Outlook Is Utilizing Mental Warfare

[Michelle Louring]

I can make a thread just to rant, right? Right!

For the last two months, I have been trying to disable the automatic spell check in my Outlook client at work, or at least get it to default to Danish.
It. Won't. Let. Me.
It's a form of subtle, but very effective, torture to spend all day trying to write emails in Danish while Outlook keeps correcting everything you write according to an English dictionary.

If you hear anyone weeping, it's just me.

[TimothyEllis]

I wouldn't use Outlook if you paid me.

Why do this  for 2 months, when in a couple minutes you can download a much better program?

[Jeff Tanyard]

I can make a thread just to rant, right? Right!

It's fine by me.   

For the last two months, I have been trying to disable the automatic spell check in my Outlook client at work, or at least get it to default to Danish.
It. Won't. Let. Me.
It's a form of subtle, but very effective, torture to spend all day trying to write emails in Danish while Outlook keeps correcting everything you write according to an English dictionary.

If you hear anyone weeping, it's just me.

Yeah, that sucks.  Condolences.   

I wouldn't use Outlook if you paid me.

Same here.  Just the word "Outlook" makes me shudder.   

Why do this  for 2 months, when in a couple minutes you can download a much better program?

I'm guessing she's required by her workplace to use it.

[Michelle Louring]

Why do this  for 2 months, when in a couple minutes you can download a much better program?

I'm guessing she's required by her workplace to use it.

The whole company's email server is indeed set up to use Outlook. It also ties into our Skype for Business, which ties into our phone system, which... probably ties into other stuff.
In short, I'm not going to topple this house of cards 

And Outlook has never given me these problems before! I just switched to another PC a few months ago and it declared war on me...

[The Doctor]

The whole company's email server is indeed set up to use Outlook. It also ties into our Skype for Business, which ties into our phone system, which... probably ties into other stuff.
In short, I'm not going to topple this house of cards 

And Outlook has never given me these problems before! I just switched to another PC a few months ago and it declared war on me...

Sounds like my place of work. We have to use Outlook which I hate. It's also linked to Lync/the phones, etc.

[Michelle Louring]

Sounds like my place of work. We have to use Outlook which I hate. It's also linked to Lync/the phones, etc.

Oh, I had no idea Lync was an international plague on humanity and not just a Danish one!
It's the same thing we use 

I don't use my phone all that much, so I don't experience the problems first-hand, but after 3 staff meetings in a row where we spent half an hour discussing Lync troubles, I have developed certain feelings toward this piece of software...

[The Doctor]

Sounds like my place of work. We have to use Outlook which I hate. It's also linked to Lync/the phones, etc.

Oh, I had no idea Lync was an international plague on humanity and not just a Danish one!
It's the same thing we use 

I don't use my phone all that much, so I don't experience the problems first-hand, but after 3 staff meetings in a row where we spent half an hour discussing Lync troubles, I have developed certain by feelings toward this piece of software...

My workplace has offices around the world. It's the biggest law firm nobody's heard of (yup, that's the nickname we've given it) so Lync is a global annoyance.

Actually, the majority of the offices recently got upgraded to Windows 10 and are using Skype for Business, but due to IT forgetting about our department and that we use specific software that has to be compatible with 10, we are still using Windows 7 and Lync.

[Simon Haynes]

Around 2002, when Outlook was (I think) MS Mail, or Outlook Lite, or similar, there was a bug where the entire program would shut down in the middle of typing an email.

I tried Eudora for a while, then got so frustrated with the shortcomings in both apps I wrote my own email client. And I'm still using it and updating it 16 years later.

And no, it doesn't have spell check ;-)

[Lysmata Debelius]

I used to work for a place that had Outlook too, and apart from the usual miseries, they also censored us. If you used a word that some IT person somewhere put on the "naughty words" list, it would either get removed or substituted. This caused many misunderstandings and miscommunications. Also much rage.

I've got a similar problem, that my computer settings get reset to US instead of UK english. Sounds like it's not an Outlook setting you need to change, but some more global language setting. Windows update waits until it can sense that I'm relaxed and unworried, and then BOOM my " turns into a @ again, or my spellcheck wants to change every "s" into a "z".   

[Simon Haynes]

I've got a similar problem, that my computer settings get reset to US instead of UK english. Sounds like it's not an Outlook setting you need to change, but some more global language setting. Windows update waits until it can sense that I'm relaxed and unworried, and then BOOM my " turns into a @ again, or my spellcheck wants to change every "s" into a "z".   

Mine goes the other way - suddenly switches to UK even though I'm in Aus with a US keyboard layout.

When I first installed windows 10 I picked UK engish but US keyboard, and ever since the #$%#$ thing has been forcing the pound symbol on me for currency in SOME programs, but not others.

I've gone through the registry, international and regional settings, uninstalled every UK language pack I could find, even switched to US language and the UK Pound symbol still shows up from time to time as the default currency. Almost always in dotnet apps, oddly enough.

[Guerin]

For the last two months, I have been trying to disable the automatic spell check in my Outlook client at work, or at least get it to default to Danish.
It. Won't. Let. Me.

Exactly which spelling check do you want to disable? There is the auto-correct, that will change words as you type them, the auto-check, that will check words as you type them and underline them in red when they're incorrect, or the spelling check that it runs when you send an email. All of these can be disabled.

[Michelle Louring]

Exactly which spelling check do you want to disable? There is the auto-correct, that will change words as you type them, the auto-check, that will check words as you type them and underline them in red when they're incorrect, or the spelling check that it runs when you send an email. All of these can be disabled.

In the beginning, I just wanted to get rid of the auto-correct. But now I just disable all of them once a week in the hope that some day it will stick.

[RCoots]

Oh, I had no idea Lync was an international plague on humanity and not just a Danish one!
It's the same thing we use 

I don't use my phone all that much, so I don't experience the problems first-hand, but after 3 staff meetings in a row where we spent half an hour discussing Lync troubles, I have developed certain feelings toward this piece of software...

I'm stuck with Outlook/Lync as well. My boss has started using it for monthly meetings, or to get in touch about this or that thing and she tries to CALL me with Lync and it never works. I just sit there and go "Why, why!?"

[Becca Mills]

I can't stand Outlook. Ugh.

[Post-Doctorate D]

Sometimes I dislike receiving eMails from people that use Outlook because it has an annoying habit of putting attachments into a win.dat file which is then a pain to open if you don't also use Outlook, which I, like most civilized people , do not.

[Becca Mills]

Sometimes I dislike receiving eMails from people that use Outlook because it has an annoying habit of putting attachments into a win.dat file which is then a pain to open if you don't also use Outlook, which I, like most civilized people , do not.

I have a friend whose boss became deeply annoyed at all the "unopenable attachments" my friend persisted in sending him. Really not good.

[Michelle Louring]

Sometimes I dislike receiving eMails from people that use Outlook because it has an annoying habit of putting attachments into a win.dat file which is then a pain to open if you don't also use Outlook, which I, like most civilized people , do not.

I have a friend whose boss became deeply annoyed at all the "unopenable attachments" my friend persisted in sending him. Really not good.

I didn't even know it did that!
Outlook is pretty much the default among Danish businesses (especially among our clients, considering we sell ERP solutions from Microsoft, meaning Outlook is the easiest to integrate with), so it has never come up.
But seriously, what's up with that?!

[Post-Doctorate D]

Sometimes I dislike receiving eMails from people that use Outlook because it has an annoying habit of putting attachments into a win.dat file which is then a pain to open if you don't also use Outlook, which I, like most civilized people , do not.

I have a friend whose boss became deeply annoyed at all the "unopenable attachments" my friend persisted in sending him. Really not good.

I didn't even know it did that!
Outlook is pretty much the default among Danish businesses (especially among our clients, considering we sell ERP solutions from Microsoft, meaning Outlook is the easiest to integrate with), so it has never come up.
But seriously, what's up with that?!

Apparently, Outlook uses RTF for text and to preserve the RTF, it puts everything, including attachments, into a win.dat file which Outlook can open but other eMail clients cannot.  I guess it is seamless when sending from Outlook user to Outlook user.

RTF can be turned off in Outlook so it then will not put everything into a win.dat file.  We've sent instructions for doing so to people and it fixes it for a while but eventually that setting gets changed and it gets back to using RTF again.

I had an app that can extract files from win.dat files but it doesn't work any more.  I don't know why, unless the win.dat format got changed somewhere along the line.