Personal Tech
Client’s handy automations get grayed out unless you know the keyboard shortcut
If you’re using Quick Steps in Microsoft Outlook and
wondering why they’re grayed out, a bug introduced in version 2512 is the culprit.
Classic Outlook is approaching the
twilight years of
its prodigiously long life, but users can still fall victim to productivity-killing bugs – in this case, a problem with Quick Steps.
Quick Steps automates common or repetitive tasks in Outlook. Always have
to move a bunch of messages to a specific folder? Quick Steps is your friend.
Pin an email and mark it as unread? Again, the actions can be lined up in Quick
Steps and executed with a single click or a keyboard shortcut.
Until Microsoft breaks it.
In a support article,
Microsoft has confirmed that in some situations, Quick Steps in classic Outlook
can appear grayed out. The workaround (if rolling back or switching clients isn’t an option) is to use a keyboard shortcut. “The shortcut will work even if the Quick Step is grayed out in the
user interface,” Microsoft wrote.
The problem is that if a Quick Step
contains actions that “can’t be fulfilled,” it’s grayed out. Microsoft’s own the example states: “A Quick Step that moves a message to a folder and
clears categories will be grayed out in messages where there are no categories
applied.”
“This is known
to happen with Quick Steps with Flags and Categories actions such as ‘Clear
flags on message’ or ‘Clear categories’.”
Classic Outlook has suffered several glitches of late. Microsoft admitted in April that it could occasionally chow down on
system resources for no obvious reason. Then there was its tendency to explode when opening too many emails.
Microsoft has been clear that Classic Outlook’s days are numbered. Outlook 2024 is due to drop out of
mainstream support in 2029. However, there remains much that Classic Outlook does which New Outlook
doesn’t, such as COM support.
And, when Microsoft hasn’t broken them, Quick Steps. ®
