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Do you want to cancel? No or no

  • mott555

    I was adding a contact through Outlook and typed in the person's phone number. Then I wondered what that little drop-down arrow button means. So I clicked it.


    I got presented with this dialog. I'm not entirely sure what this is for, but I think it would only apply if I had a dial-up modem in my workstation, which since we're nearly in 2013 I haven't even seen a modem in many years.

     

    So I clicked cancel. And this came up.

    It doesn't matter whether you click yes or no, it takes you back to the previous form. It's not cancelable. It even implies that it isn't cancelable in the dialog titled "Confirm Cancel". I ended up just filling out the stupid form and thankfully it didn't get stuck on "Hey these settings are invalid because you don't have a modem. Try again? (Yes or yes).

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  • takashipl

    Apparently, you need to do some magic to fix this:  http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/outlook-2003/how-do-i-stop-the-location-information-pop-up-

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  • error
    Considered Harmful

    I love the "In addition, some programs will immediately show this dialog again when you cancel." "We know this is busted in some places and that some of our programs show cancel buttons where cancel isn't an option and that it may be entirely pointless to ask this question, but..."

    It also reeks of the message box coming out of some non-UI library, another no-no.

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  • flabdablet

    According to an ex-Microserf I once met, the Outlook guys are the bottom feeders in the Office team.

    It shows.

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  • blakeyrat

    It doesn't have to be a modem, in theory a VOIP system could use that information to make outgoing calls directly from your Outlook address book. But yeah, definitely a nasty bug you found.

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  • niteice

    Maybe it uses the system telephony framework to parse and validate phone numbers. TRWTF is that the system telephony framework will not function without location information.

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  • Jaime

    This bugbehavior has been around forever, I remember it happening as far back as NT 4.0. The easiest way to deal with it is to type in your area code and click OK. None of the other fields matter.

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  • E

    I hate this legacy in Windows, it still annoys me every time I open HyperTerminal on an XP box just to talk to something on a serial port "What? You need to dial international just to find COM3?"


    I can see why it exists but there are better ways to do it given the very few circumstances when it would actually be useful, I've never actually found it useful, even when I did have a dialup modem!

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  • Zemm

    I've seen these things filled out with all kids of weird entries. Including one where the postcode was entered into the "area code".

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  • A

    @flabdablet said:

    According to an ex-Microserf I once met, the Outlook guys are the bottom feeders in the Office team.

    It shows.

    Still better than Lotus Notes.

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  • ender

    IIRC, the dialog was introduced in Windows 95 and has not changed at all since then (including the part where clicking Cancel immediately shows it again).

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  • dhromed

    @ender said:

    IIRC, the dialog was introduced in Windows 95 and has not changed at all since the
     

    Paleofeatures are fun!

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