Outlook is not your friend
Topic(s): Miscellaneous Bait
Submitted by: jhschmitt – Sat, 10/31/2009 – 09:38
Ever notice how Outlook remembers past email recipients so as you type in a name it takes a guess on filling out the rest of the characters? Usually this is a nice feature... but sometimes you end up including the wrong person in a long list of addresses. Again, not a big deal... unless that wrong person is a customer. Maybe not a big deal for one email, but then people start hitting "Reply All" and next thing you know some confidential "behind the curtain" stuff leaks out.
I caught an email like that this week; luckily all the communications were benign. But it reminded me of a guy I worked with who wasn't so lucky: he accidentally sent cost information to a customer. Not good, but these things happen. Then, just a couple weeks later, he did it again. He didn't survive that second one.
Comment: Outlook
Since I'm an expert on anything auto I figure I'd better pipe in here.
I saw this thing on TV the other day where this guy had an idea on how to make windows better so he wrote to Microsoft and they created Windows 7 which will solve all our problems. Why don't you try that?
Coupe de Ville – Mon, 11/02/2009 – 14:33
Comment: Outlook is from Office 2007, not from windows 7
Outlook comes with office 2007
Outlook express (without a lot of the "nice" features) comes with windoze 7. So upgrading to win7 won't help. We were discussing outlook, not outlook express.
btw I don't like outlook express because the features that I use every day are not included.
btw2 - win7 is just vista repackaged
btw3 - you can't upgrade vista ultimate with win7 professional without re-installing everything on your computer. and win7 ultimate isn't available here (or maybe it was just sold out). pitfa (pain it the frickin asset)
Mortimer14 – Mon, 11/02/2009 – 16:44
Comment: Outlook And The Two Steves
I regularly send email to two different people names Steve. As I type the name in Outlook, is continually only recommends one of them. They have common last names and I experience a similar problem when using their last names. Never had that trouble with our old system.
We have about 15,000 employees in the address book. Some of them have the same name. There is no way to easily tell you are selecting the right one from the suggestions without opening the contact information after selecting it.
Sphynx – Tue, 11/03/2009 – 08:49
Comment: Outlook is not your friend
Has anyone tried clearing the cache? It is annoying as you no longer have auto-complete, but it WILL recreate....
Explaining the ... – Fri, 11/06/2009 – 12:03
Comment: It could be worse....
While I appreciate the quandry some people find themselves in when using Outlook, it really reminds me that there are a couple of things we should all be doing.
First, don't be indiscriminately sending emails to "all". Even if you are sure that your message should go to everyone, they might not think it is such a wise idea. (your boss may not think so either if the wrong info goes out)
Secondly, we should all be checking our emails for content and delivery. I wonder how many of use would broadcast personal information intentionally? After all, that is the ultimate "reply all" faux-pas, yes?
Finally, consider that if we did not have tools like Outlook we would still be writing 4 part carbon memos. Would that be better?
Just my $0.02 as always YMMV
Security is a concept not a product!
Digital Willie – Mon, 11/02/2009 – 10:49
Comment: Agreed on the personal responsibility part!
Regardless of what Outlook remembers - and it's only the autocomplete part we're examining here - it's still the sender's responsibility to make sure they send the message only to those who are supposed to receive it.
Back to the topic, a "reply all" would only send the message to those on the original list and nobody else.
I still don't understand how a deleted contact would appear if you enter an updated address list (or distribution list).
Autocomplete will remember wrong addresses - whether malformed or deleted from the address book - as long as one attempt to send a message was done to that address. However, aucomplete is just that - automatically completing what the user starts to enter; and that is your responsibility to ensure it's the proper address!
asitnik – Mon, 11/02/2009 – 12:28
Comment: Yes And No
Yes, everyone should take more care and responsibility for what they send out. They should also fully read what they are responding to.
As for where we would be without tools like Outlook I would have to say in a better place. We recently switched to Outlook and it is in no way as robust as our old e-mail system. It also has many more flaws (aspecially dropping names randomly from group lists).
Sphynx – Tue, 11/03/2009 – 08:45
Comment: All it takes is a simple
All it takes is a simple registry to disable the reply all button in outlook. then at least you don't have to worry about that problem.
as for auto complete picking the wrong address the simple answer is to read what auto complete is suggesting before you accept it. and if it is such a huge problem I'm fairly sure outlook allows for this to be turned off.
and if you know the auto complete entry is wrong when it displays simply arrow down to select it and hit the delete key. problem solved
Creator – Mon, 11/02/2009 – 14:12
Comment: You know you can disable that, right?
This is for Outlook 2007, but I'm sure there's an option in earlier versions as well:
Tools->Options
Preferences tab, E-mail options button.
Advanced E-mail options button.
Uncheck "Suggest names while completing To, Cc, and Bcc fields"
apathy42 – Mon, 11/02/2009 – 15:01
Comment: TOTALLY!
What I find even more annoying is that Outlook keeps bringing back deleted contacts as well as old addresses for existing contacts. Not only that, but it will forget the current contacts when it tries to "fill in the blanks" as mentioned above. The only ones brought up are the deleted/changed contacts.
Instead you need to click on "to" or "cc", find your person in the contact list, make sure that it is the correct address (not an old one), click to or cc again to get them into the appropriate line, and go on to the next one. AND! the contact list brought up this way doesn't match the actual contact list that you get when you click on "contacts" in the navigation panel.
Don't even get me started on group lists in outlook, mine are never right. Outlook is constantly replacing current email addresses with old ones, or leaving out contacts that I just added to the group list, or it will use a group list of the same (or similar) name from 3+ years ago (deleted 3 years ago) instead of the one I just created today.
ARRRRGGHHH!!!
Sometimes it's enough to make me pull my hair out.
captcha: vegdob -- who cares about date of birth for vegetables?