Outlook (2016 & Later) & email addressing

[britechguy]

I have not been using Outlook as a "daily driver" for some time, but am trying to determine if my memory is faulty or if something really did change in recent versions of Outlook.

When creating a new e-mail message, I could swear that "in times past" if I started typing the first few characters of a name (whether first or last) of someone who is in my contacts that a list of those matching whatever partial information I've typed would drop down below the To, CC, or BCC fields, allowing me to arrow down and select or point and click select any one of them.

This is not happening in the compose window for Outlook 2016, and, in fact, unless I have actually previously sent a message to someone nothing will show up in that list area below the edit box as I type.

All I have to have done is to have used a given address once, and there it is, but when setting up Outlook afresh that's not the behavior I want. If someone's in my contacts, as I type their name or email address, I want that information snagged from Contacts and prepopulated for me to select from. Can this be achieved and, if so, how. Web searches have not turned up anything that I've been able to get to work.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Autocomplete works off its own list, and is populated by what was put into the To box previously. It doesn't work off your address book, if you want the address book you click the "to" label.

And no, you cannot have contacts be in the "recent" list without use, and it won't ever suggest based on a contact. Which is kind of dumb... but short lived as a problem because use of either Teams or Outlook sorts out autocomplete automatically very quickly.

 

[britechguy]

Autocomplete works off its own list, and is populated by what was put into the To box previously. It doesn't work off your address book, if you want the address book you click the "to" label.

And no, you cannot have contacts be in the "recent" list without use, and it won't ever suggest based on a contact. Which is kind of dumb... but short lived as a problem because use of either Teams or Outlook sorts out autocomplete automatically very quickly.

Not quickly enough, particularly for my blind clients who happen to be using a new install.

I know about clicking the "To" or cc/bcc buttons, but even that process afterward is arduous compared to just having contacts show up.

Yet another reason (among many) that Outlook has never been my favorite email client. This design choice is the diametrical opposite of logical.

 

[Sky-Knight]

No, it's just designed differently than you want. Recent communications is not your entire contact list, it's a subset of that list as well as other items not on that list. It's simply different.

And, that list integrates with other apps in the M365 suite, which Outlook is a part of. So if you aren't using Outlook as an extension of m365 services... You're just doing it wrong. In those cases yeah, it makes no sense. But when you are using it as a front end to M365, all sorts of magical things happen to your work flow.

TLDR, Outlook isn't an email client... it never really was, today it really really isn't.

 

[britechguy]

No, it's just designed differently than you want. Recent communications is not your entire contact list, it's a subset of that list as well as other items not on that list. It's simply different.

In this case, I'll just say, "Yeah, whatever."

I've been around the block innumerable times, and this question keeps coming up and coming up and coming up. Most people expect autocomplete to look at their contacts list from the get go, and in most other email clients (and, yes, Outlook is one) they do.

There's "just different" and "stupid different" and this choice, without any doubt on my part, is "stupid different." That opinion is never going to change.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@britechguy Yeah well, we do disagree there.

Because as far as I'm concerned you're the one stupid different when you think one can actually run a business on GSuite.

You're only providing evidence of that fact when you insist Outlook is an "email client". It was once, it hasn't been that for a long time. That's a very small subset of what Outlook does, and if you use Outlook just for email you're better off not using it these days. You're running into just one of the myriad reasons why.

Worse, recent changes to Outlook made it worse for those that can't see... which I think is the real problem in this thread.

 

[britechguy]

Yeah, I'll agree about Outlook and the blind, and actually encourage the use of Thunderbird as an alternative.

But a very great many have no choice in office or educational settings, and, unfortunately, when it comes to screen readers (all of them) the first thing to be supported as far as email clients go is Outlook, and has been for decades.

I'm sorry if you don't choose to think of Outlook as an email client. A much larger swath of the world than you seem to work with does, and always will (along with calendar and contacts management).

The sooner you stop believing that M365 is the One True Way the better it will be as far as having an accurate perspective about what those outside your immediate sphere of ongoing support actually do and think. Office programs are still just Office programs to a massive, and I do mean massive, number of users, and it will remain that way even if they're on M365 because of actual patterns of use. Just because features have come into existence does not mean that many people will use them. 'Twas ever thus.