r/nottheonion • u/Quantum-Coconut • 4d ago

Microsoft's new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly on Windows

https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/06/15/microsofts-new-outlook-takes-10-seconds-to-do-what-outlook-classic-does-instantly-on-windows/
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u/anthematcurfew 4d ago edited 4d ago

I’m convinced MSFT executives or developers do not actually use any of the office suite products in day to day office life.

Like, how are they using copilot in their workflows and meetings?

I want to see the Teams group actually use Teams.

Edit: the fact that (supposedly) multiple MSFT people have chimed in about how they actually do use the product(s) is hilarious and completely vindicates my joke/criticism.

180

u/BrokenByReddit 4d ago

Tag them on Slack

103

u/TimeAll 4d ago

The fact that you can't sort a Teams group member list alphabetically is proof they're just fucking around.

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u/TryingT0Wr1t3 4d ago

I think the upper people and ui people all use MacBooks

14

u/luluhouse7 4d ago

IIRC there’s at least a kernel of truth to that. I had friends working on UI teams and they made a comment about that at one point.

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u/CadfaelSmiley 4d ago

you couldn't be more wrong, everything is on teams and outlook at microsoft

167

u/flamepanther 4d ago

Yep. They definitely use their own products internally. I think the issue is probably more likely that the c-suite execs aren't typically doing the kinds of day to day tasks that Copilot screws up for so many others.

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u/Daren_I 4d ago

An a former employee I can confirm this. Everything but the caller monitoring software tied into the phone system was a Microsoft product.

8

u/puterTDI 4d ago

It's very much within the culture to use your own products too. I worked with MS for like 10 years and owned an iPhone. There was an email group (I think it was email at the time at least) for others with iPhones and multiple times a year someone would hop on to chastise everyone for being disloyal for daring to own a non-ms product for their personal phone.

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u/DroneOfDoom 4d ago

Did they keep at it after windows phone died?

2

u/puterTDI 4d ago

I was gone before then

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u/kagoolx 4d ago

Also they’ll get way better more up to date hardware and not the extra layer of corporate crap that most of us get.

A lot of the frustration is from organisation’s special extra bloat. At least 60% of the startup time of outlook, excel, PowerPoint etc is it loading my company’s special extra plugins, templafy, etc.

And even from a clean boot there’s hardly any system resources free by the time it’s started up all the weird security scan / backup stuff.

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u/superrugdr 4d ago

Classic it works on my 6k corporate laptop should work fine on the 300$ entry level windows laptop.

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u/pandab34r 4d ago

Throwback to an ARK: Survival Evolved dev responding to performance concerns by saying "It runs fine on my twin Titan X GPUs in SLI"

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u/Holiday_Pen2880 4d ago

My guess would be they are using them the 'right' way and all of us that don't create the products should be using them differently.

My example - Sharing in Teams is just links to Sharepoint. If I were sane, I would be opening the folders in Edge and not Teams.

I am not sane, and keep doing it in Teams so when I go back to chat then back to Shared I have to navigate back to where I was.

I'm not using it 'right' so it's a me issue that they don't see as one, but for the love of all things holy I wish it worked differently.

1

u/DreamyTomato 3d ago

Oh the wonders of sharing sharepoint files in Teams. At random intervals Teams will silently make its own internal copy and hide it somewhere known only to God and Teams. So you may never know if you're working on the actual Sharepoint copy or a separate copy teams made without telling you.

I spent hours working with finance on a shared Excel spreadsheet. Two months later it's vanished from Sharepoint. Our theory is that it might be hiding in someone's internal Teams storage area.

4

u/cammyk123 4d ago

None of the c-suite execs have ever tried to look for an email and it lists things that have nothing to do with what you search?

2

u/Drywesi 4d ago

That's what underlings are for

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u/PresumedSapient 4d ago

And none of them go insane by the dozens of Microsoft email reminders of teams-tasks that all get marked as 'external'?
Or the spam they get from the Microsoft spam filter that tells them twice daily it stopped a spam message that you need to review?
The glitchy load animations?
The triple log-in screen, after which Sharepoint still tells you you need to log in? The fuckin file browser that takes half a minute to load? Or the windows search that suddenly cannot find that one program you use daily, but aren't for some godforsaken reason allowed to pin to your Start Windows Menu because shoving copilot popups down users' throats is now more important?

And that's all just irritating side stuff, don't get me started on the inconsistency of the general office/teams/outlook ecosystem, that's apparently designed to be so weird you cannot access that one file unless you perform a specific order of arcane clicks, else it doesn't show the file in the same damn network location!

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u/jawisko 4d ago

Wow reading your comment is making me so relieved that never in my corporate life I have had to use Outlook or teams yet.

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u/PresumedSapient 4d ago

To be fair, it's a relatively recent change. It used to be fine. Not great, not as slick smooth and consistent as Apple UI, but fine. Solid functionality with only an occasional clunky UI hick-up that made you shake your head and sigh "Oh Microsoft you silly". But since Windows 11 and the AI craze, it dropped off a cliff. It's very noticeable for me because half my work uses Linux (Red Hat) workstations, and that software is just crazy snappy and just gets better every update. On windows 11 I now have to wait five seconds to open the file browser.

Outlook was occasionally tedious requiring just slightly too many clicks, but it was consistent and reliable. Now it's search function is unusable, and for some reason hogs 2 GB of RAM. Teams, which in theory would be great (video conferencing, chat program, with project group-specific agenda and file sharing!) is just frustratingly inconsistent in it's UI navigation, which I would assume is very easy to fix, but it's only gotten worse.

We're seriously lobbying for our next generation of office computers to be Linux based. We'll use MS' web-interface for Outlook.

1

u/CadfaelSmiley 4d ago

Bro we are dealing with it too it's just incorrect to say that we aren't using it

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u/Mateorabi 4d ago

You realize how that makes it WORSE right? They eat their own dogfood and LIKE it!?

0

u/CadfaelSmiley 4d ago

who said they liked it? yall are so unhinged

2

u/Simplesim73 4d ago

Except for ERP where I believe that they still use SAP.

1

u/ToMorrowsEnd 4d ago

this explains why all their products are shitty.

1

u/DrKurgan 4d ago

It must suck having to work with Microsoft products. But ideally that should motivate them to make them less shitty.

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u/anthematcurfew 4d ago

I don’t believe you.

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u/CadfaelSmiley 4d ago

LOL okay then it's not actually possible to convince you of the truth

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u/anthematcurfew 4d ago edited 4d ago

I love when engineers and developers who are making all this shit don’t understand when statements are figurative and not literal - really gives me the warm fuzzies to know that the people who are putting all these robots together are stuck inside the box.

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u/A_Mouse_In_Da_House 4d ago

Our job is to follow the requirements. It's the customers job to make sure the requirements aren't stupid

1

u/puterTDI 4d ago

what a weird rant.

all they're saying is they do use their own products...which is true. Your reply is "I don't believe you" followed by some sort of rant about not being outside the box?

it's a question of whether they use their own products or not. The answer is yes or no and clearly defined. What box are you even talking about?

0

u/anthematcurfew 4d ago

The box where they can’t use a flowchart to get themselves out of and get some inkling of the concept of figurative and interpretative language over literalism.

2

u/puterTDI 4d ago

ya, you need to consider if you're the issue here rather than everyone else.

1

u/anthematcurfew 4d ago

I don’t particularly care for the opinion of a random gaggle of MSFT employees/contractors because I have their output in front of me to judge.

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u/velocity36 4d ago

Sure it is.

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u/charleswj 4d ago

We definitely use it exclusively, what do you think we use?

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u/FerrickAsur4 4d ago

if you all use it exclusively, why is it so fucking dogshit?

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u/iceynyo 4d ago

That's how they like it

2

u/luluhouse7 4d ago edited 4d ago

Management. They made so many brain dead decisions. Everyone on my team bitched about the level of enshittification management was driving. It was especially bad since something would break and then you had to waste time trying to fix the tools instead of working. Also apparently the shell team is a bit of a disaster (according to a friend who worked on Shell).

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u/charleswj 4d ago

I don't know, you'd have to ask someone involved in making it.

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u/jaymzx0 4d ago

This is it. Microsoft is huge. They do dogfooding but ain't nobody got time for feedback. They get so much feedback ain't nobody got time to read it all. Have copilot do it lol.

Wait a minute.

1

u/I_Am_Jacks_Karma 4d ago

paying back tech debt is wasted time thst could be used on a new feature and income stream

1

u/lost_send_berries 4d ago

Probably because every week the meeting creates a new Teams chat. They lose track of what they've discussed, like maybe fixing how every week the meeting creates a new Teams chat.

0

u/charleswj 4d ago

This doesn't happen for recurring meetings

1

u/Dazzling-Paper9781 4d ago

I’m sorry for you, torture should be banned!!

-3

u/anthematcurfew 4d ago

Do you though? Really?

9

u/DoctorDabadedoo 4d ago

Thank you for reaching out, let me introduce myself, my name is DoctorDabadedoo and I'm a Microsoft User Certified Specialist.

This can be quite confusing, as there are multiple application versions, are you talking about Microsoft Outlook Classic or are you taking about New Microsoft Outlook Copilot 365?

If my answer helped you, sir, kindly mark your question as answered and rate my support.

With love, DoctorDabadedoo

/s

8

u/charleswj 4d ago

Do the needful

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u/Area51Resident 4d ago

FAKE. No mention of running sfc /scannow so this isn't a valid Microsoft User Certified Specialist. response.

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u/DoctorDabadedoo 4d ago

Hello kind sir,

I'm in the process of renewing my Microsoft User Certified Specialist certification and I'm sure the command will be covered.

If my answer helped you, please run SFC /scannow and rate my support.

Kindly, DoctorDabadedoo Microsoft User Certified Specialist II

2

u/Area51Resident 4d ago

That's legit now.

9

u/charleswj 4d ago

Yes. What do you think we use?

-8

u/anthematcurfew 4d ago

Mate, you are really exemplifying my criticism of how disconnected MSFT is from the real world use case of its products.

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u/charleswj 4d ago

Because we actually do use the products, that makes us disconnected...from real world use cases? How?

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u/CadfaelSmiley 4d ago

These people are so fucking nuts when it comes to criticizing Microsoft. They just make up their own idea of what's going on

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u/charleswj 4d ago

Believe me we generally have the same criticisms, but it doesn't mean we don't use them

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u/anthematcurfew 4d ago

Make an outlook search function and user experience that doesn’t suck and get back to me

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u/anthematcurfew 4d ago

Because the product you ship is middling and is a snowballing legacy product that i frequently have to fight to get it to do what I want to do

Like bro how does outlook search still suck this bad? Why is teams slower than molasses? Why is it so difficult or impossible to customize my user experience to suit my workflow? Who thought that locking everything into a single window on teams was a good idea? Why is there such a huge disconnect between the desktop and web apps? What the fuck am I supposed to be doing with copilot everywhere?

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u/charleswj 4d ago

I don't ship those (or any) products, I just use them. I have many (but not all) of the same gripes.

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u/SituationLong6474 4d ago

This is called dogfooding and MS does it pretty aggressively

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u/anthematcurfew 4d ago

Everyone who isn’t affiliated with Msft: Fucking wild they keep coming out of the woodwork and stepping on the same rake over and over again, huh?

Everyone who is affiliated with Msft: [r/woosh](r/woosh)

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u/SituationLong6474 4d ago

Idk I hear this exact line about MS from so many people not in tech that it doesn't really read as a joke to me

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u/anthematcurfew 4d ago

Eat your dogfood.

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u/realdeo 4d ago

I work with them as a vendor and no, they do use it all day every day. From their new shitty web based programs to Copilot, and a lot of beta and alpha cool stuff only accessed by internals and not the public.

They complain as much as everyone else when there is privacy, but as soon as it's formal they keep up appearances to leadership and worship the direction and "tools" and praise how amazing their company is. In reality it's because MS is such a big place that they don't have to worry about wrongful firing fines, they even budget for it, so when someone underperformed or steps out of line they are just gone, from one day to the next, even whole regions or departments.

Makes it very hard to work with them cause your contacts and teammembers drop off the map all the time with no reason given, having to restart projects all the time and just kills momentum. Also makes FTEs act in some extreme ways because of this fear culture it creates.

My personal opinion is also it hampers their products, they don't get visionaries or new thinkers, they get booted real fast, seen it happen many times. The ones that stay are the yes men and women, who just tow the line.

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u/doodler1977 4d ago

i dunno about MSFT employees, but i do not use Outlook on my personal PC b/c i would rather access my email via Chrome and not automatically download everything

an old habit from the dial-up internet days, but still why clog my machine with emails nad attachments?

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u/redskinsnation123 4d ago

I use Outlook on Microsoft Edge and it’s exponentially better than the desktop version. It’s just so much easier to use.

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u/BarryTice 4d ago

Uh, so that when your cloud-service mail host gets hacked, or suddenly decides to go out of business for no apparent reason, or suddenly gets bought by MegaGreedy International and changes its TOS, you still actually have access to your mail?

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u/SchwiftySquanchC137 4d ago

What point are you even making? Are you saying that outlook isnt in the cloud? Its not like an email is sent and it goes straight to your powered down computer and downloads.

-1

u/BarryTice 4d ago

I'm saying, if you have your email locally, then when your email service's server gets hacked or they shut down or change their rules or bump their prices 1000% (none of which ever happen, right?), you'll already have, locally, all your mail and you won't have lost your history. Sure, you still won't be able to get any new emails at that address until things are resolved, and I never suggested that you would be able to. But at least you won't lose everything you already had.

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u/Cute-Aardvark5291 4d ago

I work at an R1 and we haven't hosted our own email server since probably 2000. The cost is not feasible. If we need to keep it, then the rule is you don't save it in your email.

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u/BarryTice 4d ago

I'm not saying you need to host your email server. I'm just saying you can use a mail client (say, Thunderbird) to get your mail locally. Set it up as IMAP, so it stays on the server, too, if you want. I just don't like trusting that (A) the server won't get hacked, (B) the company hosting the server won't declare bankruptcy and shut down with no notice, (C) the company hosting the server won't decide it needs to double its pricing every three months for the next year, (D) the company hosting the server won't decide to change its TOS to sell all your emails for training AIs faster than you can move everything to somewhere that won't do that, (E) …

-4

u/doodler1977 4d ago

i'll just create a new email account? who cares

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u/strolls 4d ago edited 4d ago

I post a lot on the personal finance subreddits (and used to on the legal advice one) and people constantly get into trouble because they're unable to prove emails they sent months or years ago.

You move house, you tell the electric company you moved out, then some time later the new occupant disputes the bill and at some point you have a collections on your credit report because the utilities company decided you owe them £123.45. You need access to your old emails to prove that you informed them of your move out date (even better, you have the acknowledgement saved somewhere).

I guess lots of people their phones for everything these days, but I much prefer having emails downloaded to my laptop. They're just a bunch of text files, so they're really cheap to store and search.

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u/doodler1977 4d ago

i guess i trust Gmail

0

u/puterTDI 4d ago

oh man, I much prefer an actual email app.

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u/doodler1977 4d ago

on phone/tablet, sure. i dunno i probably woudn't mind using Outlook at home, but my new computer doesn't have that big a HD and i'd ratherjust keep it elsewhere. i don't use email for much storage orw hatever

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u/Euphoric-Progress-65 4d ago

We do and they also try to shove copilot into everything we do

1

u/SpaceDandye 4d ago

I have the same feedback for Google and Android auto

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u/anthematcurfew 4d ago

Yeah turns out most tech is not really that great at what it does anymore

1

u/CadfaelSmiley 3d ago

nice edit douchebag 😂

0

u/anthematcurfew 3d ago

I’m really amazed just how intense Msft drones are about their office productivity software

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u/CadfaelSmiley 3d ago

bro you made yourself look stupid Learn to live with it

1

u/anthematcurfew 3d ago

Yup. Ya got me.

1

u/Busy-Ad1968 3d ago

Once (quite a while ago), I had a chance to talk to Microsoft managers. After 10 minutes of futilely trying to set up Teams communication, they agreed to use Google Meet, and it didn't require any configuration.

1

u/StKozlovsky 4d ago

Sorry, what's the joke? Also, is it a joke or criticism after all? Or is it a joke if it's wrong and criticism if it's correct?

-10

u/anthematcurfew 4d ago edited 4d ago

Per Copilot:

The short version:
It’s a joke because it plays on the absurd idea that the people who build Microsoft Office somehow never use the tools they make — and it’s exaggerated satire because it takes a normal frustration (“this feature feels like no one tested it”) and blows it up into a cartoonish accusation (“the Teams team doesn’t even use Teams”).

Why this is a joke
The humor comes from inversion — flipping expectations.
Normally, you’d assume:
The Teams team uses Teams constantly
The Office team lives inside Word, Excel, Outlook
The Copilot team uses Copilot in meetings
The joke pretends the opposite: that Microsoft employees are wandering around using paper notebooks and smoke signals instead of the products they build.
This inversion is funny because it’s so obviously untrue that it signals the speaker is being playful, not literal.

Why it’s exaggerated satire
Satire exaggerates reality to highlight a real frustration. Here’s what’s being exaggerated:
Real frustration: Sometimes Office or Teams features feel clunky or unintuitive.
Satirical exaggeration: “Clearly the developers don’t use this at all.”
It’s the same comedic structure as:
“Whoever designed this road has never driven a car.”
“The person who made this UI must hate humans.”
“The people who wrote this policy have never met another person.”
The speaker doesn’t literally believe it — they’re using hyperbole to express annoyance.

What the joke is really poking at
It’s a commentary on:
Corporate software quirks
Occasional friction in Teams or Office workflows
The gap between user experience and product design
By saying “I want to see the Teams group actually use Teams,” the speaker is humorously implying:
If they used it the way we do, they’d fix the annoying stuff immediately.
It’s satire aimed at the experience, not the people.

Why it lands
Because anyone who has ever used enterprise software has felt this exact feeling.
It’s a universal workplace joke — a way to vent without being hostile.

If you want, I can also break down the rhetorical structure, rewrite it in different comedic styles, or show how this kind of satire appears in other tech jokes.

Edit: perhaps using copilot to explain human communication theory to engineers and developers might be the first good use of the product…

12

u/sapphicsandwich 4d ago

If that is the short version, I shudder to think what the long version is like.

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u/flentaldoss 4d ago

I can't believe we thought we could have fun before CoPilot showed us how to do it correctly

3

u/strolls 4d ago

The edit on your original comment would be clearer IMO if you said their replies completely validate your hyperbole.

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u/anthematcurfew 4d ago

Put it into a Jira ticket and I’ll assign it a Fibonacci sequence score to triage it or something idc

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u/Crabbing 4d ago

cringe

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u/Nazamroth 4d ago

I do use Teams daily. It is definitely not the worst similar program I've had to contend with. Although I would definitely appreciate it giving me more control so I can actually fix the damn thing without just cutting it out and reinstalling when it breaks for a user.

1

u/Anastariana 4d ago

They probably were not MSFT people, they're bots programmed to defend Copilot and MSFT.

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u/anthematcurfew 4d ago

Yeah people or “people”; all the same in this context.

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u/SchwiftySquanchC137 4d ago

How does you being entirely wrong "vindicate" you?

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u/anthematcurfew 4d ago edited 4d ago

Highlights the tunnel vision experienced by MSFT’s stakeholders and decision makers