Ideally you will be able to see:

• Who created this appointment (see yellow)
• On which PC it was created

Currently you can only see this by clicking "Reply to All"

Figure: I should not have to click "Reply to All" to find out that it was 'Ida Haugland' who created this appointment

Need an additional field "Days To Go"

We need an additional field "Days To Go" on appointment or meeting:

Figure: The date is good, an additional field "Days to Go" would be even better. A good example of this field is on the home page calendar of www.ssw.com.au

Auto spell check the subject

Please add auto spell check on mail subject.

When Repairing Corrupt Data files you need more info

When you are a damaged pst or ost you get this.

Please give me a % complete (and any other info, like the part it is up to)

It should also alert users that this is not fixing corrupt data.

Eg. This is a consistency check only checking the free space - the non-data regions of the file (the free space that needs to be used). Therefore, this check progresses has nothing to do with the data itself (i.e. it is not folder-by-folder, it is region-by-region in the file).

Figure: Please give me a % complete

Would love to run SQL queries against my inbox

Gmail allows me to take my email offline and run standard SQL queries against it Not just email.... Contacts, Calendar and Tasks.

I wish I could do that with Outlook.

Figure: Google Gears allows storing data locally in a fully-searchable database.

Help me setup Outlook search on Windows Server 2008 R2

It is not that uncommon to set up Outlook on a server.

Figure: I think the Outlook team can do better than this.... as a minimum a web page with all the download links

There are 2 options to fix this:
1. Command line: ServerManagerCmd -i FS-Search-Service or
2. Server Manager > Roles > Add Roles > File Services > Windows Search Service

Outlook 2010 - Help me fix this annoying behaviour of "Check Names" (aka Control + K)

If I type "Brian"

Figure: Then click "Check Names"

It will change to "Brian Norton"
Instead of give me a choice of "Brian Norton" and "Brian Noyes"

Figure: The reason is it only looks in the "Global Address List"

Figure: I want it to also look in the "Contacts" Address Book too.

PS: My iPhone uses the same data, but works as I expect.

Summary points
• It should work out of the box (BTW it shows both "Brian's" out of the box, for my iPhone).
• This option, should be more discoverable.

Suggestion for the Outlook Team

Figure: Change the "Check Names" button to this style

Figure: Make the order more discoverable by adding "Change Order" under "Check Names" button that would take you to

Cater for Subscribed Newsletters (aka SPAM Level 2)

We all know what SPAM is... and Outlook seems to catch most of that fine.

But there is a 2nd level of SPAM, and that is newsletters you subscribe to, but rarely get to read... but you will 'one day'

I would love another mailbox called 'Junk Newsletters' and it picked up my newsletters.

Figure: We need another folder "Junk Newsletters" and button "Not a Subscribed Newsletter"

Syncing Offline Address Book - need more info so we don't think it is a corrupt 'offline address book template file'

• This is a weird thing?what is it doing when it gets to this point?
• If you google, many results incorrectly seem to be talking about a corrupt 'offline address book template file'. Am I correct in assuming that they just were not patient enough?
• Why does it take so long?

(feels like an eternity?actually you think it is hung?but it does complete)

Figure: Takes so long you need more information

Slow Outlook - Add a KB explaining the compacting reason

Slow Outlook - Add a KB explaining the compacting reason

Outlook gets really slow when your mailbox hits certain sizes eg. 1.9GB (for 2007 ANSI) or 19GB (for 2007 Unicode) or 48GB (for 2010 Unicode)

Outlook gets really slow when your mailbox gets near its maximum.... it kicks in a whole lot of CPU processing

The performance problems happens because the OST/PST silently takes it upon itself to compact much more aggressively than it would in a situation in which it's got "room to spare".

The specifics are:
• Outlook 2007 is 1.9GB (for ANSI OST/PST)
  The 1.9GB limit is a hard limit (it relates to a fundamental limitation in the on-disk format) and, therefore, there is no work around (short of moving some of the data to another store or deleting it and allowing compaction to run its course).
• Outlook 2007 is 19GB (for Unicode OST/PST)
  This is not a hard limit, the file format is capable of growing larger and so there is a work-around that can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/832925.
• Outlook 2010 is 48GB (for Unicode OST/PST)
  The new defaults in 2010 are 50GB for max file size and 47.5GB (95% of 50GB) for the warn file size in Unicode OSTs/PSTs.

Note:
It's also worth looking over the information in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940226, which covers some of the more common root causes of Outlook performance issues. In particular, the table about SSDs can be useful for setting expectations (and keep in mind that the Vista WinSAT tool is fundamentally different than the Win7 WinSAT tool and you should download the Vista one and run it on your win7 machine if you want to compare your numbers to the numbers in the chart).

Slow Outlook - In the UI, inform about compacting

Fix the situation where there is no end user visibility when it starts compacting.
Surely by Outlook 2010 we should be able to see what it is doing.... create a Log file

Slow Outlook - In the UI, show the maximum size of the OST/PST

I didn't have any of the registry keys mentioned on http://support.microsoft.com/kb/832925

What ensured was a lot of effort to find out, that for Outlook 2007 I am using the default value of 20GB.

2 columns should be added to this grid.

Figure: Suggestion - show the Current File Size and Maximum File Size (so I don't have to look up MaxLargeFileSize)

Slow Outlook - Fix the confusion in the KB

Regarding http://support.microsoft.com/kb/832925

I didn't have any of the registry keys and I found the article a bit confusing. Especially when I could not copy and paste from the article to regedit.

The worse thing is that copy and paste from the KB to outlook fails. So I have 4 suggestions for the KB:
#A - Add another column

Figure: #1 Add a column in front to indicate ANSI or Unicode

Figure: You should be able to copy and paste from the KB to the Regedit

eg.
1. Open calc.exe
2. Switch to "Programming mode"
3. Make sure to have the calculator switched to "Dec"

   

4. Enter the decimal number that you want to have as filesize
5. Click on "Hex"
6. Use that number