Technology Notebook

Outlook 2002::Printing HTML formatted e-mails

PROBLEM/BUG:

When printing an HTML formatted e-mail in corporate version of Outlook 98 and above the attachment name does not print. When printing a message, no indication if given that there were attachments let alone what they are. This works perfectly fine on Outlook Express 6.
ANSWER FROM MICROSOFT SUPPORT:
...several companies have filed DCR's (Design Change Request's) to
change the design for printing attachment icons using HTML email
formatting. Unfortunately, due to the scope of this design change
coupled with the work the Office development team was doing these DCR's
were not accepted. Following is information from Microsoft as to why
these request changing were not accepted.

"Outlook uses the standard Internet Explorer print dialog when printing
email formatted with HTML which has no mechanism for handling
attachments. Office development has examined the possibility of creating
a new print dialog specifically to handle this design change request and
found the risks to code stability and the introduction of new
localization dependencies unworkable for a service release of Outlook.
Inclusion of this functionality in a future version is under
consideration."

RANT

So a free version of Outlook that comes with about every PC you buy will perform this function. However, when a large company pays major money for the latest enterprise edition of Exchange and the newest version of Outlook XP it won't perform this function. Not only this, but that's the way it's been for years. It's been so long, in fact, there is a company who, for about $20 per seat, will sell us a "add-on" for Outlook that will fix this. That should be embarrassing to Microsoft, but after all they are keeping their development channel in business. Just another $200 worth of "add-on" software will make up for some pretty obvious features that people want, but Microsoft just plain doesn't care about that. What's more, our authorized Microsoft support company's answer was to give us a link to www.sperrysoftware.com. Paying for Microsoft support turns out to further an a ploy to advertise overpriced add-on software.
We spent huge money migrating to a mostly Microsoft environment. The e-mail system we migrated from provided this rudimentary capability. There are certain minimal, obvious options that reasonable people come to expect of software. Microsoft just hasn't been responsive to what real people want in the real world. They should balance the "risks to code stability and the introduction of new localization dependencies" against the guarantee of looking downright stupid.