[Trainer-Talk] Bringing Back the Classic Outlook

[Brian Vogel]

Curtis Chong earlier posed this series of questions, some of which I have
answers for, some of which I don't, or at least don't exactly . . .



*1. The New Outlook is a huge drain on productivity and efficiency, and it
does lack many features that the Classic Outlook already possesses. Have
you tried spell checking a message with the F7 key? Try figuring out what
word is being misspelled.*

Answer-ish:  Are they accustomed to using Editor at all?  This is pretty
much the same setup as Editor in MS-Word that's been around for a while.  I
know you can (and I have) tweak MS-Word's Normal.dotm to force the old
spell check behavior when F7 is pressed, but I've never tried it in the New
Outlook message composition screen.


*Try jumping to a specific date in the calendar that is more than a week
into the future or the past. You can't just hit Control G, type in a date,
and get there.*

Answer:  Sadly, this appears to be broken, and it wasn't always so.  This
should be reported to Microsoft.


* Try using the copy/paste method to detach files from a message you have
received. That method doesn't work.*

Answer-ish:  Then use another.  I myself never use copy/paste for detaching
an attachment.  Depending on whether the attachments are meant to be saved
to different locations or dumped in a single location dictates whether I
use the Save As option for the "More Actions" button that's associated with
a given attachment or simply navigate to the Save All Attachments button
that is present when you have more than one.

I use copy/paste with the copy happening in File Explorer, and the paste
happening when I'm in a new message's message body to attach, but have
never used that method to detach.  I didn't start this until I encountered
someone else doing it.  Prior to that I always used the Attach button.


* Try explaining to your students when the screen reader virtual cursor
should be on or off at certain points of the email procedure.*

Non-Answer: I have no answer at all for this one, as I've never had any
issue with needing to flip-flop on any routine basis.  You'd need to be
more specific about where that's necessary in New Outlook where it's not in
Outlook Classic.


* Try telling your student what to do when, after pressing escape, all of
the New Outlook screens go away!*
Non-Answer: I can't replicate this specific issue, but I can say generally
when my students have had windows "just disappear" (and it does happen) my
general advice is shoot straight to Alt + Tabbing to find the one you're
looking for.  I don't randomly or unexpectedly have New Outlook "just
disappearing."  Unless something's crashed, it will be in the Alt + Tab
sequence.

I say the following generally, not specifically to Curtis, but the fact is
if you don't get used to the idea that "your chosen way" of doing any given
thing may, at some point, go away and you then need to choose another, you
will have a lifetime of computer use misery.  I can't count the number of
changes over the years where what I was accustomed to, often of years
duration, was just suddenly removed.  I vented about it, of course, but
promptly sought out "what works now" because for most of these I knew what
I had been used to was not coming back.  Ctrl + G no longer working in
Calendar is definitely a bug, though.  Microsoft documents this as the
keyboard-focused long date jumping method for New Outlook.

Brian