I was asked to upgrade/dogfood Office 2007 today. This annoys me for a lot of reasons; but I will limit my list of peeves to technical ones here.
- Instant Search. I don’t give a flying leap though a rolling donut about Instant Search. But there is an very annoying flyover bar asking me to install it. If I click on the bar it, correctly, asks if I want to connect to Microsoft and download it. There is no checkbox for “don’t ask me again”. You have to go to Tools->Options->Other->Advanced Options and un-check “Show prompts to enable Instant Search”. Dumb. But at least it works.
- I like the LookOut plugin. It indexes your mailbox and PSTs and allows for complex and quick searches. According to Microsoft: “Windows Desktop Search 3.0 disables the MSN Toolbar and LookOut in Outlook. LookOut and the MSN Toolbar are now considered to be old versions of Microsoft products. To offer users the clearest and most integrated search experience for Outlook 2007, Outlook disables these add-ins when Outlook starts.” F-That. So it leaves the toolbar there in Outlook- it is just empty.
- My company has a plug-in for Outlook, that is part of the reason for this dogfood. I didn’t want to upgrade to 2007, but it is a good thing to do a responsible member of the development organization. However- Why do I need to upgrade *all* of Office. Outlook I get. But apparently Word 2003 does not work with Outlook 2007.
Not a big fan at all at this point. Total time of use: 20 minutes. I was never of a fan before, this pretty much seals the deal.
The next step is Lightning which integrates Thunderbird and Sunbird. Maybe I will be happier then. Doubt It.