Throw Outlook 2003 in the trash and bring back Outlook 2000

[Loyd]

There are so many things wrong with Outlook 2003 I don't know where to start.
The one that is bugging me the most right now is the search mechanism for
contacts/address list. O-2000 had an advanced search routine where the user
could look for different things in different areas. I can't find entries that
I know are there because they are in my syncronized Pocket Windows PDA or I
just got through entering them. Most have to do with company entries where I
put the entire company name in the last name field so it would sort
correctly. Now I can't even find them when I put in any one word of the
company's name. Why did you eliminate something that worked fine? Second,
things are not nearly as intuitive as Outlook 2000. It takes a search of not
only HELP but also the M$ knowledgebase to find out how to do simple things -
like sort the names when you are looking for one to send an email to. In
O-2000 you could just click the header bar and change the sort. Why did you
take away a simple function that worked and hide that function behind a bunch
of crap? Another thing bugging me is not Outlook 2003 but Office 2003. You
took away the Office Shortcu Bar and gave nothing in its place. Yes, I know,
I can put shortcuts on the the Quick Launch bar, but I have that as full as I
want it. I could put the Office Shortcut bar on top of my screen, minimized,
and put my most-used Office shortcuts there, Why did you take away a
perfectly fine function when it was working?

I have been a Microsoft sympathizer and supporter among my agnostic peers
for years, but this version of Office is about to put me in the other camp.
I'm sure there are lots of other very frustrated users as well, so I hope you
get your act together and put out a service pack that fixes all the problems
you have created

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[CMM]

I too agree that MS has completely fumbled the ball and are basically just
riding on the inertia of previous success. They've gone insane with the
Marketing Dept taking over everything with A.croN.yM.s and slogans and
half-finished new ideas without really polishing and perfecting what they
have (Windows DNA???? Remember that? Now we have a whole new crop of
meaningless acronyms: Windows Foundation Layer, bla bla bla). Perfectly
great features in Outlook (and in theory) have never been fleshed out...
like the Journal, call logger, linking contacts to other contacts and Tasks,
Forms, etc... not to mention the whole notion of the "Universal Inbox"
(Outlook's original "slogan.") Anyone remember when Outlook could log
incoming and outgoing calls and work like VoiceMail machine? I do. It was
via an add-in called MS Phone... what happened to that?

Pretty much everybody, everywhere and at every company uses Outlook as a big
bulky E-MAIL CLIENT when it could have been (and almost is) sooooo much
more. I mean the "Rules Wizard" has not changed ONE IOTA since Outlook
97/98. Nobody uses it... and those of us that did find it is completely
bug-ridden in OL2003. Word 2003 is basically the SAME EXACT program that
Word 6.0 was... Nobody uses "Styles" everybody inserts triple carriage
returns and TABS to format documents and then are dumbounded when their
documents print wildly different on different printers. Everybody uses Excel
as a database (hello!?) and they all know how to use just one calc function
in it: SUM() (because it's a button on the toolbar).

I've been using Outlook since college back when it was called Microsoft
Exchange (the upgrade to Windows 95 Inbox)- before Exchange "Server" even
came out. I'm huge MS fan. But after the big hoopla (and total
disappointment) with Visual Studio 2005 and everything coming from Redmond
recently I question their future viability. Maybe all those Linux and
(bloated) OpenOffice dolts have a point. I mean, I hate FireFox (I think
it's slow at rendering pages and totally bloated) but these guys are doing
at least one thing MS hasn't done in a LONG TIME..... INNOVATE (and yes, I
do believe they have innovated in the past--- I'm not a MS "hater").

Next version of Office however DOES look promising.

 

[katydid]

Have you tried using Find and then selecting Options - Advanced Find to do
your search in Contacts?

I have OLK 2003 and can click on any of the header buttons and sort. Maybe
you need to run a Detect and Repair. This is under the Help menu. You may
want to uncheck 'discard customized settings and restore defaults', to take
it back to the original settings.