outlook.com The Outlook app for Android has a serious bug

[whitebread]

Hi, everyone;

 

I discovered a potentially serious (non-security related) bug in the Outlook.com app for Android (latest version, presently 1.2.1 [34] mainline). I have been in contact with the in-app support, and have been advised that they were previously unaware of the bug but have now recorded a bug report. Therefore, I decided it best to inform people about the bug in case it is affecting other people as well.

 

Using the Outlook.com website, I sent 2 separate emails to 2 friends of mine. I used the same subject line for both emails ("Hey"), however they were 2 totally separate, unrelated emails -- not one email sent to 2 people (i.e. I didn't CC or BCC anyone) -- and the body of the emails were different.

 

The next morning, I was reading one of the replies (subject line was "RE: Hey"). I happened to scroll up (to see the email I had sent her), and I noticed that in the email thread there was the reply from my other friend (slightly different subject line: "Re: Hey").

 

That reply did not show up in my inbox. If I had not scrolled up when reading the one reply that was in my inbox, I would not have known that I had received the email (at least until I went to the website on my laptop, where both replies are separate emails). It's entirely possible that, if this bug affects you, you could be missing important replies because they aren't showing up in your inbox.

 

I contacted the in-app support, and they asked me to do the following:

 

1. Download the latest version of the Outlook app from the Google Play Store (I already had the latest version installed); 2. Force close and re-open the app (didn't change anything); 3. Restart my device (didn't change anything); 4. Clear cache: open the Outlook app -> Click 'Settings' in the top-right corner -> Select my email account -> Click 'Clear Cache' (did not fix it); 5. If that doesn't work, open the app -> Settings -> Select my email account, and OneDrive account if present -> Remove the account -> restart device -> wait for 1 hour -> Re-add account in app (did not fix it)

 

Sadly, these steps did not fix the issue. I again notified the in-app support, and received this reply from QA (after being escalated from Tier 1 to Tier 2 to QA):

 

As tested on 2 Android devices, the app is threading messages/replies with the same subject line "ONLY" if the user sent the email as One with multiple recipients (However, this is still a bug since the iOS version does not do the same behavior, it lists the replies in the inbox separately). Tested to send two emails with the same subject line and body to 2 different email addresses. However, advise [me] that even though it's just one email message that sent, we will still record it as a bug.

 

It appears that this bug is not widespread, however I was able to replicate the bug by sending 2 different emails with the same subject line (and different bodies) to 2 different email addresses. I then replied to the emails I sent myself, and made sure both reply emails had the same subject line ("Re: Test email"). Sure enough, when I looked at my inbox, it showed only one thread; when I opened the thread, it contained one of the 2 emails I had sent at the top (to email address #1), then it had one of the replies (from email address #2), and then the reply from email address #1.

 

I hope that I am being clear on what the bug is. If anyone has any questions, i will be glad to answer them. I would appreciate it if anyone who is experiencing this bug could contact support using the in-app support so that they know that this bug is not just affecting me.

 

Also, just to be clear, this is NOT the OWA app for Android. It is the Outlook app that was formerly called Acompli.

[tsupersonic]

I have noted similar serious issues with the Outlook app for iOS as well. It is visually a nice looking product, and for the most part works. However, it does have some major bugs.

[tompkin]

That was a nice catch! Thanks for letting us know. I use that app as well.

[SledgeNZ]

Surely this is just conversation view?

[whitebread]

UPDATE: I received a message from Support late last night. They informed me that an update to the Outlook Android app had been released, and that it should fix the bug.

 

However, I updated and it did not fix the bug . After some troubleshooting steps they requested I take (e.g. removing/re-adding my email account, clearing the cache and re-syncing, restarting my phone, etc), I let them know that nothing had changed. Tier 1 support escalated it to Tier 2, and then to QA for another bug report.

 

Will update with any developments.