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# Nudges - Microsoft Outlook
- URL: https://www.prodbistro.com/nudges-microsoft-outlook/
- Published: 2023-05-03T21:35:58.000Z
- Updated: 2025-12-11T11:25:22.000Z
- Description: Using nudges to encourage desired behavior(s) is both good and bad. Reflections of the almost forced migration to the new Outlook and thoughts
- Author: Geoff Anderson
- Tags: Newsletter, #geoffrey, #Migrated-1705880410225, #Import 2024-01-21 23:40, #Import 2025-12-06 13:39, #Import 2026-03-07 21:16

Where I work, we are a Microsoft O365 house, and for the most part I am fine with it. 99GB email (yay, no more need to be filing and filtering to PST’s to conserve space) and frankly, the Sharepoint-based collaboration works well (I will admit that I have never been a fan of Google Docs, and I think that an enterprise would be insane to \*trust\* Google to not peek. Yes that is irrational, but …) and I love having the full application on my laptop to work natively versus via the web.

As a Mac user, it took a long time for Outlook to come to the modern Mac OS, but it works well. A couple years ago there was a “New” version, but it was pretty feature poor, so while I dabbled with it, I quickly went back (mainly because it didn’t support the plug-in for WebEx meetings, and it didn’t support PST files, so I was cut off of my large archive.

And I left it there for years.

Until this Monday. I logged in, and there was a banner (that I didn’t screen cap) that was making it clear that I needed to move to the new version.

This is the “[nudge](https://behavioralpolicy.org/what-is-nudging/?ref=prodbistro.com)”. Was it driven by Microsoft, wanting to end support for the legacy application? Was it driven by our desktop support team to simplify their support motion? I have no idea. It really doesn’t matter.

But I did push hesitantly the button to move to the new experience.

Hoo-boy. It is a “cleaner” UI, clearly something that feels tablet native (I would bet that this was built around the Microsoft Surface paradigm). Clearly the controls are meant to be easier to use with a touch interface.

However, I am using it on my Mac Book Pro, and it feels toy-like, with lots of not well utilized space.

It did allow me to add my PST files, but holy cow, it took a full 48 hours to finally move them (I have to assume that much of that time was to index for searching). I honestly thought that the process broke, and I had lost access to that archived mail. Win, I guess.

Finally, late Wednesday I was fully operational. It works, and I can find things when I need them, so “yay” I guess.

That said, there is no going back. This is a one way only migration. And I just don’t like how “cute” Microsoft is trying to be with this redesign.

But you might ask: “Geoff, how else were we going to get you to use it?” and there I have no answer. The nudge worked.

Not going to lie, I wish I hadn’t pushed the button.

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