The migration from people.live.com to outlook.live.com (the full path is https://outlook.live.com/owa/?path=/people), which Microsoft started somewhere in 2016 (and happened in my case in October 2016) literally DESTROYED my whole address book!
It’s unusable now, every single contact, the whole address book is totally messed up and by this all the contacts (in total around 500) on my Windows Phones as well.
As we know phone contacts and contacts on other Windows devices nowadays sync with the contacts under outlook.live.com (formerly people.live.com) or in other words with the so-called Cloud.
It took me years(!) to create and manage my address book until it was complete and perfect, with all necessary and up-to-date information in the correct corresponding fields. Most of my 500 contacts contain plenty of detailed information.
In the past I had used the interface under people.live.com for this because it was far more convenient and comfortable than on a tiny phone display and its keyboard.
But with the migration from people.live.com to outlook.live.com Microsoft simply destroyed my indispensable and formerly perfect address book!
I’m basically living without my address book now, for 6 months already, but nothing changed in the meantime. My address book with its essential, very important contact data (mainly business contacts) remains unusable!
The whole address management, the whole address book solution with the current Outlook Web-App’s (OWA) “People” section under https://outlook.live.com/owa/?path=/people (serving as the central “Cloud”) with all its syncing People-/Contact-Apps for Desktop- and Mobile devices is nothing but a catastrophe, a immense chaos, a shocking huge mess and therefore something that seems to be programmed by dilettantes. It’s not just an embarrassing shameful programming performance by Microsoft but also completely unacceptable, particularly for business users.
Here now the long list of the countless problems and errors that occur with my address book since the migration from people.live.com to outlook.live.com.
Please note: All following examples and terms refer to the German version of the Outlook Web-App (OWA) and the People-App! I don’t know whether these issues apply to the English or other foreign-language versions as well.
(And I repeat: Before, when my address book still resided under people.live.com, I had NONE of the following problems. Before the migration to outlook.live.com my address book was in perfect status!)
- Private telephone numbers are falsely shown as business telephone numbers in the Outlook Web-App (OWA).
- Business telephone numbers are falsely shown as private telephone numbers in the Outlook Web-App (OWA).
- Telephone numbers disappear in the Phone’s Contacts-App even though these numbers are visible in the Outlook Web-App’s (OWA) people section under https://outlook.live.com/owa/?path=/people.
- The Outlook Web-App (OWA) and the Phone’s Contacts-App don’t follow/obey the entered format of telephone numbers. For example entered spaces between digits are either ignored or automatically placed at false positions.
- In the Outlook Web-App (OWA) one finds a strange input option (hidden under “Andere” numbers) for a telephone number called “Telefon 1 (Organisation)“. What the h… is this, I asked myself. If one enters a number there it will appear in the Phone’s
Contacts-App as “Telefon Firma”. So, dear Microsoft, could you explain us users, what the difference is between a Business-, Company-, a Work and a Firm-telephone number? At the moment we have all these four terms in use, for the same thing. That’s unnecessarily
confusing!
- Field names for telephone numbers are not clearly numbered anymore. In the Outlook Web-App (OWA) only a second private or business telephone number is marked as the second. In the Phone’s Contacts-App there is no numbering at all. One has to
guess which one is the main and which one is the secondary number.
- In the Outlook Web-App (OWA) in the telephone section of a contact one now finds strange fields named as „Recently mailed“ (“Kürzlich gemailt” in German). What does this nonsense mean? A recently mailed telephone number? These fields also can’t
be edited nor deleted.
- Private email addresses are falsely shown as business email addresses in the Outlook Web-App (OWA).
- Business email addresses are falsely shown as private email addresses in the Outlook Web-App (OWA).
- Email addresses duplicate in the Outlook Web-App (OWA). A stored private email address appears after a while, literally out of the blue, as the business or work email address as well, or vice versa, and sits then in a grayed-out field which
can’t be edited or deleted anymore. Therefore it’s impossible to get rid of these double entries because they appear in grayed-out fields.
- Many email addresses of my contacts got lost because it’s suddenly only possible to determine/store a total of three email addresses (only one private, one business and one other email address), not more. I had many contacts with more than three
email addresses. This is nothing unusual nowadays. Many people in these days have and use more than three email addresses!
- With some contacts the field family name is grayed-out. Therefore it’s impossible to enter a family name for this contact.
- Both in the Outlook Web-App (OWA) and the Phone’s Contacts-App it’s suddenly only possible to determine a “Private Website” for a contact and not a “Business website” or “Company website” anymore. That’s unbelievable!! What about important business contacts
and their company website URLs?
- By this, logically, all formerly determined “business websites” were afterwards (after the migration) falsely marked as “private websites”. One should be thankful, sarcastically said, that this data didn’t vanish completely.
- Anyway, the contact detail “Private Website” is not synchronized at all between the Phone’s Contacts-App and the Outlook Web-App (OWA). No matter where one enters this detail, in the Phone’s Contacts-App or in the Outlook Web-App (OWA), the corresponding
field on other devices always remains just empty.
- Field names for contact details, both the input field names and the afterwards displayed field names, are NOT uniform in the People(Contacts)-App on PCs, phones or tablet computers and in the Outlook Web-App’s (OWA) People-Section. Field names
should be uniform on all clients and not differ!
- A good example for this very confusing non-uniformity with fields is the Name-Section of a contact. In the Phone’s Contacts-App one finds in the Name-Section for a contact a whole lot of input fields for detailed name information which are,
in exactly the following order:
- Given name, Family name, Second given name, Nickname, Titel, Name affix, Phonetic name, Phonetic family name. These are 8 in total.
- In the Outlook Web-App (OWA), on the other hand, one finds in the Name-Section for a contact following input fields for detailed name information, which are, in exactly this order:
- Given name, Second given name, Family name, Salutation, Suffix, Yomi-Name, Yomi-Family Name. These are only 7 in total. The nickname field strangely appears here in the Further-Section and not in the Name-Section where it belongs.
- I think this example shows already a lot. It shows the non-uniformity, e.g. Yomi-Name versus Phonetic name or Titel versus Salutation.
.
- Further examples for non-uniformity with fields for telephone numbers or email addresses are:
- Andere, Weitere, Sonstige… All these terms are used which all means the same in German.
- Persönlich und Privat... which all means the same in German.
- Arbeit, Geschäftlich, Firma… which all means the same in German.
- Example: In the Outlook Web-App (OWA), if I enter a telephone number in the field “Weitere” and then save the contact, this telephone number afterwards is shown as “Andere” while the Phone’s Contacts-App/People-App shows the same telephone number
as “Sonstige”. That’s confusion at its best.
- If there are more than two private or business numbers they are NOT numbered in the Phone’s Contacts-App/People-App. How one should know here which the primary is and which one the secondary number?
- The Outlook Web-App (OWA) confusingly uses several different terms for private and business telephone numbers and email-addresses which in fact mean exactly the same in German:
- The terms Privat (private in English) and Persönlich (personal in English) and the terms Arbeit (Work or Job in English) and Geschäftlich (business in English). This is very confusing and looks chaotic. How about making a decision and determine
one term only for both private and business related data in an address book? The terms Privat (private in English) and Geschäftlich (business in English) would be the best choice here because they are the most common for this in German language! Dear Microsoft:
Please forget the other terms Persönlich (personal in English), Arbeit (Work or Job in English). Because, what’s the difference between a work-number, a business-number, a company-number and a firm-number? Or is there any difference in a private and a personal
telephone number? I see none.
- Edited contacts (or contact details) in the Phone’s Contacts-App are very often not saved. After a while the old data from the Cloud is shown again and the changes are gone. Synchronization with the Outlook Web-App (OWA) doesn’t work either.
- An address (and its details) is in the Phone’s Contacts-App not displayed as “Address” anymore but as “Coordinates”. Geographic coordinates are a set of numbers, letters or symbols and NOT an address!!
- If a profile picture is added for a contact in the Outlook Web-App (OWA) it can’t be deleted there anymore. One has to delete the whole contact to get rid of the picture.
- In the Outlook Web-App (OWA) the “Skype Echo / Sound Test Service“ appears in my contacts even though I configured all my devices and clients not to show Skype contacts and filter/keep them out from my normal address book.
- The unwanted automatic linking of contacts (without being asked!) causes huge problems as well. Contacts seem to be randomly linked with each other, most of them contacts which have nothing to do with each other! This automatic linking is just
very faulty! Unlinking one of these automatically linked contacts doesn’t work. All faulty entries and date can’t even be deleted or edited anymore. What a mess! Such contacts can only be deleted to get rid of the errors in it and afterwards recreated. There
should be a user option to turn off this automatic linking!
- On a Windows Phone, if one needs to see and use the important provider numbers which are stored on Prepaid-SIM cards, one has to import them first to the contacts directory on the phone. But in consequence these SIM card only related contacts
are shown in the Outlook Web-App (OWA) as well. SIM card only related contacts then appear in my normal address book? What a nonsense!
- And last but not least from a German users view:
- With the transition from people.live.com to outlook.live.com and the new GUI (Graphic user interface) also came a stupid renaming. Formerly ones contacts were correctly titled as “Contacts” (in German “Kontakte”). But now they call ones contacts “Outlook People”. For English native speakers this might be still ok, I mean, talking now about people instead of contacts. But the German translation of “Outlook People” is absolutely weird. Microsoft translates “Outlook People” as “Outlook Personen”. A person in German is a person and not people, dear Microsoft! “Outlook Personen” sounds very stupid in German and doesn’t make sense to a German. In Germany people use and have an address book, a telephone directory, a contact list or contact directory but definitely no “Outlook-Personen”!! This translation is pure nonsense!! In the Phone’s Contacts-App the titling remains “Contacts” (in German “Kontakte”), thanks God. The easiest would be to stick to the term “Address book”.
I was waiting and hoping for 6 long months now for these problems to be fixed. But nothing happened.
Microsoft: I want to have my address book back!
