Long List Of Outlook 2016/Outlook.com Bugs // Where To Report?

[Chuck Davis]

Hi Diane,

Following the months-long winmail.dat debacle, I have been trying to report other bugs that occurred at the same time. There is also one nasty new bug that has recently appeared. I tried posting to a thread on Answers.Microsoft.com that Gabriel Bratton was moderating, but another moderator cut in and referred me to Outlook.UserVoice.com to report bugs. I reported the bugs on UserVoice and, no surprise, I was referred back to Answers.Microsoft.com. Can you report these bugs (especially the new one) or point me in the right direction for bug reporting? An additional challenge is that these bugs probably involve interactions between Outlook 2016, Outlook.com and Outlook for Android. Thanks!

New Bug:

Once again Outlook 2016/Outlook.com/Outlook for Android has gone berserk. For any contact with more than one email address, Outlook 2016 and/or Outlook.com and/or Outlook for Android rearranges the order of my Email/Email 2/Email 3 addresses in Outlook 2016. What used to be Email 3 is now Email (1).

The problem is more insidious that just rearranging the email addresses, however. If I compose an email in Outlook 2016, and fill in the To: field from cache, the address that used to be Email (1) is filled in, but when the email is sent the To: address is *changed* to Email 3 (which is now Email).

The result was some emails being sent to what should have been a tertiary/unused email address.

Will Microsoft be able to fix this or will I have to go through and manually find and correct any damaged contacts? Currently if I do correct the contacts they just get scrambled again.

These following bugs were, I believe, previously reported via Slipstick.com. Do you know if these have been fixed and will Microsoft be able to repair the damage? I really don't want to have to manually fix all of my contacts.

Bug 1:

My contacts have Name (John Smith), Company (Contoso) and email address (JSmith@Contoso.com).

Previously the "Display As" field was configured as "John Smith (JSmith@Contoso.com)".

Recently some update to Outlook changed "Display As" on *all* my contacts to just "JSmith@Contoso.com".

If I call up the contact, blank the "Display As" field and hit TAB, the "Display As" field is changed to "John Smith - Contoso (JSmith@Contoso.com)". Note the "dash company" that is inserted.

If I save the contact, call the contact back up, blank the "Display As" field and hit TAB again, this time the "Display As" field is changed to "John Smith (JSmith@Contoso.com)".

It is exceedingly weird that it takes two updates/saves to change the "Display As" field back to its original format.

Bug 2:

Microsoft also screwed up the "File As" field in all my contacts. It was changed from "Smith, John (Contoso)" to "Smith, John(Contoso)"....with no space between John and the open parentheses. As a result, the name and company appear run together on one line in the Contacts instead of on two lines.

Bug 3:

"Mystery" contact records appeared in Outlook 2016, Outlook.com and Outlook for Android. They contain nothing but a phone number. These appear to be fragments of valid contact records. I can't see any pattern of similarity among the full contact records. They were created at various times on Wednesday, 4/12 (The day after Patch Tuesday).

Possible Bug:

I think this was broken during the move of Outlook.com to the Exchange platform. I have contacts in my Outlook.com address book. I also have (thousands of) additional contacts in three .PST files that are only used for contacts. (The contacts in the .PST files are segregated to keep the number of contacts in Outlook.com (and Outlook for Android) to a manageable number.) When clicking on "To:", I used to be able to arrange the order of the address books so that the Outlook.com address book was followed by the address books from the .PST files. I can no longer do this. The address books for the .PST files are at the bottom of a screen that includes many other (unused) address books from some "standby" Outlook.com accounts and an Office 365 account that I have.

Feature Request:

My primary email address is (for example) John@Smith.Name (John At Smith Dot Name, in case the forum system masks it). This is a perfectly valid email address that is configured in DNS. Verisign auto-forwards emails to my Outlook.com address. Prior to the move of Outlook.com to the Exchange platform I was able to set up John@Smith.Name as an alias in Outlook.com and emails would be sent "on behalf of John@Smith.Name". The "on behalf of" was annoying, but I could live with it. For a while after the move to the Exchange platform I couldn't set up John@Smith.Name as an alias. I can now set up that alias, but the From address is just a string of letters and numbers. I would like to be able to use John@Smith.Name as a valid alias and have that address used for From and Reply To. (There may be issues since there is no SMTP server associated with the "dot name" address/domain.)

 

[Diane Poremsky]

do you have the link to the thread on answers?

Bug reporting: if you have the option available (should if you use an insider build, not sure for other builds) for File, Feedback. (I think File, Support goes to the answer desk.) Use File, Support, Contact Support in the Insider build.

My primary email address is (for example) John@Smith.Name (John At Smith Dot Name, in case the forum system masks it).

They are working on this. No ETA at this time.

When clicking on "To:", I used to be able to arrange the order of the address books so that the Outlook.com address book was followed by the address books from the .PST files.

You should be able to do this - open the Address Book from the button on the Home ribbon (not from To) and click File, Options.

Bug 1: This sounds like a bug that affects people who open the account on two computers - the computer that didn't edit or create it get the - company added. Editing it fixes it on the current computer, changes it to -company on the other one. Not sure what the status is - i thought they said it was fixed and haven't looked at it in a long time. (It's a stupid bug - office 365 doesn't have this problem, outlook.com shouldn't either.)

Bug 2: I will check on this.

Bug 3: This sounds like the "no address entry bug" - if a contact didn't have a physical address (even just a space in the address field), it was corrupted and split. I think it was fixed, so shouldn't happen to new contacts but you'll need to clean up existing ones.

 

[Chuck Davis]

Answers.com thread, Page 3: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...ook-2016/aa2e29e2-e277-4b72-bb23-dc72c559dffa

(BTW - I can no longer Reply to threads in Answers.com using Firefox. The screen greys out and locks. I have to switch to Chrome. I have the most recent build of Firefox (which has been somewhat buggy), and am loaded up with ad blockers, tracker blockers, etc.)

Bug Reporting: For those of us that are pond scum, File | Feedback just offers UserVoice for feature suggestions.

Arranging presentation sequence of Address Books: If I go to Address Book | File | Options the address books are shown in the desired sequence. Unfortunately this no longer has anything to do with reality.

Bug 1: I only make changes to contacts in Outlook 2016. I never use Outlook.com, and until recently (see New Bug) you couldn't make changes to contacts in Outlook for Android. I'm still not brave enough to make changes in Outlook for Android.

Bug 3: Anal Trauma.

Thanks!

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Bug Reporting: For those of us that are pond scum, File | Feedback just offers UserVoice for feature suggestions.

pond scum is a little harsh, but they also don't want to open it up to every user - they'd be swamped with questions. I'm asking Gabe about being pushed to uservoice...

BTW, do you have all updates for your channel installed?

 

[Chuck Davis]

All updates are installed.

Maybe a little harsh, but after 45 years in IT, software developer, beta tester, etc. and beating my head against a wall trying to report well-documented bugs I do get a little frustrated.

I'm starting to thing that the convenience of integrating Outlook 2016 <==> Outlook.com <==> Outlook for Android <==> Android Contacts isn't worth the pain from Microsoft's inability to maintain and support these integrations.

 

[Chuck Davis]

E.g. the "New Bug" I reported is probably due to something along this integration trail reading Email1/Email2/Email3 and writing Email3/Email1/Email2. This is the type of mistake a high school noob programmer might make and that definitely should have been caught by QA and regression testing.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

This is the "official word" on bug reports:
The "technical advisor" (not sure if that is the person who told you to use uservoice or a supervisor) will be told to direct bug reports to the backstage File, Support, Contact Support and, if needed, having the customer switch to Insider to do so.

So... my recommendation is to enable insider build (you need a subscription version) - you can switch back. You can set a reg key to turn it on then check for updates about 15 min later. Restore the value to turn it off (export the key before updating). I'm not sure how long it takes to roll back.

 

[Chuck Davis]

Thanks. Are the bugs I reported in the system or should I turn on Insider and (re)submit them?

Given the increasing bugginess of Microsoft's GA software, would it be that much more risky to just stay on the Slow Ring?

Thanks again.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

i have no idea if they are in the system - even if they are, a lot of times they need more repros. I would resubmit even the ones i thought were fixed (after verifying they still exist in the insider build).

IMHO, i don't think fast insider is buggy (or any more buggier than the standard release) - i use it on my "production" computer since they made it available. It does get updated pretty much every Thursday though.

 

[Chuck Davis]

File | Feedback still goes to UserVoice. Should I try File | Support?

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Yes (I was wrong earlier when i said support when to answer desk - they changed the dialog on me.)