Most Annoying Feature Ever Imposed on Users..

Sometime back a year or so ago, the Dayjob(tm) switched over from Notes to Outlook. In someways Outlook was quite an improvement as Notes was a veritable Jabba the Hutt definition of bloated software, while the current incantation of Outlook was much lighter and faster.

But somewhere along the line it came with the Most Annoying Feature Ever: "Reading View".

Opening a .DOC file attached to a message, instead of just opening up in Word's normal WYSISYG mode, it opens in "Reading View". On my system it comes up in a two page book format, but the text in each "page" is blown up to the point that it might get three or four words per line without discernable formatting at all.

Q: How does this help?
A: It does not. It's really quite annoying.

Why does this feel like a feature dreamed up by some PHd candidate on how to make computers easier for older users? The idea seems to be to blow up the text so it can be read without putting on ones reading glasses. But of course when the text is blown up like that, the formatting gets trashed... so they just don't format it at all! Gee Thanks. The formatting was there for a reason. It clarifies the meaning of the text and makes it easier to read. Oh, and BTW, if I'm working on the computer, I already have my readers on! Thanks for nothing.

I had asked around to see if anyone knew the proper MSIncantation to disable this "feature". No one did, but heads shook in agreement at the annoyance of it all. Today the annoyance reached critical mass which caused me enough to pop up the paperclip and type in "I never want to see the reading view ever again". And Low and behold, it told me where I could turn it off!

Halleluja! Tip of the day: Tools|Options|General tab, uncheck Open in reading view.
The checkbox is a little hard to find as it's not in the left hand column. Instead it's all alone at the top of the right column.