Microsoft Outlook

I really like the integration of the outlook app with Outlook on my Windows 10 PC, OWA and my Mac. The experience and functionality are very similar between platforms which make it easy for me to switch between them and still be productive. My biggest problem with the Outlook on iOS though is that it’s completely isolated from the rest of iOS. I understand there are some limitations with this, and maybe some more so on the SDK side of things rather than Microsoft’s, but it’s a bit frustrating that when I try to make a call directly from Phone, I don’t have the option to search through my outlook contacts. Or that when I see an email address on a website that I’m not presented with an option to write that email within the Outlook App. I’m able to share the ‘mailto:...’ link to a blank email in outlook, but cannot compose an email to that email address. The same extends for calendar. I would love to be able to see my calendar events from outlook in the calendar app, just as a kind of unifying calendar app. I know that I can setup my Office 365 account within the accounts pane in settings, but then I’m defeating the purpose of using outlook.

Rating is generous for encouragement... more like 3.5 stars. Reasonably functional. No crashes problems. Lacks a lot of the functionality of other, more mature, Exchange email clients. My wish list would be for a collapsible email folder structure. Also for a contacts screen/window for viewing and scrolling through Exchange contacts, isolated from iPad contacts, so I can keep my work and my personal contact separated. Note that I use the iPad email and contacts apps for personal stuff. Annoyingly, after last update I see a badge (little gray dot) in the upper left on the nav (menu) icon. When I click the nav icon to open the left side nav panel, I see the same little gray dot on the settings gear at the bottom. Like bread crumbs. When I click this to open the settings panel, I now see there is an Add Account “1 new”. I click this (why do I need an add account reminder) then immediately dismiss it, close out of settings and go back to mail. The little gray badge is now gone. But when I later open Outlook, there it is again. Marketing people need to stay out of this.

So when you use gmail you can do a search and it will bring up emails specifically from the word you searched. For example, if you search for Apple Pay it will pull up emails from Apple Pay first. If you do the same search in outlook it will give you all emails that include those words as the sender, subject, mention, etc. This means you have to navigate through a list of unimportant emails to get to the one you want if you don’t give up in utter disappointment in the process. If that’s not frustrating enough when you write an email and it goes past a certain line you better hope you can type really well because you won’t be able to see past that line. I would have to stop scroll up and check the sentence, correct it blindly because it toggles back down where it can’t be seen and continue typing. So I started writing in other apps like gmail and forwarding it to outlook or doing a copy paste and forwarding it to my recipient if it was a longer message. That is not how I want to send my emails but outlook hasn’t seemed to be able to figure out how to make it work. Thus I have several apps for emails. Ugh

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I’m trying to use this app to access my work email from home. The app has continually deleted my entire inbox for no consistent reason I can figure out. I will open a new email and it will delete the email while I’m reading it and then my entire inbox. My inbox on my work computer will still be intact, but any email I attempted to open in the app will be missing. When I contacted customer service through the app they told me it simply wasn’t possible that the app was deleting emails and never responded again. When I attempted to email customer service on my work computer it said their customer service email address is undeliverable. I missed a very important email from my boss this morning while out sick, and even drove into work to try and see if I could access the email there to find nothing. I very well might loose my job over this and their customer service frankly does not care. If you can avoid using Microsoft (which I know is impossible) do all you can to stay away from them. They are a heartless company, and their substandard products will not only make your life hell, their customer service department seems to get joy out of your pain. If I could give them zero stars I would!

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I was notified today that my account was disabled for “suspicious activity.” No explanation of that activity - just directions to reset my password. Tried resetting using the request form which asked for a previous password, the email address of my previous sent email and the subject line of the previous sent email, etc. Now, if I could remember my password, I wouldn’t be trying to reset it! Anywho, send the form to wherever it goes after answering the questions to the best of my ability only to be sent something saying they couldn’t verify it was really me!!! Finally got on a chat with support and was basically told “for security purposes” staff can not enable an account. When I asked how they can disable an account with no explanation and without being able to enable it, I was told to create another account... 🤬. Now I can’t correspond with my attorney via email or send anything from this account. It’s 10 levels of frustrating and has convinced me to stop using this service and to make sure everyone I talk to knows how stupid this “recovery” system is and that your account can end up disabled with no explanation or viable means to reset your password. Just a hard lesson in frustration and a waste of time.