I recently decided to stop paying Microsoft for subscription, and since I was using Outlook (the classic desktop one from Office package), which essentially stopped working because of that, I needed an alternative client. My biggest requirement is ability to see both calendar and tasks in 1 singular sidebar (without switching or anything like that), and so far it looks like emClient is the only alternative to Outlook. So I tried switching to it, and I am still trying, but… There have been quite a few things, I’d like to comment on.
Let’s start from “nice-to-haves”:
- Badge on taskbar to show new items (ideally with a count, but that’s optional). I noticed that at some point it did start showing it when a new email arrives, but it was not consistent for me for some reason, and it still does not appear sometimes. It also dissappears right after you open the client, even though you may still have new messages, that you did not read. It also does not count subfolders, but that’s true for Outlook, as well.
- Option to show calendar month in Agenda, with ability to change “Today” too any of the day there and then show items based on selected date. This is how it works in Outlook, and I find it really helpfull, when you need to plan something for next week or beyond.
- Option to hide tasks without start date in Agenda
- Option to hide tasks without due date in Agenda
- Option to alternate row colors for agenda items separately from the main window. Right now it’s either we alterante everywhere or nowhere. I would prefer alternation in main window, but no alternation in Agenda
- Option to somehow change color for the header groups in Agenda. At least in dark theme they just look like a wall of text. Or maybe not an option, but just give it a different color.
These are “minor gripes”. A bit more than “nice-to-haves” to me, but perhaps not something “important”:
- Checkmark near tasks in Agenda looks as if this is a complete task, perhaps a different icon should be used? or none at all? Or maybe move the checkbox under the icon?
- Option to select default “Open” behavior for double-click for recurring tasks, when opening them (at least from Agenda)
- Option to open tasks in read-only mode by default
- Option to mark currently open instance of the task as completed
- In tasks window selecting top level folder does not equate to selecting subfolders as well, although it feels intuitive to do
What looks like a bug, but still not as critical or I may be doing something wrong:
- When setting a custom notification sound it seems to use a default Windows notification, instead of the file selected. At least if I use a file from C:\Users\simbi\OneDrive\Documents!Personal\Customizations\Ringtones but if it’s from C:\Program Files (x86)\eM Client\Sound - works fine
- Subfolders in inbox did not start syncing right away. At the same time after I had to re-add account multiple times, they did work as expected.
- When editing tasks date fields need specifically to be clicked on the arrow, to show calendar, even when empty, and you can’t edit the content of them without first selecting a date. So I can’t, for example, copy-paste the start date or some other date.
- This may be a bug, but I can no longer replicate it: initially recurring task with 2 days on a week was not syncing Wednesday to emClient, only Sunday. But after 3 re-adds of the account it seems to have started doing that normally, it looks.
Significant deficiencies or bugs:
- Sync of recurring tasks from Outlook seems “broken”, since recurring tasks are synced with start date instead of due date (in Outlook it can be either due date only or both start and due dates), but at the same time if I open “all occurrences” the date is there. Although they do seem to pop-up in reminders window normally, so maybe the issue is specifically to how they are shown in Agenda due to the dates. This results in all recurring tasks being treated as “someday” and not showing up properly in Agenda.
- Multi-step tasks from Outlooks are just empty. Not only lacking steps, but do not even have description or any indication, that they have multiple steps
- Marking recurring tasks as completed in emClient does not mark them as such in Outlook/ToDo. It seems to update their dates, but current instance is still present in Outlook/ToDo. If I mark it completed in Outlook/ToDo - emClient at least loses due date, as if the task was synced from scratch (as per point 1)
- Updating tasks (including completing them) seems to “corrupt” contents of those tasks, at least in Outlook (screenshot attached), but at the same time they can look normal in ToDo.
- If task has due date same as start date agenda shows due date +1 day, and thus groups items incorrectly. Reminders do seem to be triggered correctly, but possibly because as per Agenda they are “-X hours”
- Folder hierarchy error, which was reported by others already
- Now this one is complex, but I got and I am not sure exactly what’s going on, but I got it twice, so enabled diagnostic logging to see if I can catch something. I had 2 symptoms: new tasks from Outlook/ToDo were not syncing to emClient, and I was getting message about an email pending in outbox. The email turned out to be in local Outbox, not Outlook’s one, and it was not going anywhere, and I did not even see any way to send it. At the same time the Operations window did not show any errors. But if I went to calendar or tasks window, I would see a red exclamation mark near Outlook account, suggesting that they were not syncing. Disabling and re-enabling AirSync or restarting the client did not help, only solution was to re-adding of the account did. Now waiting for this to reoccur again, but this time with logs.
As you can see most of my comments are about task management specifically with significant portion of them about recurring tasks. I understand that part of them may be due to AirSync peculiarities, and I plan to look if Google Tasks will suit me as alternative (other solution probably won’t if I want to see them near calendar in my email client), but it would definitely be good to address them in some way, since I do not see any other alternatives to emClient for this.
As for being an email client - it’s fine for my needs. Do not see anything outstanding at the moment, but definitely like that the client at least tries to show “avatars” that helps with finding emails and reacting to new ones, if I see a notification about one. Will probably buy a lifetime license once my salary comes in, even, especially if that will help with solving the above issues.