God, I hate outlook

Problem: Outlook 2003 User gets a message from System Administrator saying that his message to a coworker is undeliverable -- something about relaying denied -- and asks me why this happens.

Pretty simple, right? Just get him to forward the message and then check the logs. Only no, it's not simple: despite twiddling all the bits you're supposed to, I keep getting the message attachments in MS' TNEF format. I use Mutt. I give up and decide to look at Outlook itself. (Yes, I know about the decoder scripts you can get, but I was being bullheaded.)

Now we have the problem of getting the proper Internet headers in the email. (I've given up trying to persuade Outlook that I am ritually pure enough to look upon the shining glory that is The Message Source without melting like some kind of Nazi-collaborating French archaeologist; it doesn't work.)

A quick Google turns up three suggestions: a $24.95 VB plugin, giving up entirely, or right-clicking and selecting Options, then looking at the box that sez Internet Headers. I'm game, so I try right-clicking and choosing Options. There's the Internet Headers box, all right, but it's empty. WTF? I look around, but there's nowhere else to clickyclick.

I try right-clicking on another message, and sure enough it shows the headers. I try selecting the From address in the problem message (helpfully labelled as "System Administrator", which I'm pretty sure is a bald-faced lie), then Properties. It just says it's from System Administrator, and shows no actual, real email address. You remember...email, one of the things Outlook is meant to do?

Then it dawns on me: the mentioned-in-passing comment from the user that the message is probably from Outlook itself is true. I'd thought this was just a friendly gloss on an unfriendly message, but it wasn't. This fucking message is from Outlook. And it's not until I skip ahead and tell you the exciting conclusion -- it was our mail server refusing to relay and saying so, something never not once mentioned in the offending message -- that you're going to realize the full horror of the situation.

For Outlook does not only mangle email, and hide attachments in weird files called "winmail.dat", and shake its baloney all over the place like a drugged-out Hula girl in the "Before" picture in all those rehab clinic advertisements. No. That is not all.

Outlook -- the mail client -- also takes error messages from mail servers and disguises them as email messages that have just arrived, rather than showing the user the fucking error as an error when and as it occurs! It hides the origin of the error by pretending to be some non-existant sysadmin when it sends this message! And it does nothing to indicate that this false email is any different from the other messages from Bill and Bob and Ted littering your inbox about horizontal opportunity mission statements, complete with an animated surfing guy for Bob shouting "Whoah!" to differentiate his mangling of the English language from Ted's, leaving me to wonder what the fuck kind of congenital brain damage must've been at work to make this seem like a good idea to anyone.

Fuck me, I hate Outlook.