Microsoft Outlook

As the years have passed, outlook has consistently improved to a point that I am recommending its use to all my friends and family. While nothing is ever perfect and can always be improved I think it’s important note the quality, service, and features that have been implemented as of late. As one of the largest tech companies, Microsoft is poised to shape the industry and oh boy has it ever. I am in love with the ability of end user to finally report phishing attempts and other emails for different categories on mobile and desktop finally! I wish we could setup and manage rules from mobile but perhaps that’s something coming in the future. Outlook still, despite the lack of a few minor things, sits atop the rest in my opinion, ease of use and operation is highly scoring for me and I believe this is something that should be advertised to the populous. It’s very effective with its protections and sometimes maybe too over zealous with junk classification but that’s okay because it’s simply resolved through marking as not junk which will ad them to safe senders. I love the unsubscribe feature and many others that I can’t remember right now. The only thing I’m really missing and haven’t quite figured it out yet is how to install extensions to the new outlook, such as my antivirus from BitDefender/NETGEAR which should scan inbound and outbound emails and be an add-in. Over all the product itself is great!!! Highly recommended

I have been using Outlook on IOS daily for at least the last 5 years, and I would give it 4.5 stars but only had the option of 4 or 5 and feel it is better than 4 stars but definitely not a perfect 5. I will say over that time they have made some significant improvements that enable me to do more directly from my phone like sending a copy of an email to One Note and creating a task from an email. I do wish MS would wrap the “To Do” app into Outlook and feature it as a tab at the bottom like the calendar, contacts and mail. I think it’s harder having to go between two apps. I would also like to see the ability to load a signature with graphics, logos, etc. like I have in Outlook online or on my Mac. I know this is likely more of an Apple problem than MS, but it would be close to great if this could be added. Finally, (and this may be my own ineptitude) I would love to be able to select having my contacts on my phone without having them download into the main contacts of my phone. Why can’t they live in the contact folder of the app? I know you can filter which contacts you see but I don’t like having my personal contacts mixed in with hundreds of business contacts when I want to find a friend’s address or update their contact information or see all my personal contacts in a list for cleaning up duplicates, etc. Overall, the app has improved immensely in 5 years and as a traveling sales person it allows me to do much more from my phone than when I started using it and it was just sending and receiving emails.

The email functions in this app are mostly fine. It is the calendar that is lacking. There is no option to categorize (color-code). Furthermore, even if you use web/desktop/Mac to set up the events (so that you can categorize), the colors don’t show up the same in the iPad app!! They still show up as colors… just not always the same ones. For example, I currently am using blue, green, red, and orange to color-code. For whatever reason, the red events are pink on the iPad and the blue events are red. The iPhone app’s category colors are the same as the ones on the iPad (which are not the ones I actually chose). Ridiculous. Also, on all other platforms if you schedule a multi-day event and set status as “free”, the event only shows up at the top, same as an “all-day” event (and this is what I would expect and want). But on the iPad app, it shows up at the top AND it shows up down below for the first and last day. Obviously that makes no sense. The iPhone app is, once again, exactly the same. Switching the view to “agenda” fixes this issue, but “agenda” view on the iPad wastes over half the screen (on the iPhone, however, it’s actually the best view in my opinion - and it’s the default). All in all, using this app is a frustrating experience and so I have been reverting to using the web app on my iPad. On my iPhone, however, the web app is highly impractical and so I just get confused until I remember that Microsoft can’t make the colors you select actually appear on the screen.

I am a lifelong Outlook user - personal and business. I’ve always liked it, but full disclosure, I haven’t explored many other alternatives to the MS suite, so I don’t know what else is out there. I’ve used gmail & yahoo and think they’re ok. I tried OpenOffice and did not like it (that was a very long time ago). I am retired now. I have a Windows laptop and have been using iphone/ipad Office/MS365 for years. I have a paid MS365 subscription. It’s expensive, but for my needs, worth it. Some things are important, to me, and worth paying for like: productivity suite, cloud backup, ID theft protection and antivirus software, but Defender has gotten much better + it’s native to Windows & free! : ) I used the native Apple mail app when I first got my devices, out of ignorance. Then, I don’t remember when or why, I switched to Outlook. Wow! What a difference! Great features and function, like: drag & drop, customize your view, many of the same features as Outlook on the desktop, though there are some things I can do on my laptop that I cannot do on mobile, e.g. attach an outlook email to an email, delete an attachment from an email, change the name of or move a folder, no junk email options, cannot hover over a link to check the url, cannot view a zip file. I have to go to the web or my laptop to do these things. I am not a Microsoft fan, but I am a HUGE MS365/outlook fan. I really love these products - mostly I use Word, Excel, PPPT, Outlook. They work well for my needs.And just as an aside, I find excel to be superior in feature and function to Numbers. So an endorsement not just for Outlook, but for MS365 suite - IMHO! ; )