Personal Consumer Issues • Microsoft office on new computer

I bought a manufacturer refurbished laptop a few years ago that runs win11 and came with a permanent licensed office 2021.

I’ve used the office apps since forever so I was pleased to have the real excel and PowerPoint but I hated the new outlook which is a feature cut joke.

Two days ago I found out that while running ‘outlook’ defaults to this joke thing but there’s an ‘outlook classic’ installed which is the real full featured program. It’s kind of unreal to have a responsive ui and email search work properly.

Sure wish I’d found it sooner, I had no idea ‘outlook classic’ was a thing.

I remember reading an article in 2025 about Microsoft confusingly introducing a new watered down Outlook but keeping the full Outlook as "Outlook Classic." I feel your frustration. That, and their online service is also Outlook.com. Good gravy, Microsoft marketing people -- try using different names at least.

If you want to rebel and join the non-profit, open-source crowd, the Mozilla Thunderbird water is warm: https://www.thunderbird.net
I've used Thunderbird for probably 10 years consistently now and added multiple Microsoft, Gmail, Yahoo accounts to it. It's lovely and pretty robust.

I will *NEVER* use Microsoft Outlook again in a personal capacity and only use it on a work-issued computer for the company account.

Statistics: Posted by Pancakes-Eggs-Bacon — Tue May 12, 2026 11:23 pm — Replies 76 — Views 3479

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