Windows Live Taskforce

Windows Live Mail Usability

Submitted by pmbAustin on October 25, 2009 to Aesthetics, Annoyance, Bug, Usability

Problem: I just upgraded to Win7, and as part of that, I exported my accounts and emails, and then imported after upgrading. The result of the import was very frustrating for many, many reasons.

1) While you can export accounts from the File menu, you can't import them there... you have to drill into the Tools, Accounts menu and import one at a time.

2) Upon importing the account, it IMMEDIATELY synced. This was bad because I had already exported all the emails, and was about to import them... so all the emails still on the server would end up as duplicates. NO! Frustrating, causing me extra work.

3) When I imported, instead of importing where I told it to, it imported into an "Imported" folder. UGH! This meant I had to manually copy the files back to where they belonged, in the appropriate inbox and sent folders of each account. STUPID!

4) When manually copying the files, there were lots of annoying bugs. For example, 9 times out of 10, when I clicked the first email in the source folder, then scrolled down to the last email and shift-clicked to select them all, and then scrolled the left pane to bring the destination into view... when I dragged the selected emails to the destination, all but one would copy... the one that was under the cursor when I dragged. The act of dragging DESELECTED IT! Stupid bug, very frustrating.

5) The pale colors are just annoying... on my laptop screen it's almost impossible to tell the difference between the message that is being highlighted by hovering the mouse over it, and a message that is actually selected. Can we fix the color scheme to be more visible, or at least allow the ability to customize?

Solution: Make the product work more consistently and intuitively: Make anything you can export from one place also avialable for import. Don't auto-sync on importing account settings, or at least provide a dialog with a checkbox so I can say "Don't Sync" if I don't want to. When importing messages, import them to where I tell you, and don't ask me where, and then just import them wehre you want to anyway, ignoring me. *I'm* supposed to be in control. And make your group select and drag and drop work predictably and intuitively... don't DESELECT whatever I click on when dragging a group to a destination.

Severity: High

Impact: Low

Status: Not fixed