Microsoft’s new version of Outlook for Windows has seen its fair share of criticism and, frankly, rightfully so. It is a noticeable downgrade in many ways from the classic native application that has been with us since Outlook’s first release in 1997. The UI is more modern and it contains a bunch of new features such as better integration with iCloud and Google’s services, but as a web app rather than a native application, it is significantly slower and some really basic features are lacking.
The specific omission I wanted to mention is, frankly, shocking in 2024: the ability to add a username to an IMAP server. This is a basic, essential feature that has been around for decades and yet, the new Outlook doesn’t have it which just flabbergasts me. It may seem trivial, but it means that I can’t use it for my email because my web host requires a username that isn’t the email address. Outlook just assumes your email address is your username. Mail clients should never just assume anything because everyone’s setup and requirements are different.
Instead, I’ve adopted Thunderbird as my email client of choice for Windows. It is a native application and, more critically, includes the extremely basic feature of being able to add a username to an IMAP server. It isn’t the prettiest of applications, even with the fairly recent design refresh, but it is functional, reliable and usable.
I have sent feedback to Microsoft using Outlook’s built-in feedback tool, but unsurprisingly, nothing has happened. There are also already two threads about it on Microsoft’s forums from 2023 (thread 1 and thread 2), but again, nothing has changed. I’m not getting my hopes up anytime soon and honestly, I’m not even sure I want to use it as my main mail client on Windows. I just like playing around and it’s always disappointing when my fun is spoiled by such an embarrassing omission.
