Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Many college students suffer at the hands of their school network. Let's face it: When those hardworking administrators are setting up a school-wide email system, they are still boggled by the idea that there are clients out there beyond the horizons of AOL, Comcast, or Outlook.
I was indifferent to Outlook before I came to Seattle. Sure, it's a PC program. I use PC all the time. It's just another mail client with an older interface, and it's doing nothing to bother me! Live and let live, as they say.
In the months that have passed since my arrival at this school, I have developed something personal against Outlook.
It is difficult to describe my hatred for the online client in words. For the first few months, I would dutifully type the URL into my browser, log in through the box that made the site look like something off of a 1990-1998 era Windows computer, and wait for my mail to appear. When something was there, I would answer; that was the easy part. You simply click Reply, after all! Once you are finished, however, you are faced with a large problem.
What are you supposed to do with this email?
You could try to save it, of course. You just have to go and create a new folder, which is a process that takes five screens of loading and redundant clicking and typing. And then, you simply have to move the email into that folder, right? Right! You just click that little bubble next to the email, and then click the obscure icon that is supposed to represent moving the message into a folder! Be careful, though, because there are two icons right beside one another that mean very different things, but look exactly the same. Basically, I will stick a quarter in one hand, switch it around behind my back, and let you pick which one has the quarter. If you select wrong, we have to start all over again.
If you do happen to select the right icon, you are presented with a list of your folders. God forbid these be in any sensible order, because that would make things far too easy. You're in college, after all! You should be able to figure this one out. What are your parents paying for?
After excessive amounts of cursing, fumbling, and finally managing to get the email into the folder, you can breathe a sigh of relief. Just don't get your hopes up, because in a month or less, you will get a message informing you that your inbox is at full capacity!
"Full capacity," you say? "How can my inbox be at capacity? I barely have a hundred emails in there!"
Well, my friends, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there is only one simple explanation for this.
Outlook hates you. Microsoft designed this client with you in mind, and when they typed in the code for maximum space, they chuckled, whispering your name as they put a taunting number down. Every time you go to your inbox to find it full, there is a programmer, somewhere in the world, laughing maniacally at your despair.
If you have any other reasons to switch from your Outlook client to something more convenient, such as the fact that is, overall, a giant disaster, then feel free to comment. I am switching to fight the powers of evil that reside in the client. You may switch for whatever reasons you like.
I started this struggle against Outlook in September. Ever since, I have been enduring the suffering, the hardship, and the frustration, but no more. Today, after two Inbox Full emails, I pulled up the archaic tutorials on our school's OIT page, and started decoding what on earth these people were talking about with forwarding messages to a different account. Forwarding is inconvenient and disorganized, though. The answer to all of this? Redirecting.
The process all begins on a PC, of all places. While it's inconvenient, it's the only way it can happen. You have to find a PC with Microsoft Outlook on it. If you go to college, they probably have a lot of these scattered around. Log on with your school network account, open up Outlook, and don't import anything. Once it has a hold on your information, you will never, ever be able to get rid of the thing.
How To Exorcise Outlook- Go to "Tools" on the navigation bar.
- Click "Rules and Alerts..."; It is about halfway down the menu.
- In the upper left-hand corner of the box that opens, click "New Rule..."
- On the list of options, go to the second to last item on the list, or the one that says "Start from a blank rule..."
- Click on "Check messages when they arrive". The lower box should now say something along the lines of, "Apply this rule after the message arrives".
- Hit Next.
- Select nothing.
- Hit Next.
- Click "Yes" when the pop-up appears. Though it looks ominous, it's warning you of something you want very badly.
- On the list that looks just like that list you selected nothing on, find, "Redirect it to people or distribution list".
- Go down to the lower box and click on the 'link' from the words 'people and distribution list'.
- A pop-up will appear with a list of names in your address book. At the bottom of this box, there will be a field that says "To". Type the email address you want your school mail forwarded to here. I created a new email just for school through gmail; You can do what you want, but a new one would probably make organization easier.
- Select "OK".
- Go back to the list, and find "Delete it". This option is to keep your inbox on Outlook cleaned out. If you don't select it, your inbox will be full as always no matter where you receive the mail. If you do select it, you can keep your mail in your Gmail account and have the Outlook inbox nicely empty. No more complaints about running out of storage space!
- Select "OK".
- Select "Apply".
- You are now officially free from your bondage. Run out of your dorm room and scream with joy, or if you are in a public place, you may simply jump out of your chair and sing praises to your freedom.
It's so much easier than OIT makes it out to be, and that's when you have to use a PC to do it.
The moral of this story is simple: When you're presented with an Outlook client, run as fast as you can in the other direction. Hook up to Gmail, and save yourself the pain of dealing with an antique system created by an insane programmer.
If you found this article helpful, amusing, or worth anything, pass it along. This is for the greater good. If even one person has been saved from Satan's Client, then we have done our job.
2:43 PM