Way OT: Outlook for programmers

[smontanaro]

Having nothing to do with bikes, I recently switched jobs, and for the first time in my career, I'm stuck using Microsoft Outlook for reading mail. It's driving me nuts. As a software developer, I find it sucks in a number of ways (there are more general problems which have nothing to do with my role as a software engineer - I will ignore them for now):


It insists on using proportional fonts unless I explicitly compose mails as plain text
It doesn't respect my start and end when selecting text
It keeps wanting to translate my apostrophes and quotation marks


The last two items are particularly annoying. Trying to "father knows best" me on selecting text is unbelievably frustrating, especially as when trying to select a bit of program text it insists on expanding the selection to include most nearby punctuation (which, in a programming language context is rarely "just punctuation"). Auto-translation of quotes means that little snippets of code in a message can't be copy/pasted by the recipient without further editing. I followed the instructions (https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Change-curly-quotes-to-straight-quotes-and-vice-versa-017963a0-bc5f-486b-9c9d-0ec511a8fb8f) about how to get it to stop doing that, but it keeps doing it.

So, if you are a software developer (or play one on TV) and are stuck using Outlook to send and receive email, what have you done to make your email life slightly less miserable?

[jtbadge]

I am in the same boat. I have been lucky enough to have Gmail/Google Docs at work until my current employer. Would also be interested in tips.

[Bob Ross]

fwiw, I've been using Outlook at work and at home for over 14 years, and I find gmail infuriatingly obtuse!

But I'm not a programmer, I'm a luddite, so...

[retrofit]

Try this solution from Stack Overflow (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1151152/how-should-i-use-outlook-to-send-code-snippets):

If you are using Outlook 2010, you can define your own style and select your formatting you want, in the Format options there is one option for Language, here you can specify the language and specify whether you want spell checker to ignore the text with this style.

With this style you can now paste the code as text and select your new style. Outlook will not correct the text and will not perform the spell check on it.

Below is the summary of the style I have defined for emailing the code snippets.

Do not check spelling or grammar, Border:
Box: (Single solid line, Orange, 0.5 pt Line width)
Pattern: Clear (Custom Color(RGB(253,253,217))), Style: Linked, Automatically update, Quick Style
Based on: HTML Preformatted

[559Rando]

How about writing some sick VBA scripts to make Outlook do what you want it to do?

[559Rando]

And when I send SQL around the office, I usually paste special/keep source formatting

[lookout2015]

Having nothing to do with bikes, I recently switched jobs, and for the first time in my career, I'm stuck using Microsoft Outlook for reading mail. It's driving me nuts. As a software developer, I find it sucks in a number of ways (there are more general problems which have nothing to do with my role as a software engineer - I will ignore them for now):


It insists on using proportional fonts unless I explicitly compose mails as plain text
It doesn't respect my start and end when selecting text
It keeps wanting to translate my apostrophes and quotation marks


The last two items are particularly annoying. Trying to "father knows best" me on selecting text is unbelievably frustrating, especially as when trying to select a bit of program text it insists on expanding the selection to include most nearby punctuation (which, in a programming language context is rarely "just punctuation"). Auto-translation of quotes means that little snippets of code in a message can't be copy/pasted by the recipient without further editing. I followed the instructions (https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Change-curly-quotes-to-straight-quotes-and-vice-versa-017963a0-bc5f-486b-9c9d-0ec511a8fb8f) about how to get it to stop doing that, but it keeps doing it.

So, if you are a software developer (or play one on TV) and are stuck using Outlook to send and receive email, what have you done to make your email life slightly less miserable?

Turning off autocorrection, smart quotes, etc is the main change I make. It works for me - Mac, 2011 and 2016 versions. Keeping updated (assuming corporate policy allows) helps as Outlook tends to ship buggy then iterate

[smontanaro]

Thanks. I think I am in a better place now. I managed to flub the "smart quotes" directions, and didn't notice there were two similar settings to change. I also turned off auto-correct, and got rid of all the punctuation-oriented translations (like auto-smilies, mapping (c) to the copyright symbol, etc). I already had plain text set for new messages.

Now if Outlook's categories worked more like Gmail's labels... I don't think that's happening anytime soon though.

[Llewellyn]

There's quite a few things I find really annoying about Outlook but it's the only programme I can use for emailing documents from within the accounting programme I use :crap:

[sg8357]

Watch for some really cool bugs with the meeting invites.
If someone is using a different version of outlook, invites can be
corrupted by forwarding them. Great when it corrupts a repeating
meeting. Iphones also do interesting things with outlook calendering.

[kingpin75s]

Screw it! I'm going back to Pine. ;)

[weisan]

This is what works for me:

Reduce my use of emails to the absolute minimum.

Yes, I can understand this may not work for everyone. But it did for me. Plus the other digital noise.