Microsoft faces fresh criticism for removing "HUGELY impactful" Outlook feature

Back in February, Microsoft announced that it is getting rid of contact masking in Outlook, giving IT admins and end-users no control over the capability. Contact masking was eventually retired on March 31, and Outlook customers are now criticisizing this decision quite heavily.

For those unaware, contact masking allowed you to remove suggested contacts in the To/Cc/Bcc line when you pressed the "X", even for future suggestions. Many users found it very helpful, but the Redmond tech giant decided to kill the feature because it touched other Microsoft 365 services like Teams and Microsoft 365 Search too, apparently confusing customers.

However, several forum threads have recently sprouted, lamenting the death of the feature while also requesting Microsoft to restore it. A thread currently trending on the Feedback portal has people clamoring:

• Previously users could press "X" next to a suggested recipient when typing a name or email address in the TO: field to delete that suggestion from the auto-complete cache. Starting in Classic Outlook version 2603 that feature is removed. Now the only option is to clear the entire list (in File > Options > Mail > (Send Messages Section) > Empty Auto-Complete List) which is unreasonable to remove one bad entry. Please return this functionality to delete a single entry from the recipients Auto-Complete list!
• I fully agree - please restore the ability to delete individual auto-complete suggestions. Since the X was removed, our IT department has been receiving daily complaints from users who can no longer clean up outdated, incorrect, or stale suggestions. Clearing the entire Auto-Complete list is not a realistic workaround, as it forces users to lose all their valid contacts as well. This change has created significant productivity issues across our organization, and as IT administrators we have no way to resolve it for our users. Restoring per-entry deletion would immediately fix the problem.
• Yes! Please let me delete the bad suggestions!
• Obviously, someone in the MS coding section saw a Squirrel! mid-code and when they got back from the distraction, they skipped a line. There is no other reasonable explanation to have gotten rid of such a small but HUGELY impactful "X" ... the number of "undeliverables" and misdirected emails that will be going out from now on boggles my mind. Bring back the X!!
• Can we request the leadership team at microsoft to be fired who thought this was ok to do?Shittification at its finest.
• This is a huge pain in the neck, I can't believe MS did it deliberately: an unwanted side effect of something else they've done. Here's hoping they fix it VERY SOON. It's only too easy to click on these rogue addresses and email people you didn't mean to or don't even know and is surely a security issue.

We can see similar sentiments being highlighted on various Microsoft Learn forums and Reddit as well. Although this backlash is fairly significant since it concerns enterprise customers and also includes documented feedback from IT admins, it's unclear if Microsoft will attempt to appease those concerned. Outlook doesn't really have a stellar reputation right now due to multiple bugs too, so perhaps the best approach would have been to give end-users a toggle for the capability rather than removing it altogether. It will be interesting to see if the firm considers an approach like that as negative feedback mounts.