Microsoft pulled an Outlook 2013 update Wednesday after the patch inadvertently caused folder lists in the e-mail client to disappear.
After more than 14 hours of reports and complaints on Microsoft’s TechNet and Answers forums, the patch was removed from the auto-updated September 2013 Public Update released on Tuesday. The massive update included 36 security updates and more than 80 non-security updates, covering 47 vulnerabilities found across Internet Explorer, Outlook, SharePoint, Office and the Windows kernel.
Microsoft admitted its faux pas in a blog post Wednesday afternoon explaining how the problem in the update was rooted in an incompatibility found in it, and directing users experiencing a problem to simply uninstall it.
Users, and the community that maintains and patches Windows products, expressed their frustration on forums at yet another faulty patch. Susan Bradley, a moderator at PatchManagement.org, even went as far as to post an open letter to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer criticizing the company’s quality control and patch testing, leading to a fundamental mistrust in all Microsoft updates.
She wrote, “Bottom line, sir, this is unacceptable to all of us in the patching community, and quite frankly, it should be just as unacceptable to you.”
