It is 2007 and Outlook is still retarded

Update (2008-03-14):

KC Lemson has read this post and she said that she has forwarded my feedback to the Outlook team. I have since cleared the article of the word "moron" (which I used twice in my frustration), because the points I am making about UI design are still valid and more easily digested without it.

Quite some time ago when I still had the blog instead of this site I ranted about applications which seem to be designed to piss you off. My example at that time was Outlook email client. I am reproducing that rant here so we can establish a context:

Take Outlook as an example — you can create a rule from the message by right-clicking on it. It is simple, right? Nope. It isn't.

When you want to filter outgoing mail you have to select Tools | Rules and Alerts... | New Rule... to be able to create appropriate filtering action.

Why? Because someone who designed it obviously never tried using it for a while.

Try it yourself, Tools | Rules and Alerts... | New Rule... | Start from a blank rule, there you will have two options:

1. Check messages when they arrive
2. Check messages after sending

For outgoing mail you will want to select the second one. If, on the other hand, you try to create the rule by right-clicking on the message in your Sent Items folder and clicking on Create Rule option you will get a nice dialog which says:

When I get e-mail with all of the selected conditions

Still not convinced? Click on Advanced Options... and check what is written in the lower box under step 2. Yes, it says Apply this rule after the message arrives. It is hardcoded to option #1 and you can't change it. Even if you later go to Tools | Rules and Alerts... | Change Rule | Edit Rule Settings....

It means that if you have 50+ people in your address book you can't just go right-clicking every message to create all the necessary filters, you will have to make them one by one, you will have to die typing comprehensive rule names, clicking on addresses in Adress Book and browsing to the right folders, not to mention having to deselect that boring "and on this machine only" shit that gets selected automatically each time even though you might not need it.

So, you have put several GigaHertzes up your computer's lazy ass, you have a lot of RAM and free space, fast video card and all that shit and you still end up doing your computer's work?!? How come?!?

That was the rant I posted almost two years ago and apparently nothing has changed. Enter the latest jewel — Outlook 2007.

I was consolidating three outlook.pst files and I wanted to move all calendar items from the old to the new one. I thought it would be simple to do it, but as you will soon find out, you will again end-up doing your computer's work.

Faced with the problem of migrating entries from one Calendar folder to another Calendar folder I tested several approaches:

• Export calendar items
No way! Recurring items get converted to single events because there is no suitable export format which can keep recurring events. To hell with that even .txt file would do that!
• Ctrl+Click to select multiple items and drag them to another folder
No way! You can only use Shift+Click to select range of dates. Furthermore, drag and drop doesn't work because of... well beats me, because the message you can see below is the most confusing one I read since 1982!
• Copy the folder in vain hope that it will overwrite the old one
No way yet again! Outlook copies the folder but names it Calendar1. As you know Calendar is a "system" folder and cannot be overwritten, deleted, or even renamed. So I can't rename Calendar to Kalendar but I get RSS feeds main page in Serbian even though I haven't asked for localization? Great work... NOT!

At this point I am pissed off to the point of bursting at the seams and formatting C: drive and installing DOS 3.30 out of lust for revenge but I somehow refrain from physical violence and use Google to search for workaround and I indeed find one:

• Go to the Calendar that you want to copy an appointment or meeting from.
• Open the item you want to copy.
• If it's a recurring item, you will get prompted to either open that particular occurrence or the series.
• Choose to open the series.
• On the top menu use File > Copy to Folder
• A list of folders will be displayed for you to select from.
• Navigate up the folder list to your Mailbox name, and select your Calendar then click OK.

The item, or series of occurrences will be copied into your Calendar.

Now it's the perfect time to remind you why I am writing all this. Lets say that you have 50 birthdays set as recurring events and you want to copy all of them to another Calendar folder.

You need 7 mouse clicks per event so for 50 events you need 350 mouse clicks not counting those clicks you will waste adding "Copy To Folder" button to the ribbon first and navigating to each event in the Calendar!!!

Ease of use? Accessibility? Yeah, they heard of it... NOT!!! Fast forward from 2003 to 2007, and Outlook is still the same piece of junk which requires you to develop RSI to perform even the simplest of tasks.