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by downerending 2219 days ago
It could be that the interface is so confusing and horrible that it only seems different each time I dig into it.

Each time I take a new job, I have to slog around in the config screens trying to figure out how to turn off all of Outlook's !@#$ing awful "corrections" that send my email in variable-width fonts and change my '--' strings into em dashes and so on, thereby destroying my emails to users. Every time I do this, it seems like the layout of this awful pile of config dialogs has rearranged itself. Is it just PTSD?

1 comments

Yeah, well, Outlook is a different story. The Ribbon interface isn't really suited to a mail client, and Outlook has so much historical baggage that makes it ridiculously hard to use. I try my best to not use it, so I don't know how much it's changed.

But Word, PowerPoint, and to some extent, Excel? The Ribbon is really well thought-out and easy to use. It feels intuitive in a way that the old bloated menus never did. And the command search feature is actually really useful, and teaches you where a command is located so you can just go straight there next time.

This is hopelessly pedantic, but Outlook is (now) part of Microsoft Office. And matters to me the most since it's the only part of Office I hardly ever use.
Not hopelessly pedantic, it's very true. It's just that I've always hated Outlook and I'd honestly forgotten about it when I wrote that original comment.