Dear Emissaries of E-mail:

I am writing you this e-mail for a couple of reasons. First of all, I want to thank for you for Microsoft Office. What a product! Thanks to Microsoft Word's magical AutoCorrect feature, my readers never had to look at another "hte" or "adn" again! And PowerPoint's animation effects are astonishing! I have actually been working on creating an animated cartoon series that is based completely on animated PowerPoint presentations! Wait until the networks see it!

As wonderful as Microsoft Office is, however, I do still have some constructive criticism for you to consider. After using all the Microsoft Office programs, it seems to me that Microsoft Outlook is the most "half-baked" of the bunch. I've been keeping track of some of the more annoying problems I've found, and hope that you will consider addressing them when you release your next version of Outlook.

Here are the problems I've found in Outlook...

Calandar: What WERE you guys thinking when you programmed the recurring appointment features? When I reschedule a recurring appointment Outlook not only reschedules future occurrences of the appointments but past occurrences as well! Even my 512K PalmPilot asks if I want to reschedule All recurring appointments or only Future recerring appointments. I can't imagine that doctors, lawyers, or consultants are thrilled by this serious flaw either. 
 
Contact Management: I would think better integration between the Journal and the Contacts List would be no-brainer. Why do I have to specify each contact that I want to record Journal entries for? Couldn't Outlook simply record ALL contact-related e-mails, appointments, and so on? I realize that better integration between the Contacts List and the Journal might be the end of such contact management programs as Act! and Goldmine. However, since neither of these programs are Microsoft products, why not do to them what you've done to Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, and Netscape Navigator?

Options: I realize that Outlook has a lot tools and features... but does that mean its Options dialog boxes need to be as confusing as a Florida butterfly ballot? Every time I want to configure or change something in Outlook (usually 2 or 3 times a day) I have to make a call our network administrator. Anything you can do to make Outlook's Options more intuitive would be greatly appreciated by both me and my company's network administrator. 

Built-In Palm Support: OK, I know you guys are still hanging on to the idea that somehow Microsoft's ill fated PalmPC will catch up with the PalmPilot. While I can appreciate the fact that you want a product to succeed, I hope that you can appreciate that it costs us PalmPilot users at least $50 to buy add-on synchronization program just so we can have our Outlook information on our PalmPilot.

Good luck with the Justice Department!