[Trainer-Talk] Bringing Back the Classic Outlook

[Brian Vogel]

Earlier, Christopher Murphy wrote, in part, "The things that we're so used
to doing with classic outlook go away and navigation becomes much harder
and not as smooth."

I disagree, by and large.  There are definitely some changes in Outlook
that follow the pattern established in all modern Windows apps.  Increased
use of F6 to move between program regions being one of those.  I don't find
navigation to be the slightest bit harder once the few "new methods" that
have been characteristic of all modern apps for some years now are adopted
and become "second nature."

The key phrase in your observation is, "we're so used to doing."  There are
so many things that become "like breathing" and about which we don't give a
moment's thought before doing, but those were not that way when we started
out.  We learned them and integrated them.  When it comes to shifting
between operating systems, or email clients, and a lot of other things the
biggest frustration comes from continuing to do "what comes naturally" and
having that not work.  We've all been there if we've been using computers
for any purpose for a very long time.  But the need to relearn user
interfaces and other features is part and parcel of being a computer user,
and what does not come naturally as a beginner with anything tends to very
quickly become so if you force yourself to stick with it through the
learning curve.

You also wrote, in another message: "I might use the new outlook for an
email address that I don't use often."  This is not, however, possible if
we're talking paid New Outlook that's part of M365 or Office 2024.  The
Outlook Classic and Outlook (new) user interfaces employ the same account
infrastructure.  It's how you're looking at it that changes.  Outlook for
Windows is the free email client from Microsoft that shares the same UI
with Outlook (new), but as soon as a paid version of Outlook that supports
both the New and Classic UIs is installed, the New Outlook will be the paid
one and using the same email accounts as paid.  All you can do is flip-flop
between which UI you want or use either one or both, side-by-side, based on
which one(s) you invoked.

Brian