Even Microsoft Can’t Design For Outlook

This morning, I was checking the Windows Live Hotmail address I use for testing. I also receive messages from XBOX Live at this address, since using it made the sign up process for the Microsoft’s gaming service easier.

I was curious to see how Microsoft would communicate with a new gaming customer. Would they try to immediately sell me on a longer billing term or related products? Or, would they provide value, such as information on how I could best use my account.

So, I opened a message I received from them to see what I could find.

Not What I’d Expected

I did eventually get an answer to that question (to their credit, it was a useful message), but when I opened the message, this was the first thing I saw:

hotmail_irony.png

Do you see the irony of this? A Microsoft gaming service sends me an email to my Microsoft email address, that tells me their message format is not supported in a Microsoft email application.

Numerous complaints about how Outlook 2007 renders email messages have surfaced since its release.

This leads me to wonder: can we add Microsoft’s gaming division to the list of those who wish Microsoft’s Office division made a better choice?

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By: Marc Kline

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8 Comments

  1. Chris Jacobson

    That’s funny… perhaps if Google designed Outlook and Microsoft continued to send e-mails, it might work? Wishful thinking. :)

    9/20/2007 11:52 pm
  2. Ambrose Duperon

    That definitely made me chuckle.

    9/21/2007 10:42 am
  3. Habtom

    Amazing. The other day someone was demonstrating the search result of microsof in live.com, yahoo in yahoo search and google in google search.

    Microsoft and yahoo both displayed something surprising:
    The message was something like this in Yahoo.
    "we are not affilated with yahoo"
    In live:
    "we are not affilated with Microsoft"

    Only google didn’t display that message.

    Makes you smile (if you are the kind of person who doesn’t get sad easily)

    9/21/2007 11:54 am
  4. Frank J. Peter

    It is amazing that for a company of this magnitude the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

    9/21/2007 11:35 pm
  5. Mark

    fully agree, read an article some time ago about the problems of sending flash in emails – never do it!
    the only program that does NEVER have a problem is Mail for OSX …. so don t use that one for trials …..

    9/23/2007 3:14 pm
  6. John

    Call for test cases, test cases, test cases, …

    It is probably a result of the work flow in many large corporations. An agency does the layout, a different department puts it into the CMS or whatever application they use for sending HTML newsletters. The editor writes a new issue and sends it relying on the look and feel from the CMS. Boom.

    Large corporation are crazy about testing everything that relevant to billing their customers, but … HTML newsletter ;-)

    1. Use open standards (the older the better)
    2. Specify a set of OS, Mail clients that you care about
    3. Test it. At least the first issue which is based on a new layout.

    If you are a small business, you don’t need a test department. Don’t you have friends that could help you with that? Create a small test list and get screenshots back.

    9/28/2007 2:05 am
  7. Robin

    I’ve had so much trouble using Outlook 2003 with Norton’s Anti-Virus software that I’ve ditched both. Now I use an alternative anti-virus program and the free Thunderbird email software from Mozilla.

    I wasted heaps of time pissing about trying to resolve an ongoing range of incompatability issues and just run out of time.

    For heavy duty marketing email I use AWeber and Group Mail.

    9/29/2007 12:06 am
  8. Craig

    To amplify on Frank J. Peter’s post, sometimes you have to wonder if the right hand knows the left hand EXISTS!

    Indeed a sad state of affairs.

    10/2/2007 5:07 am

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