Outlook classic dropped from Microsoft 365 • Hacker News Board

Re: Outlook classic dropped from Microsoft 365

#31

Post by gerdesj » Fri, Feb 28, 2025, 1:19 AM UTC

gerdesj wrote: post #30

akaktsn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wanted to chime in and say it’s nice to see someone from IT on the site. I love the site and can follow a lot of things but feel like it’s mostly developers here.

There are a lot of non devs here ... a lot. We just let the kiddies crack on and widdle in public but we are still here!

I should point out:

Every now and then you will note a comment here that looks a bit more ... insightful than the rest - it might be bollocks or not. Search the username etc. or follow the threads and someone will eventually note who made it.

You will find some remarkable people hereabouts. The rest is the usual noise of any other social.

Re: Outlook classic dropped from Microsoft 365

#32

Post by Neonlicht » Fri, Feb 28, 2025, 1:19 AM UTC

layer8 wrote: post #12

I believe that Microsoft is shooting themselves in the foot with that forced migration, at least in the Windows enterprise world. It’s a bit like if they were replacing Excel with a half-baked version of Google Sheets.

Well speaking for myself: the reason why I keep using Microsoft stuff is because I grew up with it. The first computer that I owned came with 98SE. At this point in my life I do not really want to learn new programmes.

But if MS keeps changing shit I may as well move on to new horizons.

Re: Outlook classic dropped from Microsoft 365

#33

Post by kenrick95 » Fri, Feb 28, 2025, 1:19 AM UTC

Because of this Outlook (new) non-sense, few months ago I switched to Thunderbird on desktop and mobile, and it has been quite a refreshing experience. Sure the UI need some time to get used to, but it has been my primary driver now

Re: Outlook classic dropped from Microsoft 365

#34

Post by macintux » Fri, Feb 28, 2025, 1:23 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #19

Absolutely user-hostile move. The same happened to the Outlook Web Access light version --- while it was not pure HTML, it was still much faster and more usable than the horribly bloated "modern" full version. Microsoft is slowly becoming the opposite of what it was known for, and that's going to cause customers to reconsider alternatives. Meanwhile my ISP still offers a webmail client which doesn't require JS at all…

> and that's going to cause customers to reconsider alternatives.

I'm very, very skeptical that anything short of Microsoft's bankruptcy could cause enterprises to seriously reconsider their software. It's just too convenient to pay one vendor for everything Microsoft brings to the table.

Re: Outlook classic dropped from Microsoft 365

#35

Post by stackskipton » Fri, Feb 28, 2025, 1:25 AM UTC

gerdesj wrote: post #23

layer8 wrote: post #12

I believe that Microsoft is shooting themselves in the foot with that forced migration, at least in the Windows enterprise world. It’s a bit like if they were replacing Excel with a half-baked version of Google Sheets.

Your analogy is spot on except there is a MS webby Excel. The goal is to get you totally in the cloud and by you I mean all their customers ... all of them. On prem Exchange is being made as wanky as possible to run and has been for some years. Updates are excruciatingly painful and there is no technical reason I can fathom for that other than give them: "death by a thousand cuts". We have an all in one Exchange box…

>Updates are excruciatingly painful and there is no technical reason I can fathom

Technical reason is they don't really want to do them and they are difficult to get right. Office365 does not run Exchange updates, so they don't get properly exercised. The only reason they haven't dropped support for in place updates is customer screaming but trust me, Exchange team would love to.

Proper Office365 way to update Exchange is build new machines, patch them fully, install new Exchange version and move all the mailboxes over.

Re: Outlook classic dropped from Microsoft 365

#36

Post by userbinator » Fri, Feb 28, 2025, 1:27 AM UTC

WD-42 wrote: post #28

userbinator wrote: post #19

Absolutely user-hostile move. The same happened to the Outlook Web Access light version --- while it was not pure HTML, it was still much faster and more usable than the horribly bloated "modern" full version. Microsoft is slowly becoming the opposite of what it was known for, and that's going to cause customers to reconsider alternatives. Meanwhile my ISP still offers a webmail client which doesn't require JS at all…

When was Microsoft known for being anything but a provider of bloated software?

They were known for relative stability and best in backwards-compatibility, until around the Win8 era.

Re: Outlook classic dropped from Microsoft 365

#37

Post by senectus1 » Fri, Feb 28, 2025, 1:27 AM UTC

These are all show stoppers.

Offline support – what Microsoft is calling “offline” use of new Outlook isn’t great in practice. I speak from experience on some recent long-haul flights where I was grateful to have classic Outlook as a workable replacement.

PST support – at the moment Outlook (new) can only read emails in PST files from classic Outlook. No write access or reading of contact or calendar data.

Secure email – Microsoft is now promising S-Mime encryption for later this year.

Cross-mailbox – it’s still not possible to move items between mailboxes.

Mail merge – only classic Outlook works with Word’s Mail Merge to emails.

How they think they can get away with this I have no idea.

Re: Outlook classic dropped from Microsoft 365

#38

Post by davidt84 » Fri, Feb 28, 2025, 1:28 AM UTC

mingabunga wrote: post #7

I finally ditched Outlook last month - and settled on eM Client and it's really nice. It does a lot of stuff. Outlook for years had these recurring issues: - mail profile gets corrupted - requiring me to re-setup my mail accounts - from time to time, emails would sit in the Outbox not going anywhere. Then I'd notice hours or a day later. Frustrating. Have to restart Windows to fix it. Maybe the New Outlook is better,…

It still is. Complaining on the Microsoft "support" site for an MVP saying you should just stick to outlook classic and new outlook was only for home users.

They didn't respond when I pointed out the official notification that classic outlook was intended to be deprecated (and apparently now is)

Re: Outlook classic dropped from Microsoft 365

#39

Post by Tyr42 » Fri, Feb 28, 2025, 1:38 AM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #20

sshine wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Outlook empowers me to be ridiculously productive As a programmer, if I could eliminate email at work altogether, it’d have a net benefit to my productivity.

I would kill for something that merged Teams and email into a single flow of messages and responses in multiple subjects and threads. I still miss my BlackBerry 10 messaging merging email, SMS, BBM…

You know, Gmail does let you search chat messages too. I thi k it's is:chat. Maybe is:chat OR in:inbox would get you halfway there?

Re: Outlook classic dropped from Microsoft 365

#40

Post by LorenDB » Fri, Feb 28, 2025, 1:40 AM UTC

I'm using Outlook at work but I will 100% jump to Thunderbird if/when the classic Outlook becomes unusable. No way I'm sharing my data with their 700+ partners.