Outlook.com quagmire

[unfaithfulsfan]

This is ridiculous and I'm asking myself (again) why did I bother creating an Outlook.com account.

Everything was hunky-dory until I wanted to actually compose an email. It took me a minute but I figured out where my contacts are but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to add one (forget multiple) to a new email without manually typing it in.

The reason I'm asking here is because a) there are multiple instances of this question on MSoft's Outlook.com forum with "Needs Answer" next to them and b) when I tried to submit my own version, the "Submit" button refused to work! Of course, I refused to edit my query to remove my disparaging remarks about MSoft's inability to create an email program sans an intuitive way to perform this task. That might be why I couldn't submit it or it might be the form parsing my question and deciding that the same question has been asked enough, thank you .

Has anyone else gone thru this pointless exercise? If so, were you able to solve the conundrum and how? Or should I just drop this account and stick with programs that work (probably the preferred option, right? ) ?

Thanks,
J

[Clouseau]

I do not know the reason to use such accounts since my isp offers e-mail that can be accessed from the web. My reasoning has been, why use even MS Outlook that is included with office, when the isp's html version does everything I need it to. Hence I have saved myself from going through what you have been experiencing. Generally hate using multiple programs that basically do the same thing. If one has an advantage over the other, than I end up using the best one. So far nothing has beat what my isp has to offer.

[bubba]

I need to see what it is like to use one of these accounts. Outlook may not be worth personal use, but in an office/business environment it is very handy.

The way that Office itself is being push you need to go very high in Office licence structure to even get a physical/local running copy of the software. With Office 2013 you can still buy single seat licence, but its even more $$ than what I could get 2010 for, and its locked to the PC you install it on. Yes even the retail version, not just the OEM version.

And for those saying go to OpenOffice or LibreOffice, neither works worth a snot in business when having to swap Office docs with another office.

[unfaithfulsfan]

I always felt that Outlook was really intended for a corporate environment where you had to keep track of hundreds of people. When I was working, my circle of contacts was easily manageable. Even when I was at the top of my game, I had everyone's numbers in my head-From my produce supplier in Amite, LA, to everyone in the franchise department in Dallas, TX, along with 50 employees. That was before any of this stuff had even thought about being developed (Read: about the time of the Commodore 64). So you either lugged around a Rolodex or you used your memory. But, that's not even a shadow of the way things have become.

We weren't incessantly bombarded with TB of totally irrelevant and useless trivia to sort through to find the 10 MB of data one truly needed to get through the day. "Social Networking" was to buy a 6-pack and, along with 20-50 of your friends, hang out on the Winn Dixie parking lot. The cops knew we weren't doing or selling drugs although some of us burned one or two. The worst that would happen is a couple of guys would take a swing at each other or those of us with "hot rods" would get a little buzzed and head out to a deserted 1/4 mile of highway and win/lose a few bucks. None of us ever had a wreck or even ran off the road but no one but us was out there and we weren't trying to text or talk or take photos of ourselves while running 110+.

People getting shot/stabbed/run over happened either "Up North" or "Out West" or in the Ninth Ward or at one of the hard-core redneck bars where fun was defined as emptying the balls out of the pool tables, lining up on opposite sides of the bar and playing "Elimination" or "Chicken" or whatever they called that insanity. I saw a couple of veterans of that bar game. Up to that point, I thought everybody was just yanking my chain. You ever seen what a well-thrown 45 mph cue ball can do to someone's front teeth or eye or nose or ear? It ain't pretty, trust me.

Back to the point, tho. I've had my Hotmail account since, gosh, '96? As I recall there was Hotmail, Juno and maybe Yahoo. Not too many others. Now hotmail has been sucked up into the great void that is Outlook.com which also is linked to my SkyDrive account for the village. Then I have GoogleDrive. I still use Live Mail, fortunately, because it handles all my email: Hotmail; my domain's email; my Village domain email; gmail. Just not yahoo mail.

I signed up for an Outlook.com email to go with SkyDrive for the village and just for lark I decided to send an email. That's what brought me to the point of writing this post. I guess it doesn't matter really one way or the other as, like I said, I use Live Mail for everything as it is. It's just amazing to me that there's no easy way to add a recipient to an outgoing email short of typing it in.

[unfaithfulsfan]

As an aside, Clouseau, I just noticed your name. Is that as in "Inspector"? If so, I applaud you!! Peter Sellers was an absolute genius!! Those are some of the funniest movies of all time. If not, boy, is my face red.....