Emails don’t need to work like text messages. Why are reactions even a thing for them?
I like the idea - I don’t want to send you an email back, here’s a thumbs up to show I’ve received it.
I hate the execution because I get an email telling me you reacted to my email.
If it isn’t the first email you’ve ever exchanged, why can’t you just plan for the fact that they got your email and if they drop the ball the fault is not yours?
“I’m sending you this thing, if anything is wrong please let me know; otherwise I will assume all is agreed and we can move forward.”
No response required. Stay off my lawn, don’t send me an email or a text or anything else that just says “ok”. Maybe I’m showing my age…
Nailed it. This is how email works.
If you want to ensure i de-prioritise your request, request a read receipt or send a follow up email the next day.
If you don’t want me to ever do anything for you promptly ever again call me to check whether I got your email.
I know a guy that calls before the email even reaches my inbox. “I just sent you an email…”
We end up waiting on the phone until I say “oh, there it is”. To which he asks “what do you think”. So I have to stop the world and read the fucking thing while he’s waiting on the phone so I can give him a comment…
That is the most stupid use of time ever.
I’m not sure what you even want then. If an email can’t be delivered you should get a kickback notifications saying it can’t be delivered. Though, that may depend on the email service.
Ans if you’re effectively looking for a read-receipt, I’m not sure why you wouldn’t want to be notified of it. I don’t want to have to manually check anything to see if there is new information to look at. An email may be overkill, but 🤷.
Not everyone wants read receipt notifications for everything. It is much easier if it is manual just like message reactions. So reaction is the best solution here. But as the user stated, its execution is not the best.
A simple indication on the email in the sidebar list would be fine. A whole ass new email is just a bit much.
our secretary uses a meme to end her daily attendance email, so I give her a laughing face when its a good one. She started it on an email I made a joke in. So I just recipicate it. I also like the thumbs up on emails that are FYI type things
What is a daily attendance email?
“Hi, Im in attendance today! 🍆”
we have staff that are all over the geographical area and to keep everyone up-to-the day on who is where (at specific locations, working from home, etc) they did this. Its also used for specific “hey everyone this is important today” kinda things
same reason there is a poop emoji in a “professional” messaging app… MS is idiotic and out of ideas
MS with that “hello, fellow kids” energy.
Or, and I know this is hard for all of you, not everyone has a stick up their asses and try to make it through the day with some light-hearted fun and it’s an expected feature.
If you’re so servile that you feel non-zero discomfort if you don’t assure people you read their email, you might be better suited to a career in shining shoes.
“I get my socializing exclusively at work. I actually enjoy meetings that could have been an email.”
100%
You can blame Unicode for that.
Yeah, you won’t see the poop emoji in Linux or LibreOffice! 🤦🏻♂️
(Unicode block: U+1F4A9)
Outlook’s own reaction handling is terrible. It adds the reaction icon to the email, but it doesn’t mark it as unread or bring it to the top. The next day, I get an email with all the reactions for the day.
“Available for a meeting at 9 tomorrow?” 👍
Then the daily digest shows up at 9 and the meeting was never scheduled.
I’m confused as to why it wasn’t scheduled? Were you the one who was scheduling it, or were you reaction-replying to an invite, anticipating that the reaction emoji would accept the invitation and put the meeting on your calendar?
They sent a mail to check someone’s availability and didnt send the invite because they got no response.
Why is anyone relying on reactions for anything important and/or time sensitive?
Also, even if you’re not getting your reaction summary email timely, you can look at the email you sent and see the reactions.
Also also, if I am scheduling something first thing and it’s late in the work day, I’m messaging the key people. To do otherwise seems like bad planning/choice making/trying to get out of meeting at that time. Alternatively, I would just send the invite as the first contact. At 8:59, if the key people hadn’t responded, cancel with the message, not everyone was able to meet. How about this date and time?
If I message my boss and say “Hey have you got a slot to meet with Legal frst thing tomorrow” and I dont hear anything, the meeting isnt being scheduled. If it was vital I’d call but that isnt really the case.
My work uses outlook and I still get a whole fuckin email saying “Dipshit has reacted 👍” and it’s extremely irritating. I’ll need to remember to turn off reactions on Monday.
I need a shirt that says “dipshit has reacted 👍”
I have a coworker that responds to everything with emojis. Teams messages. Emails. Everything. Even if it’s not relevant to him or directed at him. He always does it. I want to hit him with a chair.
I disabled it as soon as they were launched. I also disabled the quick reply, reactions, and to text messages etc.
I will say, it’s practical for everyone using the same system. Sometimes it’s nice to acknowledge an email without having to respond to it
And when I had my school account, they’d send out phishing alerts of what to look out for. Those emails would be spammed with crying laughing emojis
In the case of Outlook, read receipts are a thing if the sender wants at least an acknowledgement. True that the receiver can just click no on the option to send that receipt, but presumably they’re also the type that wouldn’t have sent a reaction to the email in the first place.
Hey let’s all change what we do and how we do it to accommodate the monopoly Microsoft. Again.
Don’t forget to add a string to your wifi ssid so Microsoft doesn’t index it.
And if you don’t want Google to index it you need to use a different string, and it must be placed at the end.
good thing i dont talk to anyone and i only get emails from companies, spam, and appointments. this would annoy the fuck outta me.
you got it!
I got a thumbs-up reply to an email once and immediately looked up how to block it.
👍
🎉
I fucking guarantee you that Microsofts reasoning for this feature is to again force people to use their shit software.
Oh, don’t want those spam mails? Yeaaaahhh, you need to switch to outlook for that.
Or, you know, just block domains that use Microsoft email
Or, you know, just block domains that use Microsoft email
I’m guessing you probably don’t realize how many organizations host their email with Microsoft.
Surprise, you get the spam even if you use Outlook.
deleted by creator
How in the world is that related to the topic at hand?
👍
Coming from a neurodivergent: fuck Microsoft for doing this. It does not go along well with how email should work, makes it confusing for several reasons and shits over a lot of expectations.
According to their history, this is the extend part.
Thankfully we’ve not yet upgraded from Outlook 2016… saving this for if we ever do.
Neil is great. Checkout his other work and follow him on mastodon
Yeah i was wondering what was causing this super weird behavior. I knew it was only from microsoft but i didnt understand what was the point. Maybe there is no point.
Is there a way to use this in Apple Mail?
Reactions are great. They allow for feedback without adding to the pile of email everyone already gets.
i agree reactions can be useful, but adding them to email the way Microsoft has is obnoxious for recipients using any client other than theirs. and, i think this is probably their intention: receiving an email reaction in a client that doesn’t render it as a reaction feels wrong and MS probably hopes this will encourage some people to switch to using Outlook.
the right way to add reactions to email would be to make it opt-in (and also not a vendor-specific header but instead something which aims to become a standard): clients should only allow reactions to messages which contain a header signaling that the sender supports receiving them.
In most office environments I’ve worked at there is no option for using another email client.
but email is used specifically for receipts, otherwise messaging would be used
I realize that this is up to the user and that choice is great, so the issue comes down to implementation. and as a user… I find out far after the fact that somebody reacted to my email because outlook doesn’t show me those notifications in a timely manner, nor am I going to look for them because I consider that a chat feature and Microsoft already sends me enough notification spam
“Thanks.”
One of my most hated email message bodies.
Better to read and don’t reply, or send a message and expect it was received IMO
If it’s worth replying, write a reply. I do not need a notification from anyone of a round asshole flashing different colors and gyrating because you casually agree in a congratulatory fashion.
Ok but the point is, if anyone isn’t using Outlook they do get a pointless email. My workplace doesn’t use Outlook and I get tons of these. I’m glad to have learnt I can block them though.
😣
💯
