Best place to store business critical documents? Try Outlook deleted items!



  • Not really a coding WTF, but a business process WTF

    Just had an email from a colleague showing that a client was threatening to cancel their support contract because items were going missing in their 'deleted items' folder. One of which was a business critical document with a lot of ££s worth of revenue in invoices on it...

    Apparently, they have been using Outlook for 15 years and they "haven't just started deleting emails by accident"... headdesk immediately followed.



  • @Charleh said:

    'deleted items' folder

    A contradiction in terms, if ever there was one.

    @Charleh said:

    Apparently, they have been using Outlook for 15 years and they "haven't just started deleting emails by accident"...

    Seems to me like indeed they haven't: I suspect they've been doing it for quite some time, and are only figuring that fact out just now.



  • I've seen a lot of people using the Deleted Items folder as their own personal archive. And the ones that do always seem to expect that the e-mails will never disappear.

    What can we do about it, people are idiots



  • @GuntherVB said:

    What can we do about it, people are idiots

    That's the sort of attitude that makes people go: "what can we do about it, developers are socially inept nerds".



  • @toon said:

    @GuntherVB said:

    What can we do about it, people are idiots

    That's the sort of attitude that makes people go: "what can we do about it, developers are socially inept nerds".

    Not really. The clue is in the name of this magical folder. It's got two words in it: 'deleted' and 'items'. Any reasonable person would realise that 'deleted' means gone. Do these idiots complain that the delete key is removing letters in the things they're typing? Do they realise that the word has origins dating back to Latin (hell the word has barely changed: deletus) and it means to destory or remove.

    Personally, I think these users are fucking idiots. It's like me trying to store my car in a scrapyard compactor and then complain when it's unusable.

     


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @ASheridan2 said:

    Do these idiots complain that the delete key is removing letters in the things they're typing?

    What if it removed two letters?!



  • @ASheridan2 said:

    @toon said:
    @GuntherVB said:

    What can we do about it, people are idiots

    That's the sort of attitude that makes people go: "what can we do about it, developers are socially inept nerds".

    Not really. The clue is in the name of this magical folder. It's got two words in it: 'deleted' and 'items'. [...] Personally, I think these users are fucking idiots.

    I agree completely. However, I don't think all people are idiots. That remark sounded like a remark from the kind of person that decides if a statement makes sense, before it is uttered. The sort of person who somehow magically knows whether or not someone is a moron, before that person has finished their sentence. I say, first hear someone out, then decide if they're an idiot (like those users) or not.



  • @boomzilla said:

    @ASheridan2 said:
    Do these idiots complain that the delete key is removing letters in the things they're typing?

    What if it removed two letters?!

    Cool, but which two? I vote for E and I



  • People view their deleted items much like they view the recycling bin.  Deleted stuff goes there, but they think they should be able to undo the delete no matter how long it is in there, and that it should not be perm deleted until they hit the empty recycling bin button.



  • @snoofle said:

    @boomzilla said:

    @ASheridan2 said:
    Do these idiots complain that the delete key is removing letters in the things they're typing?

    What if it removed two letters?!

    Cool, but which two? I vote for E and I

    I've stared at this for minutes now. I presume you are both pointing out a mistake I made, but I just can't see it :-/

     



  • @Anketam said:

    People view their deleted items much like they view the recycling bin.  Deleted stuff goes there, but they think they should be able to undo the delete no matter how long it is in there, and that it should not be perm deleted until they hit the empty recycling bin button.

    These would be the same people who never have their rubbish bins emptied in case they suddenly remember they meant to keep that pizza box from 2006.



  • @Anketam said:

    People view their deleted items much like they view the recycling bin.  Deleted stuff goes there, but they think they should be able to undo the delete no matter how long it is in there, and that it should not be perm deleted until they hit the empty recycling bin button.

    If you throw something into the paper bin in the office, you can hardly complain that you were using that as a filing area when the cleaner came and emptied it out. This whole skeuomorphism that got introduced with the recycle bin shouldn't just stop at the name and the icon. If it's intended as a digital equivalent of a real world object, then don't get surprised when it behaves like a real world object.

     



  • @ASheridan2 said:

    Any reasonable person would realise that 'deleted' means gone.

    But in most users' experience an item in this folder is most demonstrably [i]not[/i] gone. It's right there in plain sight.

    As has been argued at length on TDWTF before, any reasonable person might be forgiven for concluding that the word 'deleted' is being used to mean something different in this case.

    @ASheridan2 said:

    Do these idiots complain that the delete key is removing letters in the things they're typing?

    But they can often get those letters back, can't they?

    @ASheridan2 said:

    Do they realise that the word has origins dating back to Latin (hell the word has barely changed: deletus) and it means to destory or remove.

    I doubt it.

    @ASheridan2 said:

    Personally, I think these users are fucking idiots. It's like me trying to store my car in a scrapyard compactor and then complain when it's unusable.

    Now that [i]is[/i] idiotic. Did you get your money back?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @snoofle said:

    @boomzilla said:

    @ASheridan2 said:
    Do these idiots complain that the delete key is removing letters in the things they're typing?

    What if it removed two letters?!

    Cool, but which two? I vote for E and I

    Well they've already removed Þ, Ƿ, Đ and Ȝ (at least æ and œ are still used occasionally, and & has been re-purposed.)


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @ASheridan2 said:

    @snoofle said:

    @boomzilla said:

    @ASheridan2 said:
    Do these idiots complain that the delete key is removing letters in the things they're typing?

    What if it removed two letters?!

    Cool, but which two? I vote for E and I

    I've stared at this for minutes now. I presume you are both pointing out a mistake I made, but I just can't see it :-/

     

    Have you ever read the tags and noticed people complaining about the editor? Me, neither.



  • IMHO, the name "Deleted items" is part of the problem - the folder should've been called Trash, since this would drive the point home better.



  • @ASheridan2 said:

    If you throw something into the paper bin in the office, you can hardly complain that you were using that as a filing area when the cleaner came and emptied it out.
    Don't even kid about that. I know someone who balanced documents on top of their bin, and then complained that they disappeared by the next morning. Apparently it was obvious that it wasn't rubbish. They then had to go and dive in the big dumpster outside to go and recover the documents.

     



  •  I thought it was just the backspace key and not the delete key that had this problem on the CS editor...



  • @ASheridan2 said:

    If it's intended as a digital equivalent of a real world object, then don't get surprised when it behaves like a real world object.

    To be fair, real recycle bins don't auto-expand until they're taking up 10% of the office and only then start automatically throwing out the oldest stuff.

    Perhaps a compost heap would have been a better metaphor.



  • @Mole said:

    Don't even kid about that. I know someone who balanced documents on top of their bin, and then complained that they disappeared by the next morning. Apparently it was obvious that it wasn't rubbish. They then had to go and dive in the big dumpster outside to go and recover the documents.
    These people are the reason we need to start taking warning labels off of things, let natural selection take its course for a while.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @ASheridan2 said:

    I thought it was just the backspace key and not the delete key that had this problem on the CS editor...

    Now I think you're not familiar with the concept of, "What if...?"


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @ASheridan2 said:

    @Mole said:

    Don't even kid about that. I know someone who balanced documents on top of their bin, and then complained that they disappeared by the next morning. Apparently it was obvious that it wasn't rubbish. They then had to go and dive in the big dumpster outside to go and recover the documents.
    These people are the reason we need to start taking warning labels off of things, let natural selection take its course for a while.

    To be fair, these sort of people don't pay attention to the warnings. The labels are just an attempt to prevent lawyers for the next of kin from cashing in.



  • @boomzilla said:

    Now I think you're not familiar with the concept of, "What if...?"
    whatif?

     



  • @ender said:

    IMHO, the name "Deleted items" is part of the problem - the folder should've been called Trash, since this would drive the point home better.

    Apple may or may not have a trademark on that, since I've never seen the term trash used outside their own software.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @MiffTheFox said:

    @ender said:
    IMHO, the name "Deleted items" is part of the problem - the folder should've been called Trash, since this would drive the point home better.

    Apple may or may not have a trademark on that, since I've never seen the term trash used outside their own software.

    Kmail, for one, uses "Trash" for its respective folder.



  • @flabdablet said:

    Perhaps a compost heap would have been a better metaphor.

    Wonderful idea. And then the contents of the files in the compost heap should be partly shuffled, the longer the heavier, until only random bits are left. Drives home the point that that data needs backup.



  • @MiffTheFox said:

    Apple may or may not have a trademark on that, since I've never seen the term trash used outside their own software.
    At least both Courier and dovecot IMAP servers name the folder Trash. I've also seen some clients do the same, though I don't think I've seen a Windows-only client that named the folder that way.



  • Well-known story. Happens more often than you think. Not wanting to repeat myself.



  • @ASheridan2 said:

    @Anketam said:
    People view their deleted items much like they view the recycling bin.  Deleted stuff goes there, but they think they should be able to undo the delete no matter how long it is in there, and that it should not be perm deleted until they hit the empty recycling bin button.
    If you throw something into the paper bin in the office, you can hardly complain that you were using that as a filing area when the cleaner came and emptied it out. This whole skeuomorphism that got introduced with the recycle bin shouldn't just stop at the name and the icon. If it's intended as a digital equivalent of a real world object, then don't get surprised when it behaves like a real world object.
    You really should not try to apply real world logic to software, specially software Microsoft makes.

    Microsoft taught people that things in the recycling bin don't magicly vanish, so people not surprisingly assume that items placed in deleted items will also not magicly vanish.  Their logic is completely flawed but this type of short circuit logic is common and frequently results in the correct conclusions, just not in this case.

     



  • @ASheridan2 said:

    @snoofle said:
    @boomzilla said:
    @ASheridan2 said:
    Do these idiots complain that the delete key is removing letters in the things they're typing?
    What if it removed two letters?!
    Cool, but which two? I vote for E and I

    I've stared at this for minutes now. I presume you are both pointing out a mistake I made, but I just can't see it :-/

    I assumed he was making a reference to IE, which at least for me there have been plenty of times where I wanted to delete it



  • Also has been discussed here.



  • @boomzilla said:

    @ASheridan2 said:
    Do these idiots complain that the delete key is removing letters in the things they're typing?

    What if it removed two letters?!

    What if it did the same thing as the backspace button?



  • @Anketam said:

    Microsoft taught people that things in the recycling bin don't magicly vanish, so people not surprisingly assume that items placed in deleted items will also not magicly vanish.  Their logic is completely flawed but this type of short circuit logic is common and frequently results in the correct conclusions, just not in this case.
    I might be wrong, but I thought large items would automatically be removed from Recycle Bin if the disk was becoming full, or am I imagining that? Been so long since I've been in that situation, I really can't remember.



  • @Anketam said:

    Apple taught people that things in the Trash don't magicly vanish, so people not surprisingly assume that items placed in deleted items will also not magicly vanish.  Their logic is completely flawed but this type of short circuit logic is common and frequently results in the correct conclusions, just not in this case.

    System 7 predates Windows 95'd that for you.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @ASheridan2 said:

    @snoofle said:

    @boomzilla said:

    @ASheridan2 said:
    Do these idiots complain that the delete key is removing letters in the things they're typing?

    What if it removed two letters?!

    Cool, but which two? I vote for E and I

    I've stared at this for minutes now. I presume you are both pointing out a mistake I made, but I just can't see it :-/

     

     

     

    Treating this as a straight line, they're talking about the ambiguity of using the word letter to both mean a piece of email and also a single glyph in the English alphabet.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Charleh said:

    Not really a coding WTF, but a business process WTF

    Just had an email from a colleague showing that a client was threatening to cancel their support contract because items were going missing in their 'deleted items' folder. One of which was a business critical document with a lot of ££s worth of revenue in invoices on it...

    Apparently, they have been using Outlook for 15 years and they "haven't just started deleting emails by accident"... headdesk immediately followed.

     

    I think the only way you can really stop this is by capping people's mailbox size.  Then again, that's a horrible thing to do in this day and age.



  • Yet another case of "breaking the contract". This is why I'm a big supporter of deliberately trying to break applications (well, in this case, "business processes") that rely on implementation details. For example if Outlook and Windows randomly deleted items from the trash after some time, they probably would have learned not to store important stuff in there before.



  • @GuntherVB said:

    I've seen a lot of people using the Deleted Items folder as their own personal archive. And the ones that do always seem to expect that the e-mails will never disappear.

    What can we do about it, people are idiots

     

    It's perfect for this. You hit the "delete" key on your keyboard and bam, archived imediaely :)

     I have seen my share of such people. Logical answer is "Do you put your money in the trash bin so you can find it back later?"

     



  •  No, it's about CS's implementation of TinyMCE, but snoofle started talking about actual characters within text. What a silly combo-breaker.



  • @tchize said:

    I have seen my share of such people. Logical answer is "Do you put your money in the trash bin so you can find it back later?"

    +1


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @dhromed said:

     No, it's about CS's implementation of TinyMCE,
    NitPick - I thought it was because the version of TinyMCE dates from the Paleozoic Era, rather than any particular brutality foisted upon it by CS.



  • @snoofle said:

    @boomzilla said:

    @ASheridan2 said:
    Do these idiots complain that the delete key is removing letters in the things they're typing?

    What if it removed two letters?!

    Cool, but which two? I vote for E and I

    J and U.  If the Romans didn't need them, neither do we.

     



  • @MiffTheFox said:

    @Anketam said:
    Apple taught people that things in the Trash don't magicly vanish, so people not surprisingly assume that items placed in deleted items will also not magicly vanish.  Their logic is completely flawed but this type of short circuit logic is common and frequently results in the correct conclusions, just not in this case.

    System 7 predates Windows 95'd that for you.
    I have no quams blaming Apple.  But still precedent was set.  And to make matters worse with the messed up logic.  Trash/Recycle Bin dealts with files not emails, and as such they are fundamentally different but that does not stop people from making dangerous assumptions. 


  • @cconroy said:

    J and U.  If the Romans didn't need them, neither do we.
    Explains why they went after Brian so much, they couldn't find Ess.



  • @ender said:

    IMHO, the name "Deleted items" is part of the problem - the folder should've been called Trash, since this would drive the point home better.

    Another reason why Lotus Notes is better than Outlook.



  • @Anketam said:

    Microsoft taught people that things in the recycling bin don't magicly vanish,

    They do vanish at unpredictable intervals. The only thing that makes your statement technically correct is the word "magicly" which you misspelled. SO NYAH!!!

    I do agree that the "deleted items" folder in your email client should have the same name as the same folder in the file browser. Whether that be "recycle bin" or "trash" or whatever. Because that would be more clear. Oh, and BTW? The "deleted items" folder in your email, much like the recycle bin, is emptied at unpredictable intervals. The only difference is the name.

    I also agree that while the ability to recover deleted files is a great feature (and, oh BTW, the CLI everybody loves so much doesn't fucking have it, so good luck if you make a typo), it is perhaps a little *too* accessible. Perhaps instead of being placed on the desktop it should be hidden away a bit, like in the control panel? Maybe when you restore an item the first time you should get a giant pop-up that says, "hey it's not a folder!" I don't know.



  • @JoeCool said:

    Another reason why Lotus Notes is better than Outlook.
    Woah, I think Outlook has some huge sucky problems as much as the next guy, but you're advocating Lotus Notes? Talk about out of the frying pan and into the industrial deep fat fryer.



  • @MiffTheFox said:

    System 7 predates Windows 95'd that for you.

    ... yeah and System 1.0 predates System 7. And GeOS predates Windows 95. Also Amiga. Also... why the hell are you being so selective OS-wise?

    System 7 was like the WORST Mac OS. Why would you pick it out of the dozens of systems before Windows 95 that had trash can? Ugh I hated System 7. Did you know you could corrupt your entire system, for all time, by simply dragging a font out of the "System Folder:Fonts" folder? That perfectly innocent action? Bam. Broken system. Also it wouldn't run Carrier Command.



  • @ASheridan2 said:

    @JoeCool said:
    Another reason why Lotus Notes is better than Outlook.
    Woah, I think Outlook has some huge sucky problems as much as the next guy, but you're advocating Lotus Notes? Talk about out of the frying pan and into the industrial deep fat fryer.

    Another reason why having a sense of humor is better than being Sheridan.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Another reason why having a sense of humor is better than being Sheridan.
    Is that the best you could do?


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