Pros and Cons of MS Outlook

In my previous post, I have discussed about the new features added in the Microsoft outlook 2013 beta version.MS outlook is an integrated part of Microsoft office suite. Current version of Microsoft office suite contains various revised features and also, newly added features but still something is lacking behind. In spite of a lot newly added features, there is still a lot more to  be added in the forthcoming years.MS outlook Email Client offers various features for organizing Emails, solid spam and phishing filters as well as  social integration but though, its cons are legging side by side. Let’s have a look at the pros and cons of using the current version of Microsoft outlook.

Here is the List of some useful features of MS Outlook:

• Strong and Effective filters: These filters help you for spam filtering and blocking phishing attempts and thus, let you enjoy a safe Email Exchange process.
• Easy Email organization features: Its features such as Snappy, conversations and mail grouping, flexible search, smart folders, virtual folders make the task of email organization easier.         You can set up "Quick Steps" buttons in the toolbar; it will let you access filing mail, replies, new messages to oft-mailed recipients flagging and more in one-click.
• Effective integration features: You can now, enjoy powerful integration features for email messages, to-do lists, scheduling and social networking updates well. You can now easily linkup with your favorite social networking services without the use of social connector.
• Multiple accounts: It let you manage multiple accounts such as, POP, IMAP, Exchange, MSN and Hotmail accounts.
• Easy Message organization: MS Outlook provides filers that let you easily organize, thread, and label Email messages. You can easily find messages with the help of "Search Folders”, which automatically contain all items matching certain criteria.
• S/MIME email encryption and IRM access control: S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) and IRM (Information Rights Management) access control lets you enjoy secure Email exchange process, as it display all the mails in super-secure plain text and also supports HTML message viewer that makes the more secure.
• Better secure download: MS outlook provides displays all the mails in plain text and doesn't download remote images and thus, provides better privacy.
• Other Newly added features: New version of MS outlook contains a lot of  new features which makes it more consistent and easier to use, these new features include Metro UI, Hotmail and social networking integration, Peeks, Inline replies, Weather tool, Touch-oriented mode, Improved Calendar module, Renamed Contacts module. If you want to read in details about these features, see my previous article to know what’s new in MS outlook 2013 beta? 

Cons of using MS Outlook:

• Multitude of options can make its use, a bit confusing for users and there is a lot of setup for custom Outlook views that might be cucumber some for users. Some of the items in menus have been moved to other new menus which can be confusing for old Outlook users.
• Current versions of MS Outlook lack useful message templates, and its RSS feed reader flexibility that needs to be added in the future version.
•  There is no way to apply categories to messages in IMAP accounts in MS Outlook. This is also one of the lacking points in current versions of Outlook.
• Outlook items can be sorted by clicking a column title and by Clicking toggles between ascending and descending order. There is no proper way to manage sort order for a custom view, we have limited sorting options such as for
•  Most views: Sort by Priority, then Start Date 
• Recent view: Sort by Modified Date only.
• Auto prioritization need to be improved in the coming outlook versions. If we compare outlook with Trog Bar then, we can say that it comes close but still, Trog Bar is far much better as it auto-prioritize more nicely than Outlook.
• Auto-suggest tasks need to be improved in the next versions: The current version of outlook can’t auto-suggest tasks based on the users Strategic Calendar. 
• Message templates could be more flexible, though, and its smart folders could learn from example.

MS outlook is a popular email client, Pros and cons are walking side by side with its use. Its one among the popular Email clients, with the set of numerous features that makes it more interactive and easy to use .But still many extensions need to be added for expanding the feature set of Microsoft Outlook, lets hope for a better move in the coming versions.