Need Help With Stupid Outlook

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Clarissa

January 25, 2012

I hate stupid Microsoft Outlook and never use it. I don’t know which enemy of humanity invented the stupid thing and I have no idea why anybody would want to use it. It ties you to one computer and then you can’t even check your emails if you are at the library, traveling, at an Internet cafe, etc. That stupid, stupid thing.

The only reason why I configured this vile Outlook is that I needed to email my class and our wonderfully helpful system at my university only allows us to do that through the stupid Outlook, may God punish it and its mother, father, and siblings. Whose genius idea was it to force faculty members to use the stupid Outlook, anyways?

So I configured it and you know what it did? It stole all of the emails I had in my work account. It just took them out and transferred them all into the Outlook mailbox (marking them all ‘Unread’, which is a disaster in itself.) And now my university email account is empty.

Does anybody know what I should do now? Is there a way to transfer my messages back to my university email account from the stupid Outlook? There are 657 messages. They are all crucial and I want them all in my email account, not in some stupid Outlook box. Or should I just resign myself to using Outlook for work?

Do you, people, use Outlook? Are there any bonuses to using it? Is there a reason why it is even in existence?

I don’t respond well to change, especially when I haven’t chosen this change, so this is really freaking me out. I think I will go and throw up now.

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19 responses to “Need Help With Stupid Outlook”

David Bellamy

January 25, 2012

Does your department or university have a system administrator? My department does, and he really helpful. If not, maybe you can find a student who is a computer geek and hire her (or him) for a few hours. Several times over the years I have hired a student (not in my department) to help me with something in my office, though not since the 1980’s.

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GMP

January 25, 2012

Your problems have to do with the mail retrieval protocol you are using — POP vs IMAP. Looks like you used POP and now all messages have all been downloaded on the local computer. You want to use IMAP, which generally allows you to retrieve your email from wherever, and if you create a folder structure in Outlook on one computer it transfers to the server and any other computer you use to access mail; I access all of my mail from various computers, my phone, etc.

Go to Account Settings, Email Accounts, change the type of protocol to IMAP.
You may need to play with a few other options, like ports for incoming and outgoing mail.

No way to save your downloaded messages (except email them to yourself again), but by changing the protocol you can ensure this doesn’t happen again.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  January 26, 2012
  
  Thank you, GMP, you are absolutely right, it was POP initially. I have changed the settings and now the account doesn’t steal messages from the university website mail.
  
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Z

January 25, 2012

Don’t switch to Outlook, it is evil.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  January 26, 2012
  
  I know. I am especially annoyed at how my university practically makes me use it because there is no other way to email my class if I don’t use Blackboard this year.
  
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  1. Z
    
    January 26, 2012
    
    I’d set up a shell Blackboard site and e-mail from that. If you don’t want to use Blackboard then don’t put anything in it but
    e-mail from it. This way, I’d evade Outlook.
    
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    1. bloggerclarissa
      
      January 26, 2012
      
      “I’d set up a shell Blackboard site and e-mail from that. If you don’t want to use Blackboard then don’t put anything in it but
      e-mail from it. This way, I’d evade Outlook.”
      
      – This is, of course, the best way to go. I considered doing it at the beginning of the semester and then got too lazy. Now I’m paying for that. Idiot (me, of course. Not you.)
      
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anon

January 26, 2012

“No way to save your downloaded messages (except email them to yourself again)….”

I’m not sure that this is correct. An inexperienced sys admin made this mistake when setting up a second computer for me at work. He managed to “undo it” (i.e., return all of the emails back to the work server) with the help of a more experienced colleague. Check with your school/dept. sys admin….

“Your problems have to do with the mail retrieval protocol you are using — POP vs IMAP. Looks like you used POP and now all messages have all been downloaded on the local computer. You want to use IMAP….”

I use POP with Outlook at home. You can easily configure this to leave a copy of your messages on the server. I’m using Office 2003 version at home, so I could provide step by step instructions on how to do this if you want.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  January 26, 2012
  
  “I use POP with Outlook at home. You can easily configure this to leave a copy of your messages on the server. I’m using Office 2003 version at home, so I could provide step by step instructions on how to do this if you want.”
  
  – Thank you! I have managed to find it and change the settings.
  
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Nat

January 26, 2012

I think GMP is correct. Another thing u would want to do is to check the option “leave mails om server” and “never delete”. This will let outlook download email but still leaves them on your webmail server. But i think the ones it already downloaded would stay on the local computer…
Personally i thought outlook is pretty easier to use than any webmail. Just bear with it for a while and you’ll get used to it :).

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  January 26, 2012
  
  One good thing is that it seems to allow me to attach a signature to my emails which the university email never managed to do. Or I never figured out how to do it. So that’s something positive.
  
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Lear

January 26, 2012

GMP has the answer to your problem. Once you’ve done this I think you can select all your e-mails and drag them back to your IMAP account, and can mark them as unread.

I find Outtlook/Exchange pretty good for corporate mail, you have book addresses, shared calendars, shared folders etc. There’s also a web version if you need to access it on the go. It doesn’t beat the simplicity of Gmail but it’s still pretty good.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  January 26, 2012
  
  There is a web version of Outlook? Really?
  
  God, I’m So clueless.
  
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  1. Z
    
    January 26, 2012
    
    Isn’t there a web version of anything – university webmail, gmail from web, yahoo, hotmail – ? Not a reason to go to Outlook!
    
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  2. Kellen
    
    January 26, 2012
    
    I use outlook at work, and we have a “web version” but it’s hosted on our company’s website and so if your company/university hasn’t set that up, I don’t think it’s something you can access just by logging into outlook.com. In your case, the web access is provided via your normal university website mail, and now that it doesn’t “steal” your mail from there, you probably have it set up the way it’s “supposed” to work.
    
    Also, outlook is not even remotely as evil as “CRM” this archiving system we have installed that works “with” our outlook and we are supposed to use to save all work emails to a central location. It crashes my computer every time I try to use it.
    
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Z

January 26, 2012

It’s unstable and full of bugs and gimmicks, and it’s a Microsoft product. A better client would be Thunderbird in my view – http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/download – although I just use the university mail and gmail, do not want yet more interfaces and so on.

I am not sure but I am wondering whether it might be possible to suck your messages back from Outlook into university e-mail. As long as you haven’t downloaded them to some HD and deleted them from the server, I think you can do what Lear said.

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tteclod

January 26, 2012

DANGER WILL ROBINSON!!

Be extra careful with the “do not delete messages on server” option. When I (finally) took a vacation befoer Christmas, that very week my server inbox filled and I stopped receiving messages. After several work-arounds failed, I finally arrived at deleting emails after 90 days. Outlook doesn’t permit saving emails more than 100 days – which doesn’t make sense since it allows saving emails indefinitely also.

In any case, I feel your pain.

My personal advice is to require all your students to send you letters through the US Post. Handwritten with a fountain pen. In triplicate with two copies to you and one for return with your response. Take that you lazy kids! 😉

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1. David Bellamy
  
  January 26, 2012
  
  I would add, handwritten in legible cursive handwriting.
  
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Ol.

January 26, 2012

We switched to Outlook last year. Apparently it was a cheaper option than what we had before. I hated Outlook then and I hate it even more now. Good luck.

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