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Is My Outlook Damaged or Unstable?



 
 
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Old September 5th 10, 06:40 PM
bill marsano bill marsano is offline
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First recorded activity at Outlookbanter: Jan 2010
Posts: 9
Default Is My Outlook Damaged or Unstable?

1. I’m using Outlook 2003, which I’ve had for several years, and XP Pro, which I switched to from XP Home a year or so ago when I got a new computer. I paid a professional to do the installation and no one uses my computer but me! My problem is that Outlook sometimes—too often—acts as if with a mind of its own.

2. Every now and then Outlook adds new and unwanted toolbars. Recently it added three. One (between the icons bar and the bar with SEND and other words mixed with icons) says Go to Office Live Open Save. It briefly disappeared as mysteriously as it came, but now it’s back again. Another unwanted toolbar is at the bottom of the screen. It’s full of icons related to drawing. A third toolbar, headed “CONTRO,” formatted vertically, sometimes appears in my writing space. These things eat up my writing space and are generarlly annoying distractions. I want them GONE for good.

3. Outlook frequently reconfigures my main toolbar (the one with the icons) in inconvenient ways. It adds and removes buttons, and changes their order. I used to have B, I, and U--but the I and U have suddenly disappeared. The icons for centering/aligning text have been replaced by document mapping, drawing, inserting Excel worksheet, inserting tables and borders, and other stuff I don’t want. When I began an e-mail an hour ago Outlook opened in double-underline mode, which I hadn’t known existed (I’ve never seen a button for it). Sometimes it opens in all caps. (At this point I want to make it clear that a] no one uses my computer but me and b] I don’t play with my computer. I don’t go prying into the toolbar options and other stuff just to see what will happen. Changes that I complain about have not been asked for by me.)

4. Every once in a while I’ll hit RETURN and the next line will begin in italic mode. Or I’ll cut/paste something from a Word doc to an e-mail and get a different type font and color (usually 10-point Times New Roman black) instead of the 14-point Palatino Linotype dark blue that I use without exception for mail and docs. I’m using Word as my e-mail editor and it's supposed to change double hyphens to em dashes. I often use double hyphens in place of parentheses, in which case Outlook will usually (but not always) change the first pair to an em dash but not the second. Sometimes it changes neither (in both docs and e-mail).

5. I have a manual impairment that forces me to type with two fingers, a fatiguing method that results in many typos. To compensate, I a] have removed the keys most often struck by my dragging fingers (caps lock, for example) and b] rely on Outlook Auto-Correct. But A-C is becoming a drag. It increasingly redlines words previously auto-corrected. When I ask for an auto-correction, a dialogue box tells me I have already defined that particular error, and do I want to do it again?

6. Isn’t it possible to establish a page format of my own choice of default page margins in Outlook? As with a typewriter? Outlook spreads my words the full width of the monitor—very hard to read. Very! It will even do this to docs I cut/paste from Word and the web! From time to time a new e-mail starts with a ruler or margin guide at the top of my writing space—only to quickly disappear. When it stays down long enough for me to try to adjust margins (I imagine that this is what it’s for), the little triangles and “L” symbols prove either resistant to any movement at all or to staying where I’ve manage to put them. What I want is a page set up for conventonal business correspondence—margins of 12 (characters) on the left and 72 on the right, leaving 60 between. It makes for very nice reading, like a proper business letter or manuscript. I can get something similar if I go to VIEW and click, say, NORMAL—but it won’t stay there as a default.

7. Last month my outbound e-mail was down for 4 days. I kept getting this error message:

Task 'RCN - Sending' reported error (0x8004210B) : 'The operation timed out waiting for a response from the sending (SMTP) server. If you continue to receive this message, contact your server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP).'

My ISP, RCN, said it’s a Microsoft problem and that it's common. I thought that if so, surely MS would have fixed it with an update long, long ago, no?
Apparently not: I talked to several colleagues using RCN. Those also using Outlook were aware of the problem; those using other e-mail programs were not. And the problem just comes and goes: It stacked up a bunch of messages last week and then finally sent all of them an hour ago. I did not do anything to make that happen.

8. I’d like to know how to make Outlook adjust properly when I add or subtract text from a given graf. For example, a moment ago I went back to graf 3 above and add this parenthetical phrase: (the one with the icons). The result was that several words from Line 1 were pushed over to Line 2--the rest of which was left blank. So I went to the end of Line 2 and clicked DEL to adjust. OK, all the words came up but I also got an indented first line and the remaining lines moved to the left. When I tabbed them back into place I still had an unwanted indent that I had to remove. This seems like an unnecessary amount of housekeeping for such a simple change.

9. When I start a new e-mail my signature positions itself perfectly. When I reply, the top line of my signature is sometimes indented 5 spaces. And in both cases my cursor aligns not with the signature but at extreme left.

10. By and large, it seems to me that a lot MS instructions in the HELP function are unclear, or incomplete (steps missing) or aren’t trustworthy. For example, they tell me that if I want an umlaut over a given letter I should do CTRL+SHIFT+:, the letter. Oddly, the instructions are identical or upper case and lower case:

ä, ë, ï, ö, ü, ÿ,
Ä, Ë, Ï, Ö, Ü, Ÿ CTRL+SHIFT+: (COLON), the letter

It’s really hard to read in MS’s layout because of the 6-point type and 8-inch gap between the sample letters (To Do This) and the instructions (PRESS), but the real problem the result (when there is any result at all): it's upper case. For lower case I have to highlight it, go to Format--Change Case--Lower Case--OK. Way to go, guys.

Yesterday I tried to solve the problem by putting the ASCII characters I commonly use (a total of about 50) into a letterhead so I could simply copy as needed and avoid both the CTRL+SHIFT business and Insert--Symbol. I tried following the Help instructions but they were blindingly complicated, so perhaps the failured was mine. I did manage to get this far: I’d open Word and a blank “page” would appear; the letterhead was in a menu at screen-right. Clicking would transfer it to my page. Fine. But today that doesn’t happen any more. The menu is gone. Couldn’t this whole thing be made as simple as creating a signature?

11. Now maybe this is all due to my ignorance, but I can’t find solutions. (MS really ought to take a very long look at the ways it writes explanations and instructions.) I’ve tried the FORMATS button on the tool bar. Now I can change case with impunity, but what I really want is my choice of default margins and actual hyphenation. In any case, I lose an enormous amount of time trying to do what Outlook and Word won’t do and undo what Word and Outlook will do, and I’m really tired of it. I want solutions and defaults. I want Outlook to open looking and working in the same old dull, unimaginative way every time. Maybe my copy is damaged? If so, I'll buy a new one. If on the other hand, Outlook is really supposed to work like this, just let me know and I’ll try some other program.
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