Microsoft kicks new Outlook opt-out deadline down the road to 2027

Microsoft has delayed the opt-out phase for the new enterprise version of Outlook to 2027, giving administrators another 12 months to get ready for migration. In a post filed with the Microsoft 365 Message Center at the end of last month, Microsoft said postponement was to "ensure organizations have the time they need to …

[Anonymous Coward]

Most users where I work hate it and actively switch it off. They get the desperate survey asking why when they do. I'm not sure I believe the accelerated take up, more like they've seen what people think of it.

[I ain't Spartacus]

When I tried it last year (or it least it foisted itself without fucking asking on a colleague), it couldn't even open multipole inboxes. And yet it was supposed to be ready to for this year. I checked last month, and it can apparently do that now. Although there's still quite a long list of stuff it can't.

I think there's going to be a big correction. Those £600 Apple laptops are going to sell like hot cakes - and some businesses might start thinking about how annoying Microsoft are getting.

We're a small company, with few resources, and no professional IT. There's me, and whatever I can't do, we buy in. We've got a CRM system tied into Outlook and Office 365, because it needs access to our emails. But dealing with the constant and wearying changes with Microsoft is really starting to piss me off.

Got a problem with connecting a new user to that CRM on O365. So I get a vague error message and Google it. Get to Microsoft's own documentation. Which says to fix this problem in Azure. Fine, go to the Azure admin console, which is buried 2 menus deep in their shitty Admin system. Azure tells me that i require a license and all seems to be extra stuff to do with AI. So go to Entra, which says at the top, "This service used to be called Azure"! So yet again, MS change the name of something while immediately re-using the name.

For fuck's sake! You look at a new PC now, it's got Outlook (the old Outlook Express) built in, then Outlook (classic), if you install Office, and finally Outlook (NEW) - why the fuck can't they have different fucking names you useless imbeciles!?!?

I manage our Office 365 because the company that we paid to do it let me down, I had to work out how to clean up their mess, and I haven't yet met a problem on it I couldn't solve. With sufficient time. And swearing... But every fucking time I have to do it, the Microsoft documentation is out of date, or the menu that you go to has a message on it saying, this menu is now in legacy mode and will be updating to something else in a month's time. Every! Fucking! Time!

Can they just give us software that wasn't written by gibbons with ADHD who've taken too much speed? Surely this can't be that hard?

I actually understand the change to Outlook (new). Old Outlook must be a nightmare to maintain, and the thing with the ost/pst files is an unstable mess that causes loads of problems. So I can fully understand not just making a new version, but also wanting to force everyone to move to it. But the way to do that is to start by making it better! And then it's much easier to persuade people. But it seems with everything now it's compulsion as the only option.

[theOtherJT]

Making things better is hard. Forcing your subjects customers by dropping support is easy.

[coredump]

Yup. Particularly when you don't actually care if the customer-victims are satisfied or not.

[ChrisBedford]

I'm 100% with you on all points raised and judging by the 50+ upvotes we're very much not alone. I'm also driven to swearing - a lot - mostly by the high-handed approach to rearranging the menus so damn often. I get the idea of "giving it a fresh look" every now and again (shopping centres do it, so...) but just moving shit around for the sake of it has pretty much been a Microsoft signature move since... well, the [Start] button in Windows 95, I guess, and it's... annoying. I wonder how those gibbons on meth would feel if we broke into their houses at night and rearranged not only all the furniture but the contents of their kitchen drawers and cupboards and anything else we can, just because we feel it would "look better" that way.

About the only significant interface improvement I've noticed in the Office suite in the last 15 years was putting the Insert / Remove page breaks menu item in Excel on the ribbon under "Layout" instead of several non-intuitive menu items deep. That's it. As I've said in response to that clingy and insecure survey about "Why did you revert to Classic", if I wanted to use the web version of Outlook I'D USE THE WEB VERSION OF OUTLOOK.

Which incidentally is one version you forgot to mention in the list of different Outlooks. And there's also the email service called outlook.com that it connects to. The frustration involved in the confusion of "same names for different products" alone is enough to make a grown man cry (the words left out of Jagger's Windows 95 promo theme song...)

[richdin]

You mean the [free] outlook.com that occasionally decides someone is actually a spammer and blocks itself from sending and/or receiving legitimate emails - so you'll consider moving to a paid 365 subscription?

[webstaff]

Small mistake spotted.

If you give someone or something with adhd speed chances are that would improve them..

Personally a better analogy would be to get them drunk, then feed them lsd.

Everything else seems spot on if a little light on expletives..

[theOtherJT]

Anyone else remember the days...

...when software was a thing you bought? If a product was shit you just... didn't buy it. "No thank you, I've got one that works perfectly well, I don't think I'll be 'upgrading' at this time." The vendors couldn't drop support for it or otherwise disable it because you already owned it.

Somewhere along the line with vendor lockin, proprietary "standards", and decades of institutional inertia we have gotten things badly, badly wrong.

[simonlb]

Re: Anyone else remember the days...

I also remember the times when a 'productivity tool' actually worked and made your life easier. Pretty sure M$ used to make more than one or two of those...

[gosand]

Re: Anyone else remember the days...

"Pretty sure M$ used to make more than one or two of those..."

MAYBE one or two... they purchased all the rest. I can't think of one that has gotten better over the years.

[ecofeco]

Re: Anyone else remember the days...

SaaS.

I remember the non-stop hype. My first thought was, who the hell would let the vendor control your business and could cut you off in the blink off an eye?

And that is still my thought.

But these days, that makes me a heretic.

[Mike Pellatt]

Re: Anyone else remember the days...

Well, no, you didn't actually own the software you thought you'd bought.

What you owned was the media it was supplied on, and a license to use it.

Just like recorded music.

Use it in contravention of those license terms, and it's quite possible that you'll have your collar felt by some industry shakedown organisation or other.

Just any small business who wants to play music on the radio in the workplace or retail outlet.

So, just as contraventions of music licenses are easy to spot by walking down the road and going into shops, software licenses are now easy to enforce thanks to universal connectivity.

[simonlb]

Re: Anyone else remember the days...

In the EU and UK you are allowed to make a backup copy of the source media - both software or recorded music - to cover you losing the source media. You do actually own it. However, in the US the DCMA prohibits that, but as the majority of legislation there seems tailored to protecting companies and industries and screwing over the consumer at every level, that is no surprise.

As for other countries, not sure.

[kmorwath]

Re: Anyone else remember the days...

Well, when MS kills the "old" Outlook I will opt-out from Office.

If enough users do, I guess Nadella will start to understand the meaning of "firing in one's own feet". This is a an idea that may look good in the lofty air of MS board, but I don't believe it will go down well among customers.

[ChrisBedford]

Re: Anyone else remember the days...

"I don't believe it will go down well among customers"

Alas, I'm not so sure about that, at least amongst individual / private users. Outlook has become so entrenched, for most people it's the only UI they understand. The only viable alternatives I've found are eM Client (free version spies on usage and disables itself if it suspects you are using it for commercial purposes) and Thunderbird (opens everything in a new tab and some users just can't be taught to be aware of them - before long the whole computer grinds to a halt under the memory load of hundreds of open tabs; plus it has several menus that overlap in functionality but are accessed in completely different ways, AND THEY KEEP CHANGING THEM WORSE THAN MICROSOFT DO)

[kmorwath]

Re: Anyone else remember the days...

I didn't mean they will switch to other applications - which actually don't exist. But Outlook is one of the few MS application everyone uses where MS Office is deployed, regardless of their role. and many may have vaste local archives of emails. Ruining their "UIX" IMHO will have a huge impact on their attitude towards Microsoft - even larger than the cumbersome UI of Windows 1x.

Thunderbirt IMHO has several UI design issues, partly because it's now an old design, partly because it's built on the wrong UI framework, partly because very few open source projects has the resoruces to develop complex GUI applications. But yes, some choices are strange, and too much influenced by Firefox, like the multiple tabs. I don't like its attachments management as well. But deep changes requires a lot of resources, so all one can get are minor ones.

But it looks Nadella is going to help them a lot making Widows applications UI worse and worse.... and he also killed any useful email client shipped with Windows. But I'm sure the main target now is to get as much as data on MS servers to train AIs, and everything else no longer matters.

[Paul S. Gazo]

Re: Anyone else remember the days...

To be fair, what you describe NEVER existed. "The vendors couldn't drop support for it or otherwise disable it because you already owned it."

Nothing has ever prevented a vendor from stopping supporting software. Not open source, not closed source. Not perpetual license, not subscription. WordPerfect 5.1 from 35+ years ago is unsupported. Linux kernel 6.17 is unsupported. Acrobat DC 2020, the highest version version guaranteed to work on Win7 is unsupported, as is Win7.

With small exception, few vendors - not even Microsoft - are preventing people from running old, unsupported versions of software. You can fire up a perpetual licensed copy of Outlook 2003, and it will run on a sufficiently decrepit operating system, as long as you only need it to talk to an archaic version of Exchange or some circa 1988 POP3/SMTP configuration. Granted, activating software may be difficult or impossible if activation servers are down. Granted, subscription software may not allow you to roll back to legacy versions.

But here's the important bit...

It's 2026. Businesses of all sizes are constant targets for malware and ransomware. Running unsupported - ergo vulnerable - software in this decade is not something that should be done outside of controlled, specific circumstances. What I am saying here is that if you've got a perpetual licensed copy of Outlook 2021, you can run it even after Microsoft completes the shift to Outlook New... but you shouldn't.

Don't get me wrong. I dislike New and strongly prefer Classic. But that's a different topic from what you're talking about. We've never had control over vendors doing obnoxious things to software we use. Witness Firefox, time and time again.

But acting like things have materially changed with regards to support or ability to run legacy software is mistaken.

[Anonymous Coward]

New Outlook is a stinking pile of poo. To be fair, so is old Outlook, but I'm used to the smell.

It's at the point where if Microsoft is pushing something - ANYTHING - I have to assume that their goal is to limit my options in the future, serve me more 'recommendations', or increase their capability to modify my environment on the fly without consultation.

[workrabbit]

Classic Outlook is falling

New monthly release of Office, new Outlook Classic bugs. I use both versions, and each has unique features I like, shortcomings, and bugs.

[PeterM42]

Office Outlook, W10 Outlook, "New" Outlook, outlook.com, Office 364½.......

Whatever - The outlook for Microcrap is NOT GOOD as they continue to piss off their traditional customers with their interference in what users try to do and gross lack of quality.

With Android and Chromebooks/ChomeOS gaining popularity, together with the possible amalgamation of these worthy systems into "Aluminum", and the plethora of brilliant android apps which could potentially be used on Aluminium, the emphasis will eventually shift from a Microcrap world to a Google one.

[Dan 55]

Re: Office Outlook, W10 Outlook, "New" Outlook, outlook.com, Office 364½.......

I don't see Google being any better. How many messaging/video clients have they released over the years?

If we want to stop this nonsense then open source is the answer.

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Re: Office Outlook, W10 Outlook, "New" Outlook, outlook.com, Office 364½.......

Ah yes, Open Source, where you have the choice of a vast array of essentially unfinished choices. Do you want the latest version of GNOME, where the developers have explicitly said that copying shortcuts to the desktop is discouraged? How about an incomplete OneDrive client? Or perhaps sir would enjoy a nice Wayland experience, which attempts to replace the moribund but stable X11? If one is a developer, perhaps one might like to sample delightful tools such as the very intuitive git or the exceedingly helpful Jenkins? And shall we be so gauche as to bring up systemd?

The real problem with software generally seems to be that every new product manager and lead developer wants to leave his mark in much the same way and for the same reason that dogs piss on fire hydrants.

In my opinion, what's really needed is more meaningful competition to Microsoft, whether that's open source or not. Unfortunately, Microsoft has arranged the situation so that they own a vast feature set, well beyond standard desktop productivity. Even if some of those features are not fully baked or are profoundly irritating (SharePoint, I'm looking at you), the sheer scope of what they offer is hard to compete with. I certainly don't see an open source solution competing any time soon.

[Dan 55]

Re: Office Outlook, W10 Outlook, "New" Outlook, outlook.com, Office 364½.......

Ah yes, Open Source, where you have the choice of a vast array of essentially unfinished choices. Do you want the latest version of GNOME, where the developers have explicitly said that copying shortcuts to the desktop is discouraged? How about an incomplete OneDrive client? Or perhaps sir would enjoy a nice Wayland experience, which attempts to replace the moribund but stable X11? If one is a developer, perhaps one might like to sample delightful tools such as the very intuitive git or the exceedingly helpful Jenkins? And shall we be so gauche as to bring up systemd?

If you're a company, you buy in a solution or support so as you don't have to think about that. Like this or this.

[StinkyMcStinkFace]

Re: Office Outlook, W10 Outlook, "New" Outlook, outlook.com, Office 364½.......

You are not wrong, but ...

I would prefer a broken open source product to an intentionally broken-by-design malware ridden flaming mess from Microsoft.

[_wojtek]

Re: Office Outlook, W10 Outlook, "New" Outlook, outlook.com, Office 364½.......

not to mention that majority if open source is severely underfunded, especially compared to behemoths like microslop.

Just imagine if they were getting same money flow... (but a lot of people use open source because it's "free" without pondering consequences of not funding it... what I mean to say - if you can -- donate!)

[ChrisBedford]

Re: Office Outlook, W10 Outlook, "New" Outlook, outlook.com, Office 364½.......

"I would prefer a broken open source product to an intentionally broken-by-design malware ridden flaming mess from Microsoft"

I think this puts you in the minority. Quite a small minority, at that.

[zeigerpuppy]

Re: Office Outlook, W10 Outlook, "New" Outlook, outlook.com, Office 364½.......

We run our whole enterprise on open source tools (and it's not a small company).

For groupware we use Nextcloud (takes care of file sync, calendars, shared docs with collabora). We use Gitlab/Mattermost/Hedgedoc for development and documentation. Customer facing websites use Hugo and mkdocs. We run our own IMAP/SMTP.

For CRM we are using twenty CRM. A few other tools here and there. It all works beautifully, is self-hosted and we pay $0 in licence fees (with the exception of a small fee for sentry, which we haven't moved inhouse yet).

You don't need to be tied in knots with Microsoft.

For client machines, some of our staff use Linux (generally Debian/Devuan/Arch) and some use MacOS. No-one remains masochistic enough to use Windows.

[kmorwath]

" and we pay $0 in licence fees"

Which again, it's what people really mean when they say FOSS!

And how do you believe they all pay the developers to write such software so you can pay nothing for but you make money from?

The F in FOSS should be for "freetards".

[ChrisBedford]

Re: Office Outlook, W10 Outlook, "New" Outlook, outlook.com, Office 364½.......

"the emphasis will eventually shift from a Microcrap world to a Google one"

You say that like it's a good thing! It sounds very much to me like a frying pan / fire situation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can they at least change the spell check back to right click on the red wavy line, like every other product they make, like it was when they introduced it in Word 95????

[MorningLightMountain]

Even Sage says "It's shit"

As many other companies do, we use Sage at our company for suppliers, accounting and other financial matters. Last week when somehow the sending of invoices via email from Reports in Sage broke for no reason, we suddenly had a very business critical issue on our hands. The emails were generating as drafts as intended, attachments were there and everything but when they were sent, it just errored out immediately and put them back into Drafts. With that initial fact-finding, we just quickly tried putting Outlook back to the old version and lo and behold IT JUST WORKED! Confused why that was the case I then looked at the Support pages for Sage. Even they say more-or-less that New Outlook doesn't work correctly, just force it back to the old one if you need to send automatic emails.

If something messes with invoicing, payroll and other financial processes, I am willing to bet Microsoft has been hearing some colorful feedback on their redesign of Outlook. We were not impacted financially since we caught it and fixed the same morning, but there's almost certainly going to be some that can point to some hard numbers that this redesign has cost them.

[anthonyhegedus]

Re: Even Sage says "It's shit"

Many of our customers use Sage and are struggling with the same Outlook bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Even Sage says "It's shit"

Many of our customers were using sage too. But we sorted that after boring of the insane work arounds, outdated software and blind belief security isnt their problem and everyone still uses xp Sage VS Outlook New, its a tough call. Least its not smegging Quickbooks I guess

[StinkyMcStinkFace]

Every morning when I read another one of these, I am thankful that we were not stupid enough to migrate to O365.

[StinkyMcStinkFace]

Who died and made you god?

Microsoft's attitude is a prime reason why we don't use closed software.

I don't remember adding microsoft to our board of directors, and I don't take orders from you.

I don't "opt-in" or "opt-out" of any of your mandates.

"we've extended the opt-out timeline..." OK stop right there. Please stick this where the sun doesn't shine.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

[steviebuk]

I fucking hate it

And most at work do. Only found 2 people that oddly like it. We keep the option on so you can try it if you want. But I'll have to look for the policy then, if they are taking the option to roll back away. As I certainly don't want the fucking shitty new version.

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Microsoft's own new-vs-old comparison site...

New Outlook can't (but old Outlook can):

Work with on-prem Exchange ("Partially available")

Have multiple inboxes ("Upcoming")

Access files on a fileshare

Have custom forms

Work offline ("Partially available")

Have VBA macros

Copy/cut/paste calendar events ("Upcoming")

Show teammates' calendars ("Upcoming")

Have COM add-ins

Talk to Teams

Mail merge ("Partially available")

.msg support ("Partially available")

Rules ("Partially available")

Address Book ("Partially available")

Hey Microsoft! When you finally get the core features put in and get it out of alpha testing, let us know!

[Acrimonius]

Re: According to Microsoft's own new-vs-old comparison site...

VBA macros will be last or never.

[kmorwath]

Re: According to Microsoft's own new-vs-old comparison site...

Don't worry, soon AI will rewrite all that C/C++ code into the Javcascript the kiddies writing the "new" Outlook weren't able to implement yet...

And remember the "new" Outlook sends your email credentials to Microsoft because all your accounts are managed server-side, even the non-MS ones, and all emails are stored on MS servers, even thos from other providers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: According to Microsoft's own new-vs-old comparison site...

Very good point. I think that what is going on above all, Kmorwath. It’s why Windows 11 requires a TPM, won’t allow local accounts, and is so heavily focused on client-side scanning. Microsoft is clearly struggling with some of the technicalities of all this, but it is prepared worsen its products and piss off its customers off to fulfil its role in the surveillance state.

[Rockets]

Re: According to Microsoft's own new-vs-old comparison site...

Try adjusting the column widths in any of the folders. Eg in the Inbox the From column. It limits how large or small you can make the column, for me not small enough for the From column. You can't make the folder pane on the left much larger or smaller.

Want to use the Notes that Outlook "Classic" has supported for decades? Be ready to go hunting for that data becasue now it's in OneNote, but before that MS moved it to the Office365 app which then became the Copilot app, all without any notification to the user of where to find that feature.

The only one thing New Outlook does is it has better performance, but that's hardly surprising since it's got so few features.

[Always Right Mostly]

Microsoft is not only making my job suck it's genuinely affecting my health. When you're contunually handed "this is the new new, suck it" changes where failure to adapt/adopt is not an option...well have a nice fucking day.

[Mostly Irrelevant]

Please stop can kicking Microsoft. I don't want to have to support Old Outlook's ridiculous HTML rendering engine anymore.

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Username checks out.

[Sp1z]

When looking up the phrase “username checks out”, a screenshot of these two comments should immediately appear.

Touché sir/madam.

[ErikOnTech]

Unfortunately, old Outlook got too many things right.

This is not saying old Outlook is great. It's not. But it had some major wins that the FOSS community does not seem super-interested in replicating:

1) ActiveSync. Yes, it's a horribly-designed protocol. We complain about spaghetti code, and it's the next level of bad: a spaghetti standard. But what it does is insanely important: it gives end-users a really easy way to connect their email account(s), calendar(s), address book(s), and notes via a single, simple process that uses an autodiscover mechanism to minimize the number of things they have to enter. For normies, this blows away every other system out there if you want on-device, app-based processing and not a web site.

2) The user interface is livable, in a meh sort of way. But for normies, most of the other email clients out there are worse. Combining email, contact management and calendaring in one app, with good multi-calendar support was a great move. These things are all tightly linked, and having them together is super-convenient for end-users. Even Apple manages to screw this up badly. There are some decent commercial email clients out there, but getting people to pay more (overall) than Outlook is a very big ask in most business environments. The closest thing in FOSS is Thunderbird, and I try it occasionally and then delete it after a few months of frustration. Maybe I'll give it another shot now.

[anthonyhegedus]

Is it just me?

... or is Microsoft deliberately nobbling "classic" outlook and making it not work reliably, properly or at all, in an effort to get people over to "new" outlook?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Is it just me?

It never worked properly in the first place, and I'm pretty sure they stopped letting anyone fix it aside from critical security issues a decade ago.

Combined with the corporate lack of testing, it's more surprising that it still runs at all.

The ridiculous part is that "New Outlook" is still far worse.

[Rockets]

Re: Is it just me?

I'm finding Outlook classic got a lot more sluggish lately. Glad to see I'm not the only one thinking MS may have done a bit of nobbling.

[blu3b3rry]

"Where's this gone?"

ask some of my less computer literate colleagues. (There's definitely an assumption at <WORKPLACE> that everyone already knows their way around Office 365 and Windows).

As the dynamic duo in IT are horrifically overworked for a company of over 500 I sometimes get asked instead. 9 times out of 10 Outlook has decided, all by itself, to switch from classic to shite new, and on occasion the toggle has also vanished.

Explaining that it's an automatic update and that I can't undo it often leads to visible frustration on the user's part, as they now have to waste time figuring out where the hell some of the functions they use have gone, assuming that the new outlook actually supports them.

Not to be outdone by the Outlook devs, M$'s Teams devs managed to go one better on their update cycle. We have Classic Teams, EOL and doesn't work. It tries to automatically download New Teams also doesn't work and appears to be an EOL version.

This tries to download an installer/updater via web browser for.....I'm not sure, I guess it's New New Teams? but goes to a 404 and errors out! The newer versions of the software appear to have split the settings into two separate panes. Half of them hide behind your profile picture, and the other half of the settings hide behind a "three dots" dropdown menu that looks like it's designed for a tablet (why?).

I can't see how anyone human or otherwise designs stuff like this by accident so can only assume it's done out of malevolence. Or they've handed the job to ClippyPilot.

[Sp1z]

You can pry Classic Outlook from my cold, dead, arthritic hands.

Fight me.

[KentWillumsen]

Evolution

Have a try with Evolution. I went straight from old desktop Outlook to Evolution and it is a good replacement. Evolution also supports Exchange but I have not tried this. I have ditched Microsoft for Kubuntu and are quite happy. Only have a desktop running Windows 10 for games only, everything else is Linux.

[deeredd]

Re: Evolution

Same but actually Steam on Linux works perfectly, have had zero issues and zero tinkering. No noticeable performance issues although I do have a chonky PC.

So far have bought a OneDrive program which isn't very good and a pdf editor which is. Both perpetual licences. Nothing else needed.

Briefly had to boot windows last week and was instantly enraged by some copilot shite and sluggish UI so feeling extra good about it.

[nohatjim]

I am 52 I can’t wait to retire

It’s going to be at least another 10 years but not using any Microsoft products is what I am most looking forward to.

[ecofeco]

Re: I am 52 I can’t wait to retire

Same here.

[Fred Daggy]

Re: I am 52 I can’t wait to retire

Little Johnny is at school when the teacher asks each student what their father does for a living.

One child says, “My dad is a doctor.”

Another says, “My dad is a firefighter.”

When it’s Johnny’s turn, he says, “My dad is a piano player in a brothel.”

The teacher is shocked but moves on. Later that day she calls Johnny’s father to discuss the comment.

Johnny’s father sighs and says, “Look… I’m actually a Microsoft support engineer. But I didn’t want my son to be embarrassed in front of the class.”

---

The GF knows the drill and backs the story - I completely lie about what I do for a living when I meet people. If I tell them I work in IT, the first question is "I have a problem, $X_MS_PROGRAM, does $Y_ANNOYING_THING, how do I stop it?" and expect free support, for life.

[Zakspade]

New Outlook = New Leaver

The Mac version - sorry if it doesn't fit with the Outlook version being discussed (does anyone know what version Micro$oft is ever foisting on everyone? Does Micro$oft?)

I bought the standalone Office suite. An update created a Frankenstein monster in which Outlook appeared to lose all my emails, but in reality, just hid them and made me perform a search every time I wanted to read one. VERY annoyingly, this would include some (but not all - I never worked out why) emails that I glanced at and tried to re-read a few minutes later...

I would switch back to the Old Mode and Micro$oft would sometimes ask me upon start up, whether I wanted to switch to the amazing new look (the one that hid my emails). I would decline and Micro$oft would let me carry on - until next start up, whereupon the New Amazing Shitty Mode would be engaged and I would have to turn it off to find my emails.

I solved the problem.

I stopped using the Micro$oft Office Suite and switched to non-M$ software.

These days, I don't even use Windows - and I read how many are struggling to overcome Micro$oft's Data Scoop and general Fuckiness.

The final straw with Windows came with it repeatedly resetting my file associations to M$ built-in apps, despite my having set them to third-party products.

That was a while back and I cannot say the switch was easy. I had to find alternatives to so many things. However, I managed it and today, I am Micro$oft (and Adobe)-free.

And I don't regret it or feel any loss. But I can read of the pain of running Windows and Micro$oft products and feel good knowing that I'm not one of their victims...

[coisa]

I AM retired IT and so relieved to be. MS$ once was a company that ask what do you want / need, how can we help. It is now to this is what you have to do or else [fill in whatever they demand]. Everything must be on / in a MS account, nothing local even if you want to be but all must be internet based. Some part of that internet structure implodes / cancelled / fails and we are sol. We do not want or need everything shared and in the cloud accessible by entities where our stuff is none of their business. MS$ goal is for us to pay continually. It's like renting a house and never living it it.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worse tbh because you have to adapt you business processes to fit in with whatever form of chaos they ahve released this season.

If you don't work the way MS builds its tools then tough, no adaption. It doesn't even consider your local legal requirments.

[Ensign Nemo]

Outlook 2010

Glad I stayed with it. I think I’ll just stick with it for another 15 years.

[AndersH]

The devs must not actually use new Outlook

Otherwise, they would know it contained basic flaws. Want to send an email? Occasionally, the new Outlook was just like, nah, so I'd have to copy and paste the email. Shared calendars just stopped updating. I'd look at colleagues' calendars, and they'd appear to be free, book a meeting, then wonder why people declined because of a clash. Very little chance of getting me to try this a third time, so I can see why they'd try to force this. Maybe these issues are fixed now...?