Warning: this story is not for the faint of heart. It is about an experience over the weekend that made me want to scream. If you don’t have any problems using Outlook, no need to read further.
The queue of things I want to write about for the weblog is a long one. With a rainy forecast for last weekend taking fun motorcycle rides out of the picture, I had thought the weekend was set to give birth to at least one story and maybe a few drafts for later. Friday morning when I awoke at the Sheraton in New York City , where I was attending the IBM/Forbes Executive Conference, I was surprised to find that my inbox had no new mail in it? Something must be wrong, I thought, since normally I would have had at least a hundred new ones during the night. I investigated various things on my ThinkPad for ten minutes but then had to give up and go to the conference.
I got back to my home office from New York around 4 PM and started working with Outlook to figure out why there was no email coming in. I went to the patrickWeb mail server using the new Opera 8 browser and sure enough the inbox on the mail server had the normal few hundred (by now) daily emails — about 85% of which is garbage from spammers. I tried sending an email to myself with webmail and it worked instantly. I then started the Thunderbird email program. It immediately connected to my mail server and downloaded all the mail — I leave a copy of email on the mail server for 30 days. Seemed that something was wrong with Outlook. After spending the entire evening until quite late, the bottom line was that webmail with Opera and Thunderbird worked just fine but Outlook was unable to send or receive email. I was tempted to switchover to Thunderbird on the spot. However, like many people, I use Outlook for not just email but also my calendar, task list, and thousands of contacts in Outlook. It is also setup to synchronize all this with my Sony Ericsson P910a mobile phone. I also have various plugins in Outlook that enable me to synchronize contact information with hundreds of industry colleagues, filter out the spam, allow me to read other people’s weblogs, and a few other things. In other words, I am locked in to Microsoft Outlook — for now.
The support people at Microsoft are very well trained, efficient, and polite. I talked to several in Bangalore over the past few days. They are quite methodical in their approach but have also been trained to focus on the non-Microsoft software that may be causing problems. The immediate presumption if Outlook is not sending or receiving mail is that there is something wrong with your PC, your anti-virus software, your firewall, your ISP, or you yourself! They also don’t acknowledge that some users want to organize their data in certain ways — not necessarily the way Microsoft would organize it. For example I like to keep my outlook data in a place on my PC that I can remember, that is easy to reach, and easy to backup. Outlook data — mail, calendar, contacts — is kept in a file that ends with .pst (no idea what that stands for). I have five pst files — outlook_jrp.pst, archive_2002.pst, archive_2003.pst, archive_2004.pst, and archive_2005.pst. I backup these files at least twice per week. In implementing a Microsoft support resolution to my Outlook problem on Saturday, I did not realize until the next day that the steps I was given lead to changing the name and location of my primary outlook file. It was now Outlook2 and it was stored as a hidden file deep in the bowels of Microsoft’s file structure. I searched around the MS web site and found that the file is not only hidden, but that the search capability of the MS File Explorer can not find it! No problem though because there is a quick fix to enable the Explorer to find the pst file. You won’t believe their "quick fix"
To configure Windows XP to search all files no matter what the file type, obtain the latest service pack for Windows XP and then turn on the Index file types with unknown extensions option.
If you use this method, Windows XP searches all file types for the text that you specify. This can affect the performance of the search functionality. To do this:
- Click Start, and then click Search (or point to Search, and then click For Files or Folders).
- Click Change preferences, and then click With Indexing Service (for faster local searches).
- Click Change Indexing Service Settings (Advanced). Note that you do not have to turn on the Index service.
- On the toolbar, click Show/Hide Console Tree.
- In the left pane, right-click Indexing Service on Local Machine, and then click Properties.
- On the Generation tab, click to select the Index files with unknown extensions check box, and then click OK.
- Close the Indexing Service console.
Huh?
At the end of the day Saturday Outlook was working. Although I had lost a day of valuable time, I was happy and relived it was working again. Sunday morning it was broken again but I had learned enough from MS Support to fix it myself — in fact I fixed it several times on Sunday and again on Monday. Monday evening it was more badly broken and I couldn’t fix it, even after spending quite a few hours on the phone with MS support Monday night and half of Tuesday. As of Wednesday, I believe everything was working and re-organized the way I want my data to be, but Friday to Wednesday was a major loss in productivity.
I have written quite a bit about how difficult it is to use some web sites. I’ll pause on that for the moment to comment about Microsoft Outlook. I won’t say anything about Outlook Express — the shortcomings there are well known. Outlook is supposed to be much more "industrial strength". I got somewhat spoiled after having used Lotus Notes at IBM from 1992 to 2002. It has it’s own set of shortcomings for sure but it is unquestionably "industrial strength". After I retired from IBM at the end of 2001, I decided I should use Outlook since many of the people I interact with outside of IBM use it. Outlook definitely has some nice features and in some ways it is very intuitive and easy to use. There are a number of useful plugins for Outlook and in some ways Outlook is a highly remarkable piece of software — especially Outlook 2003. In certain other areas it is a disaster.
In reading through various bulletin boards I find that many people share my frustration. Microsoft does some great software engineering but, being a monopoly, they don’t seem compelled to enable people to have much control of their own environment. Microsoft executives have been quoted as saying that the world would be much safer and simpler if everybody would use Windows exclusively. You might call their thoughts as those of a benign monopoly. There is an argument. If I would just use the Windows firewall instead of Zone Labs, the Windows anti-virus software instead of Symantec Norton anti-virus, the Windows messenger instead of AOL IM, Microsoft Office instead of Open Office, Microsoft Internet Explorer instead of Opera, Microsoft Money instead of Quicken, Microsoft Frontpage instead of Dreamweaver, Microsoft VoIP instead of Skype, etc, etc. then maybe I would have no problems? I don’t think so. In the 1960’s IBM had that attitude — if you had an IBM mainframe with non-IBM peripherals and you had a problem, then IBM presumed that the problem wasn’t theirs. When I called MS Support on Saturday the first thing they said was that the problem was Symantec Norton anti-virus. I have been using Norton for years without a problem and I was quite certain that it was not a problem now. At one point in the weekend MS Support suggested I uninstall my firewall and install the Microsoft firewall, just to be sure I was protected while trying it. And did I have the CD to reinstall my firewall if that turned out not to be the problem? Even when I explained that webmail and Thunderbird could both communicate with my mail server with no problem, MS Support never once gave me the feeling that they thought anything could be wrong with Outlook.
There have always been many email alternatives to Outlook, but at this point there are some really good alternatives. There are many onlline email programs that are ok but I like to have my emails local on my PC so I can slice and dice and backup and import/export, etc. If you are like that then I can recommend three good email solutions. If you are a very casual email user and do not need a lot of data about people in your contact list, the new Opera 8 browser is a very good email client. It is fast, easy, and even though it is integrated with the browser, it provides offline operation. If you have more extensive contact information and you want something closer to the functionality of Outlook and that will work with Windows or with Linux, I recommend Thunderbird. I would say most Outlook users could move to Thunderbird and find their life much simpler. Finally, if you are an enterprise user, then the new IBM Workplace is a good way to go. As for me, as soon as I can confirm that synching with the Sony Ericsson P910a will work and that a couple of my Outlook plugins can work, I will be a Thunderbird user.
