RSS in Outlook 2007 sucks big time...

outlookrss

<rant>

I was expecting a lot from Outlook 2007 regarding the RSS feeds.  What a disappointment! Look above, I can't even have a recent update on Scoble feed!

I’ve been using the RSS features in Outlook to read my news feeds and while this works the process of how the feeds are retrieved really sucks (I think). It seems to me the way the feed updates are structured is just too damn simplistic. There appear to be two options: Grab feeds on EVERY send and receive – which makes my send and receive terribly slow and long winded – or OFF.

No way to have a send and receive feeds ONLY, just all the stuff together! Strangely the beta 2 didn't give me the same problems.

So time for me to go back to NewsGator, which work perfectly well with the Beta, so hopefully with the RTM too.

Microsoft if you want people to adopt RSS in Outlook, a serious work is required!

</rant>

7 Comments

  • Did you try Send/Recieve groups? You can define one for email and second for RSS.

  • test

  • Thanks Kirkov.
    Mike yes it's a solution, but it's still slow, and if you look at the screen in my post, I still get errors which I don't have with Newsgator

  • If you are using IE6, these errors are known issues that can be resolved (if you so choose) by upgrading to IE7. An interesting thing to look at is that if you go to the RSS feed url in IE outside of Outlook, that feed will start updating again. In any case, the bug I reported during beta was determined to be in IE6, not Office for whatever that's worth.

  • The RSS feeds in outlook are indeed one of the most lamest I've seen in a long time. Not only can't you specify a refresh time per feed, though this is fixable with the groups, what's worse is that you can't specify the SORTING.

    As I have a lot of feeds, I like the most important ones at the top in a folder. You can't specify the sorting of the feeds, they're always alphabetical. THe view is also very simplistic: no specific views. Viewing a feed in a browser looks better.

    Rss feeds are simple to consume and the interface is also a no-brainer. You don't need 5 years full time work on this, yet the RSS feeds in outlook are looking like an afterthought and therefore pretty useless.

  • The RSS feeds in outlook are indeed one of the most lamest I've seen in a long time. Not only can't you specify a refresh time per feed, though this is fixable with the groups, what's worse is that you can't specify the SORTING.

    As I have a lot of feeds, I like the most important ones at the top in a folder. You can't specify the sorting of the feeds, they're always alphabetical. THe view is also very simplistic: no specific views. Viewing a feed in a browser looks better.

    Rss feeds are simple to consume and the interface is also a no-brainer. You don't need 5 years full time work on this, yet the RSS feeds in outlook are looking like an afterthought and therefore pretty useless.

  • So the bug is with IE6?! It sounds like "oh, lets correct this in IE7 so everybody is obliged to upgrade".

    I will not install IE7 because I do not need IE7. And that is main cause of 90% of MS software: lame integration.

    I will keep on using the beta version of google labs. That allows me to read the feeds anywhere.

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