Outlook Frustrations

I’m trying to use Outlook (2007) more as my mail and calendar client, but I’m finding it frustrating.

I’ve got both an Exchange account and an IMAP account set up, with an Exchange address book and an LDAP directory for looking up addresses. I can’t figure out how I can get Outlook to search the LDAP address book automatically for names entered on the To: line as I compose an email.

And when I specifically go over to the Address Book search screen, the LDAP searching algorithm seems broken – for instance, if I search Jack Hoffman, I get no answer, but if I search Hoffman, I see he’s listed as Jack D. Hoffman. Other email clients don’t have this problem.

And one more minor nit – I, like most people I know, tend to sort my email so that the newest messages appear on top. Then I scroll down to where the unread messages start, and work my way up to the newest. Apple’s Mac mail app knows that if I’ve got messages sorted that way it should move up when I delete the message I’m reading. Outlook, by contrast wants to move down, which necessitates two or three more key presses for each message. Multiply that by several hundred messages a day and it’s not so trivial as it seems.

Are there some configuration options I don’t know about that can fix these issues?

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