Steve Clayton: What Sucks About Microsoft Software?

Thanks for referencing my "Outlook Sucks" post. I've been collecting even more ways that it sucks, thinking I might do another post someday. Here's the list so far:

• If you have categories from an old version of outlook, and you click on that category in Outlook 2007, the category is deleted without warning. See YouTube video of this in action on my system.
  
• Window doesn't scroll as you move the scrollbars...so it's a guessing affair to scroll to the right email or contact. (Dynamic scrolling was introduced by the NeXT computer in 1990 -- 17 years ago!)
  
• No underlineing of misspelled words. (And no, I won't use Word as my editing tool--2 memory hogs together!)
  
• Doesn't automatically find email addresses that you've written to before, as in Thunderbird or Gmail. You *must* manually create a contact in order for Outlook to be aware an email address exists at all.
  
• No easy way to choose which of multiple addresses you want to write to.
  
• No way to view contacts by the date that the entries were created
  
• When you search for a contact, the possible matches are shown only by name and in a separate little window. You have to click though each one to find the guy from the right company, for example.
  
• No way to to switch display of all names ("Last, First", "First Last") See my post
• No standard way to flip between different components of program. (like a ctrl-tab in browser)
  
• The different views have no memory. So if you navigate to a future date in the calendar, switch back to cross check a mail or look up a contact, and then go back to the calendar....you get reset back to the default view and have to navigate all over again. Ugh!
  
• No way to split into multiple windows, so you can't e.g. see your calendar while you navigate through your mail messages.
  
• It can't automatically select my default profile, and it can't remember my password to auto-log me in.
  
• In Outlook 2003 there is no way to paste unformatted text. Totally sucks if you're copying from a web page or another email, or really, from anywhere. And no way to remove all the formatting on a text so that it matches a normal message composition.
  
• Outlook 2007 *does* have the "paste unformatted text" option hidden in there, but there is no way to give it a keyboard shortcut.
  
• Apparently they removed the feature for assigning keyboard shortcuts. (See here)
  
• Once a name is recognized, and the person has multiple addresses, you don't know which one it picked.
  
• It was asking me to do the time-zone change 2 weeks late. It's not smart enough to know about changes.
  

I can't believe they still sell this junk for actual money. The product has only gotten worse over the years.

B.L. - thanks for collating your responses. I just wanted to let you know that I'd seen them but just about to head off on a week's vacation so will come back with some thoughts on my return.

though it doesn't address all the things you've listed, I just posted about an update to Outlook 2007 to deal with some performance issues. more info at http://blogs.msdn.com/stevecla01/archive/2007/04/15/outlook-2007-update-released.aspx

thanks again

Steve

okay...I finally got around to coming back to this thread. Apologies for the (long) delay. Some of the stuff here is simply personal preference but much of it is good feedback that I'll route in to the Office team. What also comes across (though I may be wrong) is that you actually quite like several things in Office but wish they'd been implemented more consistently or better. This is all good feedback...we never said we're perfect.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to collate and here are my responses. I'll say right now I'm no Office expert but happy to chat this stuff through with OfficeRocker (Darren Strange) who is great at replying and helping with this kind of input.

Microsoft Outlook
- The search is terrible in Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint. The Spotlight search in Apple's OSX will accurately find any mention of a word or phrase anywhere on your computer in a second.
I agree, Spotlight is great but I find Vista’s search on a par personally. I have a MacBook Pro and though Spotlight is fast it’s indexing a lot less stuff than Vista is. Sure it takes Vista a while to actually build the index, but once done it’s pretty quick. Once you’ve done a search on Vista, it’s more powerful than Spotlight in it’s manipulation of the results.

- The address book freezes.
not seen that

- You put an email in a project folder, then delete it from your inbox and it disappears from the project folder.
- the spam filter is completely inadequate and does not learn over time
fair point.

- You can't set where your want your junk mail to be sent. - like the trash.
fair point
PowerPoint Problems:
- the templates are amateurish and, mostly, ugly
better in 2007 but sure, I agree. That’s why other companies can make money from selling templates which I think is a good thing. Microsoft isn’t a design house and should leave that to the pros. Seriously though, do you really use the templates for presentations?

- working with a 200-slide presentation for a 1/2-day workshop is like playing concentration. Apple's Keynote has a much more elegant interface.
Personal preference. I think Powerpoint 2007 is a big improvement but I’m biased. 200 slide presentation though? You should come work for our marketing teams 

- the "special effects" are lame. See Keynote.
Again, PPT 2007 has terrific special effects. Perhaps not as good as keynote but for making shoddy bullet point slides look great, I’ve been very impressed.

- the stock photo library is very weak. Why not just link to a better one?
or just link to Flickr I say....that’d be a nice extension someone could easily build given the open architecture of Office and esp the ribbon in 2007.

- the file sizes get really unwieldy and can't be sent to clients easily
enter Open XML

- you don't seem to be able to add video or flash to Power Point without a plugin
I’ve added video without a plugin for a long while in Powerpoint.

- the handout option produces lousy documents
never really used it so can’t comment. My personal rule is never to provide handouts. What I’d love to see though is a publish to slideshare option.

- you can't easily collaborate with others on production of a presentation
I disagree here. You can use other tools like Meeting Space etc to collaborate but the built in review and track changes features in Office (2003 and 2007) are second to none in my opinion. When used well, they make collaboration fantastic. When used with Sharepoint or Groove, it changes the way you work

- you need Paint Shop Pro or another program to merge all the slides into one screen for a screen map summary
Don’t quite understand this one sorry.

- if you create a presentation on a PC and transfer it to a Mac, or vice versa, there are font problems
not seen this so can’t comment.

- how do you translate a Power Point to html?
file, save as “single file web page” or “web page” ?

- it's difficult to impossible to get slides to time to music, while Apple Keynote does this automatically
fair point, they’re better at this for sure.
Word problems
- Spellcheck and grammar check are laughably bad
that’s a pretty broad statement. Compared to what? Examples would be good if you want to see it improved

- "Find" works really badly
Again, examples would be great

- there are compatibility problems with earlier versions of word
I agree. Though does all your old hardware work with OSX? Broadly speaking i think Microsoft does a terrific job of legacy support. In fact it’s one of the things that slowed Vista down – trying to ensure that people all over the world who bought a printer 10 years ago were not forced to buy a new one just because we decided to leave them behind. The format changes between versions of Office are well known and Microsoft invests to provide migration paths but things will never be as smooth as we or customers would like.
Internet Explorer
- I don't use it. Firefox is much more intuitive.
That’s your choice. I use both, I like both.
I also am sick of the patches, viruses, demands that I install updates before I can work.
I switched on my MacBook Pro last month and it told me I needed over 20 security updates. No advance notice that I had these security issues. We’re not angels but we’ve improved. A lot.

And, my favorite thing about my Mac, besides all the wonderful, built-in software, is that I never have to press "Start" to turn the computer off. I say "Shut Down" when I want to shut down. Imagine that!

Vista fixed that – we invested tonnes of research to work that one out 
• If you have categories from an old version of outlook, and you click on that category in Outlook 2007, the category is deleted without warning. See YouTube video of this in action on my system.
I’ll feed this back to the Office team – thankyou.

• Window doesn't scroll as you move the scrollbars...so it's a guessing affair to scroll to the right email or contact. (Dynamic scrolling was introduced by the NeXT computer in 1990 -- 17 years ago!)
Not sure I understand this one.
• No underlineing of misspelled words. (And no, I won't use Word as my editing tool--2 memory hogs together!)
Okay, so you like the underling feature of Office but don’t like Word? There are shared resources between the two so you don’t need to run Word to get underlining of misspelled words in Outlook.
• Doesn't automatically find email addresses that you've written to before, as in Thunderbird or Gmail. You *must* manually create a contact in order for Outlook to be aware an email address exists at all.
Does for me. Not sure why this doesn’t work for you.
• No easy way to choose which of multiple addresses you want to write to.

• No way to view contacts by the date that the entries were created
Good feature request - thanks

• When you search for a contact, the possible matches are shown only by name and in a separate little window. You have to click though each one to find the guy from the right company, for example.
Good feature request - thanks

• No way to to switch display of all names ("Last, First", "First Last") See my post

Good feature request - thanks

• No standard way to flip between different components of program. (like a ctrl-tab in browser)
The ribbon sort of fixes that in Office 2007 but not completely. What I’m starting to see here is a theme – you actually like a lot of stuff that office does but see lots of room for improvement based on existing features. We like feedback and we also like to provide an extensible product so people can add stuff we didn’t think about or couldn’t do or just plain dumb stuff.
• The different views have no memory. So if you navigate to a future date in the calendar, switch back to cross check a mail or look up a contact, and then go back to the calendar....you get reset back to the default view and have to navigate all over again. Ugh!
Same as above
• No way to split into multiple windows, so you can't e.g. see your calendar while you navigate through your mail messages.
I’d like this feature too but for now I manage by having a window open for mail and one for calendar.
• It can't automatically select my default profile, and it can't remember my password to auto-log me in.
My system does this. Easily controlled through the Mail icon in control panel
• In Outlook 2003 there is no way to paste unformatted text. Totally sucks if you're copying from a web page or another email, or really, from anywhere. And no way to remove all the formatting on a text so that it matches a normal message composition.
Agreed – a personal bugbear of mine. Thank heavens for Notepad 
• Outlook 2007 *does* have the "paste unformatted text" option hidden in there, but there is no way to give it a keyboard shortcut.
• Apparently they removed the feature for assigning keyboard shortcuts. (See here)
• Once a name is recognized, and the person has multiple addresses, you don't know which one it picked.
Depends how you choose to display the name which can be controlled.
• It was asking me to do the time-zone change 2 weeks late. It's not smart enough to know about changes.