I can be a Microsoft fanboy from time to time, I’ll admit that. I’ll also admit that I’ve been looking forward to Outlook 2010 since Outlook 2007 first arrived… mainly because when OL2K7 was released to manufacturers in late 2006, it was STILL missing alot of productivity features; some of which Gmail debuted with almost 3 years prior. I’m talking about conversation view, the ability to quickly move a message to a specific folder, effective keyboard shortcuts, etc.
Now, I think OL2K7 was a significant improvement over 2K3 but that’s not really saying much. I am, however, stunned to see (with the Office 2010 technical preview released this week) that Outlook 2010 has not made the leaps and bounds it truly needs to make in order to remain both relevant and competitive.
What has improved?
Well, the Outlook interface is finally in sync with the rest of the Office platform. Meaning, of course, that the infamous “Ribbon” is now all throughout the application instead of just within new message windows as it was in 2K7. (I read an article on BetaNews.com by one Carmi Levy stating that they wish Microsoft would do away with the Ribbon altogether. I wholeheartedly disagree and think that the Ribbon is a great way – especially for touch displays now and in the future – to quickly find what you’re looking for.) In addition, the overall appearance is very bright and refreshing. There are still some theme options in place but the default is great in my humble opinion.
Conversation view has, at long last, been added to Outlook. It’s still a tiny bit quirky but it acts pretty much the way you’d expect it to. If a message comes in that’s a reply to an existing message, any related messages to that particular subject line are displayed with it.
The startup process, while unfortunately lengthy (see next section), is a bit less annoying. The improvement comes with the new animated launch screen – it stays up until Outlook is fully ready to be used. Previous versions of Outlook were a bit of a tease in that the window would launch but you’d be waiting about 5 seconds for each element of the application to appear: 5 seconds for add-in toolbar A, another 5 seconds for add-in toolbar B, 5 seconds for the To-Do bar to appear, etc. I find I have more patience with the animated splash screen… and patience is a rare commodity these days.
Message clean-up is ever-so-slightly enhanced. You’ll notice in the first screenshot above that Microsoft has finally embraced the concept of “tagging” in Outlook but only barely. In the screenshot above, there’s an area of the first Ribbon section called “Tags.” However, all that area presents is a drop-down allowing you to use the previously-existing “Categories” functionality of Outlook to file a message to categories of your choice. This is exactly what the previously-reviewed Outlook add-in Taglocity does but Taglocity still does it alot better. The aforementioned add-in allows you to jump to a tagging toolbar, begin typing tag/category names (it finds as you type), hit enter and your message is tagged. Hit the escape key and you’re back to your message. The process with the now-slightly-more-visible button is still very much mouse-driven and just doesn’t make sense with frequent Outlook power users.
In addition, there’s a new “Clean-Up” drop-down button in that same section of the Ribbon that allows you to quickly get rid of insignificant, older messages in either the conversation that’s highlighted or all of the conversations currently in your inbox… or even all of your subfolders.
Quick Steps represent a fantastic new feature in Outlook 2010. As you might guess from the name, Quick Steps allow you to create shortcuts for various actions like forwarding to a specific person or department or automatically reply to a selected message and delete the original – all in one action. You can even assign a keyboard shortcut to your quick step. A number of Quick Steps are included by default but it’s insanely-easy to create your own.
Forwarding a message as an attachment now has a designated button in the primary tab of the ribbon. Hit the button and, as you’d expect, a new email comes up with the selected message already as an attachment. This also works with multiple messages… very cool.
What hasn’t improved?
Filing and organizing messages. To my knowledge, there’s still no easy and fast, find-as-you-type way to move a message to a specific folder without a 3rd-party Outlook add-in like SimplyFile. We reviewed TechHit’s SimplyFile (from the makers of QuickJump and TWinbox) way back when and it offers a very Gmail-esque way of moving messages using the keyboard while remaining in your inbox. It’s a beautiful process and while I’d hate for TechHit to lose a revenue stream (still plenty of other great features in SimplyFile), this is functionality that should already be in Outlook… especially when this sucker is released in the year two-thousand and ten. C’mon, Microsoft. Seriously. Gmail also has this with the new “Move To” (keyboard shortcut “V”) and “Label” (keyboard shortcut “L”) features.
It’s most likely due to the fact that it’s a technical preview but Outlook’s performance over that of Outlook 2K7 w/SP2 has TANKED. The migration process was a lengthy 10-20 minute process… and I’m on a dual-core with 4gb of RAM so resources aren’t scarce by any means. Any subsequent, routine launches also take more time than 2007 required.
The reply process still inserts your own email address when clicking reply on an email you sent. Technically, that makes sense since you’re replying to an email that you sent. Intuitively, it makes absolutely no sense at all. In 99.9% of all cases, I’m just going to want to follow-up with someone on an email I already sent them – I’m not following up with myself. Gmail does this correctly. There, you hit reply on an email you sent and the email address of the original intended recipient is automatically inserted in the “to” field.
In addition to bare-minimal support of “tagging,” Outlook has still yet to present us with an option to add notes to an email. Sure, with the 2010 Office suite, OneNote will be included and it’s pretty easy to send a message to OneNote from within Outlook. However, that involves and entirely separate program and is entirely unintuitive… as well as a waste of time. C’mon, Microsoft… you already have a “notes” section inside Outlook… just find a way to marry messaging and notes and give us the option to add a freakin’ note to a message without having to modify the message itself.
What’s regressed?
3rd-party add-ins have taken a significant hit in Outlook 2010 as a result of the ribbon. The one solitary problem with the Ribbon is that it takes the place of loads and loads of various toolbars that previous versions of Microsoft Office required. Instead, each toolbar is replaced with a “tab” on the ribbon. The problem here is that many Outlook add-ins require visibility in order to maintain full functionality and to be as effective as possible. For instance, with the SimplyFile add-in within Outlook 2007, there remained a toolbar at the bottom of the window with a drop-down of folders and a SimplyFile button (among other items.) With a highlighted message, I could hit that button and my message would automatically be filed to the correct location. Now, there’s an extra click in the process as I have to navigate to the add-ins tab on the ribbon to get the button… which really disrupts the natural flow of that process.
Overall
Sure, the list of items under the “What has improved” section of this post is longer (mostly minor items) than the other sections but I’ve been genuinely let down by this version – as it stands now in a Technical Preview. I have absolutely no idea how Outlook will remain relevant over the next few years as Gmail & Google Apps both continue to grow exponentially while we wait for Office 15. Plus, Google has Google Wave coming down the pipeline which, according to pretty much everyone (I seriously have yet to read a non-Microsoft, negative opinion on Google Wave), will be the end-all, be-all of productivity apps. Good luck, Microsoft. You’re gonna need it.
What about you, readers? Have you had a chance to play around with Outlook 2010? What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments.
RE: adding notes to an existing Outlook message… I meant to hyperlink that to a tutorial but there are two “hacks” to do that currently. First, if you double-click on a message to open it, you can change the subject line. I typically add keywords for which I know I’ll be searching in the future. Just hit “save” on the message when you’re done.
Second, if you’ve double-clicked on a msg to open it, you can select “Other Actions” from the Actions area on the first ribbon tab to choose “Edit Message.” That gives you full control over your message – enabling you to add any text to it that you’d like. Again, hit save when you’re done. Perfect for searching. The problem there is that I often times don’t want to alter my original messages in any way. I’d much prefer notes to be stored in a separate field.
I am completely underwhelmed. Every once in awhile I slip over and read about the MSDos world. I’ve never had to use a machine hindered by such a disk operating system. I very relieved that there is still no reason to do so. I simply don’t understand how Gates hypnotized so many CEOs to buy it. The Amiga back in its day was far ahead of MS and Apple existed in another dimension. What happened? Oh well, what to do?
Lets all remember that this is a Technical Preview…
The problem, Thomas, is that Microsoft technical previews don’t typically vary that much from the final product. If that’s the case, and this is my point, Microsoft will launch Outlook 2010 and *already* be severely behind in the market of communications apps. Heck, even Postbox has made tremendous progress even over the last 5 months… more progress than Microsoft has shown in the last 3 years.
I find the lost of tool-bars to be the biggest set back. I had a lot of custom settings and the ribbon just doesn’t work in that area. The ribbon is fine when your composing an email and Outlook 2007 balanced it well.
The only thing I really like is the conversation mode. I hope they can get it to work as well as Gmail did.
I had to see what Outlook 2010 offered after 3 years of (nothing).
Organizing by conversation is good (as MS always does, let someone else prove the usefulness of the feature then they copy it and tout it as a revolutionary new feature they’ve added to their line).
Ability to add a note from onenote is good.
Other than the above, a pretty unimpressive preview.
I’ve got to say, Outlook 2010 is just change for the sake of change. No reason to switch if you’re happy with Outlook 2003 (still). If you’re not happy with that, you’ll hate all this junk.