Outlook classic dropped from Microsoft 365(office-watch.com)
office-watch.com
Outlook classic dropped from Microsoft 365
https://office-watch.com/2025/outlook-classic-dropped-from-microsoft-365/
67 comments
When was Microsoft known for being anything but a provider of bloated software?
They were known for relative stability and best in backwards-compatibility, until around the Win8 era.
The world runs on legacy software, this is super important.
At some point it seems like all industries start with providing useful things people want through creation and competition, and then flip to monopolistic exploitation.
How can we keep the first part of this cycle and some how stop it from getting to the second?
How can we keep the first part of this cycle and some how stop it from getting to the second?
> and that's going to cause customers to reconsider alternatives.
I'm very, very skeptical that anything short of Microsoft's bankruptcy could cause enterprises to seriously reconsider their software. It's just too convenient to pay one vendor for everything Microsoft brings to the table.
I'm very, very skeptical that anything short of Microsoft's bankruptcy could cause enterprises to seriously reconsider their software. It's just too convenient to pay one vendor for everything Microsoft brings to the table.
Enterprises will control which version of Outlook they deploy up to the point, in a few years from now, classic Outlook is EOL'ed for EXO. Until that point in time, Microsoft can set whatever default they want, and enterprises will deploy whatever they want to.
I believe that Microsoft is shooting themselves in the foot with that forced migration, at least in the Windows enterprise world. It’s a bit like if they were replacing Excel with a half-baked version of Google Sheets.
Your analogy is spot on except there is a MS webby Excel. The goal is to get you totally in the cloud and by you I mean all their customers ... all of them.
On prem Exchange is being made as wanky as possible to run and has been for some years. Updates are excruciatingly painful and there is no technical reason I can fathom for that other than give them: "death by a thousand cuts".
We have an all in one Exchange box so no fancy stuff and it really is painful to watch updates and there is no technical need for it. Its not even a subtle nudge. I've had updates take multiple hours.
I'm old enough to remember when email (let alone the www) didn't exist. MS were eventually very clever in the '90s and noughties and have kept on top of things since. They don't have a total monopoly but quite a decent slice of the "market". The goal is silo off users in their cloud. On prem does not make them anything like enough cash.
They will lose a few customers to Linux and Apple but the full on subscriptions model will more than fix up the finances.
On prem Exchange is being made as wanky as possible to run and has been for some years. Updates are excruciatingly painful and there is no technical reason I can fathom for that other than give them: "death by a thousand cuts".
We have an all in one Exchange box so no fancy stuff and it really is painful to watch updates and there is no technical need for it. Its not even a subtle nudge. I've had updates take multiple hours.
I'm old enough to remember when email (let alone the www) didn't exist. MS were eventually very clever in the '90s and noughties and have kept on top of things since. They don't have a total monopoly but quite a decent slice of the "market". The goal is silo off users in their cloud. On prem does not make them anything like enough cash.
They will lose a few customers to Linux and Apple but the full on subscriptions model will more than fix up the finances.
>Updates are excruciatingly painful and there is no technical reason I can fathom
Technical reason is they don't really want to do them and they are difficult to get right. Office365 does not run Exchange updates, so they don't get properly exercised. The only reason they haven't dropped support for in place updates is customer screaming but trust me, Exchange team would love to.
Proper Office365 way to update Exchange is build new machines, patch them fully, install new Exchange version and move all the mailboxes over.
Technical reason is they don't really want to do them and they are difficult to get right. Office365 does not run Exchange updates, so they don't get properly exercised. The only reason they haven't dropped support for in place updates is customer screaming but trust me, Exchange team would love to.
Proper Office365 way to update Exchange is build new machines, patch them fully, install new Exchange version and move all the mailboxes over.
Is that the proper way in EXO? SPO had individual file replacements. SharePoint stamps were not pave-and-build.
For Exchange it is. Microsoft officially puts out patches for Exchange and technically patching is supported, it's just Exchange Online does not do it so it's poorly tested and when working with Microsoft 8+ years ago, they told us to rinse and replace. I developed a bunch of Powershell scripts to do it before I stopped being Exchange admin.
Ah I thought you were referring to EXO the service, not Exchange Server. Yes, Exchange Server has been a full ISO deployment for many years, now.
Just wanted to chime in and say it’s nice to see someone from IT on the site. I love the site and can follow a lot of things but feel like it’s mostly developers here.
There are a lot of non devs here ... a lot.
We just let the kiddies crack on and widdle in public but we are still here!
We just let the kiddies crack on and widdle in public but we are still here!
I should point out:
Every now and then you will note a comment here that looks a bit more ... insightful than the rest - it might be bollocks or not. Search the username etc. or follow the threads and someone will eventually note who made it.
You will find some remarkable people hereabouts. The rest is the usual noise of any other social.
Every now and then you will note a comment here that looks a bit more ... insightful than the rest - it might be bollocks or not. Search the username etc. or follow the threads and someone will eventually note who made it.
You will find some remarkable people hereabouts. The rest is the usual noise of any other social.
Well speaking for myself: the reason why I keep using Microsoft stuff is because I grew up with it. The first computer that I owned came with 98SE.
At this point in my life I do not really want to learn new programmes.
But if MS keeps changing shit I may as well move on to new horizons.
But if MS keeps changing shit I may as well move on to new horizons.
interesting data point. someone born in the 90s thinking like someone born in the 40-60s... i guess the 70-80s generation really misplaced a lot of hope on the latter generations on these matters.
Outlook is an odd duck.
It is an application with so many flaws
or weirdness and I dont like it.
Though, being honest, I do hate it a bit less than all the other alternatives in that space.
If I am in a "Microsoft powered enterprise" Outlook empowers me to be ridiculously productive. compared to GSuite/Workspace.
If you are outside a Microsoft sphere it is harder to justify it.
I use Gmail a lot. THe web interface is blah. very blah.
But it gets the job done, and I hate it a little less than the alternatives.
I did get Mutt up and running last week, Oh what joy it was to get it to integrate with Gmail.
I will say that if your macOS based MailMate is the best mail client for me.
Sadly I am often on the Windows end of things.
Though, being honest, I do hate it a bit less than all the other alternatives in that space.
If I am in a "Microsoft powered enterprise" Outlook empowers me to be ridiculously productive. compared to GSuite/Workspace.
If you are outside a Microsoft sphere it is harder to justify it.
I use Gmail a lot. THe web interface is blah. very blah.
But it gets the job done, and I hate it a little less than the alternatives.
I did get Mutt up and running last week, Oh what joy it was to get it to integrate with Gmail.
I will say that if your macOS based MailMate is the best mail client for me.
Sadly I am often on the Windows end of things.
Thunderbird does what it says on the box. It just works.
It can also now talk to Exchange servers.
Does MailMate work well with Office 365 accounts? And how does it compare to the stock Mail app? The screenshots I could find look pretty similar.
I use Outlook for Mac at home and for Window at work. It's ironic that the Mac version is so much nicer than the Windows version. The Windows version feels like a wrapper around outlook.live.com.
I use Outlook for Mac at home and for Window at work. It's ironic that the Mac version is so much nicer than the Windows version. The Windows version feels like a wrapper around outlook.live.com.
It is unless you use old/legacy outlook. The “new” outlook is electron/webapp
I've been rocking Evolution for around 10 years now. We migrated from GroupWise at my little firm to Exchange a few years before that.
I mostly look after the mail systems myself because no one else really seems to give a shit! Provided it carries on working. We have been all in on prem for a good 25 years now and I run a separate Exim n Dovecot with rspamd setup for a few vanity domains.
Evo just works. It does have a fair few quirks of its own but nothing as nasty as Outlook. I doubt it will be too popular here - it only runs on Linux.
I mostly look after the mail systems myself because no one else really seems to give a shit! Provided it carries on working. We have been all in on prem for a good 25 years now and I run a separate Exim n Dovecot with rspamd setup for a few vanity domains.
Evo just works. It does have a fair few quirks of its own but nothing as nasty as Outlook. I doubt it will be too popular here - it only runs on Linux.
> If I am in a "Microsoft powered enterprise" Outlook empowers me to be ridiculously productive
What does that mean in more detail? I only have typical corpo Outlook experience, and I find it passable at the best of times. Not even necessarily as the fault of Outlook.
What does that mean in more detail? I only have typical corpo Outlook experience, and I find it passable at the best of times. Not even necessarily as the fault of Outlook.
It means you can get through 300 emails in 1/10 the time as you can in Gmail. Outlook’s layout and software is FAST.
Once it goes web or “new” it’s a laggy piece of crap, still maybe not as bad as g suite though
Once it goes web or “new” it’s a laggy piece of crap, still maybe not as bad as g suite though
> Outlook’s layout and software is FAST.
?????
Updating mailboxes takes forever. Wrangling a significant number of mails takes forever, but notably it at least finishes, much unlike in the new, web based version. Opening links takes forever. Randomly loses connection to the server which it cannot reestablish without a restart.
Are we talking about the same Outlook? It's also a bog standard email client, I cannot even hope to imagine what you find different on its layout.
?????
Updating mailboxes takes forever. Wrangling a significant number of mails takes forever, but notably it at least finishes, much unlike in the new, web based version. Opening links takes forever. Randomly loses connection to the server which it cannot reestablish without a restart.
Are we talking about the same Outlook? It's also a bog standard email client, I cannot even hope to imagine what you find different on its layout.
Outlook "classic" is an Exchange client first an email client second. [1]
A lot of speed depends on corporate setup, so I'll skip that.
But integration, end to end, over core groupware elements like emails, distribution lists, calendars, contacts, etc is something nothing else does as well in my experience - though 3rd party components differ in quality (both of the solutions and how they got deployed)
I can mimic or even do better on personal scale but group level? Nothing comes close, if only because they end up connecting disparate data sources with disparate protocols and everything gets a slight case of Chinese whispers or desynchronization (sure, you can reliably send ICS files as invitations, but they don't synchronize, etc)
[1] a particularly funny aspect of this is that Outlook and Exchange do not support HTML Email directly - they have to wrap it in RTF, despite there existing a MAPI datatype for HTML content - if you use it, the MAPI library literally crashes opening the mail store.
A lot of speed depends on corporate setup, so I'll skip that.
But integration, end to end, over core groupware elements like emails, distribution lists, calendars, contacts, etc is something nothing else does as well in my experience - though 3rd party components differ in quality (both of the solutions and how they got deployed)
I can mimic or even do better on personal scale but group level? Nothing comes close, if only because they end up connecting disparate data sources with disparate protocols and everything gets a slight case of Chinese whispers or desynchronization (sure, you can reliably send ICS files as invitations, but they don't synchronize, etc)
[1] a particularly funny aspect of this is that Outlook and Exchange do not support HTML Email directly - they have to wrap it in RTF, despite there existing a MAPI datatype for HTML content - if you use it, the MAPI library literally crashes opening the mail store.
In my experience this means network effects. Microsoft has been very successful in pushing its entire stack at enterprises, and there’s a benefit to knowing that everyone in the org has the same tools and will actually use them. Like, I can send someone docx in an email and can expect that anyone can open and edit it with instruction.
“Most people can get an email and open a document without instruction” may seem like a low bar to you, but in my experience with run of the mill enterprise it’s massively better than the alternatives.
Also, Outlook as a whole is inarguably bloated, but it’s an order of magnitude faster than Gmail at the basic act of opening and navigating between emails.
“Most people can get an email and open a document without instruction” may seem like a low bar to you, but in my experience with run of the mill enterprise it’s massively better than the alternatives.
Also, Outlook as a whole is inarguably bloated, but it’s an order of magnitude faster than Gmail at the basic act of opening and navigating between emails.
The biggest integration I can think of is the calendar and the reaction emojis on emails. Previewing Office documents I don't really do, but that sounds fairly trivial as well.
> it’s an order of magnitude faster than Gmail at the basic act of opening and navigating between emails
There must be a tremendous difference between consumer and business gmail then, cause I'm honestly unable to imagine this. Outlook is generally not fast, and will reliably choke when wrangling an appreciable amount of mails (a few thousand or more).
> it’s an order of magnitude faster than Gmail at the basic act of opening and navigating between emails
There must be a tremendous difference between consumer and business gmail then, cause I'm honestly unable to imagine this. Outlook is generally not fast, and will reliably choke when wrangling an appreciable amount of mails (a few thousand or more).
> Outlook empowers me to be ridiculously productive
As a programmer, if I could eliminate email at work altogether, it’d have a net benefit to my productivity.
As a programmer, if I could eliminate email at work altogether, it’d have a net benefit to my productivity.
I would kill for something that merged Teams and email into a single flow of messages and responses in multiple subjects and threads.
I still miss my BlackBerry 10 messaging merging email, SMS, BBM…
I still miss my BlackBerry 10 messaging merging email, SMS, BBM…
You know, Gmail does let you search chat messages too. I thi k it's is:chat. Maybe is:chat OR in:inbox would get you halfway there?
I prefer the asynchronous nature of email.
I can close my email client when I need to focus
properly on something.
When I need a break, I can go get another mug of coffee, open the email client, and work my way through it.
This is far preferable to instant messages popping up at random times and distract me from my focus.
Of course, I can just close the IM app as well, but there is an expectation that I have to respond to an IM promptly, and not responding is far more likely to cause a problem.
After all, if it was not deemed urgent by the sender it could have been an email message instead. Of course, a lot of people just use whatever IM there is entirely instead of email removing the asynchronous option entirely,.
Nothing is perfect. You will still have people who send you an email. Then two minutes later show up, tapping you on the shoulder and asking if you saw that email they just sent.
All that is made worse by everyone sitting on tables in a giant warehouse.
With cubes, there was a slightly bigger threshold, for physically disturbing someone.
With an office and a closed door, the threshold is substantial.
When I need a break, I can go get another mug of coffee, open the email client, and work my way through it.
This is far preferable to instant messages popping up at random times and distract me from my focus.
Of course, I can just close the IM app as well, but there is an expectation that I have to respond to an IM promptly, and not responding is far more likely to cause a problem.
After all, if it was not deemed urgent by the sender it could have been an email message instead. Of course, a lot of people just use whatever IM there is entirely instead of email removing the asynchronous option entirely,.
Nothing is perfect. You will still have people who send you an email. Then two minutes later show up, tapping you on the shoulder and asking if you saw that email they just sent.
All that is made worse by everyone sitting on tables in a giant warehouse.
With cubes, there was a slightly bigger threshold, for physically disturbing someone.
With an office and a closed door, the threshold is substantial.
I've worked in places with both. I always have my own notes/planner system using text files. Being able to use weblinks to reference emails is a killer feature of even the most ascetic web client. My outlook messages always got lost in the sauce even with folders. (And searching in Outlook was always bad for some reason.)
These are all show stoppers.
Offline support – what Microsoft is calling “offline” use of new Outlook isn’t great in practice. I speak from experience on some recent long-haul flights where I was grateful to have classic Outlook as a workable replacement.
PST support – at the moment Outlook (new) can only read emails in PST files from classic Outlook. No write access or reading of contact or calendar data.
Secure email – Microsoft is now promising S-Mime encryption for later this year.
Cross-mailbox – it’s still not possible to move items between mailboxes.
Mail merge – only classic Outlook works with Word’s Mail Merge to emails.
How they think they can get away with this I have no idea.
Offline support – what Microsoft is calling “offline” use of new Outlook isn’t great in practice. I speak from experience on some recent long-haul flights where I was grateful to have classic Outlook as a workable replacement.
PST support – at the moment Outlook (new) can only read emails in PST files from classic Outlook. No write access or reading of contact or calendar data.
Secure email – Microsoft is now promising S-Mime encryption for later this year.
Cross-mailbox – it’s still not possible to move items between mailboxes.
Mail merge – only classic Outlook works with Word’s Mail Merge to emails.
How they think they can get away with this I have no idea.
Can’t wait for my 75 year old father to call me for tech support when the app auto-migrates, changes layouts, corrupts the mail profile or requires sign in for licence validation. Thunderbird is just as bad, there is a new UI change every few months (and they all make it worse).
Agreed. Very disappointed that Thunderbird went the direction they did.
So maybe thunderbird isn't ideal for you because it keeps changing... but I do know for a fact you can disable auto updating in Thunderbird. I would much rather set up a 75 year old with something that will stay the same AND allow installing older versions, than something I don't fully trust will obey the "Disable auto-updates" checkbox.
Actually my Thunderbird looks the same for many years now. I set it to a specific layout and it keeps that way. Either distro package maintainers keep this layout change from disrupting me, or I have configured it in a way that even when updates come, I still have my usual oldschool layout with high information density.
I too was disappointed to see Thunderbird copy the atrocious Outlook layout. I am sorry, I get 50 e-mails a day, not 3. Outlook is a child's toy and I hope Thunderbird does not turn into one as well.
I too was disappointed to see Thunderbird copy the atrocious Outlook layout. I am sorry, I get 50 e-mails a day, not 3. Outlook is a child's toy and I hope Thunderbird does not turn into one as well.
Thunderbird is just as bad, there is a new UI change every few months (and they all make it worse).
Turn off automatic updates.
Turn off automatic updates.
Out of all software to disable auto-updates on, email clients are probably the riskiest, given how much use they get and that they are the number one vector for delivering malware.
There's already been a privilege escalation found this year in Thunderbird.
There's already been a privilege escalation found this year in Thunderbird.
Microsoft and the other megacorps hate email. It's a wildly successful federated open protocol. They don't control it. They are all doing everything in their respective powers to turn email into a proprietary experience.
The classic Outlook is good now. Enterprise did integrate many addins to it for years. I don’t know replacing with the web based one is better or not. I guess not.
Outlook was better in the past, too. The "Advanced Find" functionality was better than any other email client I've ever used and it was gutted in 2013 (or 2016-- I don't recall). Outlook (and Office) 2010 we're the peak of the product to me.
Advanced Find still works for me. Outlook classic for Microsoft 365 MSO (Version 2501 Build 16.0.18429.20132) 64-bit. Shift-Ctrl-F
The feature is still there but it doesn't return all results like it did in older version of Office. 2016 had a nasty bug that made the Advanced Find window "disappear" (resized itself to a tiny sliver and unless you know the ALT-SPACE shortcut to get to Resize the window is just lost). I don't know if that but persisted into newer versions. Microsoft acknowledged the bug but said they were de-emphasizing Advanced Find in favor of the awful search in the main Outlook window.
In Outlook 2010 I could do a search for all messages from a given sender with specific words in the subject and an attachment of at least 100KB and get results.
In Outlook 2010 I could do a search for all messages from a given sender with specific words in the subject and an attachment of at least 100KB and get results.
Are there any product managers left at Microsoft? So many half baked programs getting deployed before they are finished. Or are there too many project managers that are under constant threat to show impact? Nothing but flashy changes will ever be approved? Notepad now lets you search Bing.
I finally ditched Outlook last month - and settled on eM Client and it's really nice. It does a lot of stuff.
Outlook for years had these recurring issues:
- mail profile gets corrupted - requiring me to re-setup my mail accounts
- from time to time, emails would sit in the Outbox not going anywhere. Then I'd notice hours or a day later. Frustrating. Have to restart Windows to fix it.
Maybe the New Outlook is better, but when I first tried it, it was missing lots of stuff.
Outlook for years had these recurring issues:
- mail profile gets corrupted - requiring me to re-setup my mail accounts
- from time to time, emails would sit in the Outbox not going anywhere. Then I'd notice hours or a day later. Frustrating. Have to restart Windows to fix it.
Maybe the New Outlook is better, but when I first tried it, it was missing lots of stuff.
It still is. Complaining on the Microsoft "support" site for an MVP saying you should just stick to outlook classic and new outlook was only for home users.
They didn't respond when I pointed out the official notification that classic outlook was intended to be deprecated (and apparently now is)
They didn't respond when I pointed out the official notification that classic outlook was intended to be deprecated (and apparently now is)
As noted in the article, you can still get classic Outlook which has a few more years of support. This article is clickbait.
It's still dropped from new installations, requiring users to actively go seek the classic version, and Microsoft has been nagging classic users to switch to the new Outlook for a while now.
While Outlook classic is not dead and buried yet, it's firmly sitting in the casket while Microsoft is pushing down to close the lid.
While Outlook classic is not dead and buried yet, it's firmly sitting in the casket while Microsoft is pushing down to close the lid.
Yes, it is absolutely sitting in the casket, and that's probably a good thing, security-wise.
Given it is the enterprise that "cares" about classic Outlook due to legacy COM addins, "new users" don't matter so much as they would deploy the correct version required for their userbase.
Yes, I'm discounting home users or users with their own small tenant, but there are clear and easy ways to get classic Outlook if that is what you want/need.
Given it is the enterprise that "cares" about classic Outlook due to legacy COM addins, "new users" don't matter so much as they would deploy the correct version required for their userbase.
Yes, I'm discounting home users or users with their own small tenant, but there are clear and easy ways to get classic Outlook if that is what you want/need.
My problem is I support so many applicants which use MAPI calls to create emails to Outlook, and they haven’t and may never add support for MAPI to the web-based version. I kinda thing one reason they are trying to kill the classic Outlook is it’s getting harder to find programmers willing to maintain it.
I found someone's solution that actually does seem to work, even if it's hacky!
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/1640434/...
and
https://gist.github.com/SelimBasyouni/efec48a197bfefb59d4ff7...
basically create an EML file with X-Unsent: 1 and if you open in New Outlook it will show as a draft. This could basically replace what we're doing with MAPI.
I finished testing that solution earlier and it is what we'll initially implement, until a better solution is available. Note for anyone testing, the C# project created a file with CR/LF line endings, and it does not open as a draft in classic Outlook ("Old Outlook"). Changing the file to end with LF only solved the issue and works with classic and New Outlook.
Because of this Outlook (new) non-sense, few months ago I switched to Thunderbird on desktop and mobile, and it has been quite a refreshing experience. Sure the UI need some time to get used to, but it has been my primary driver now
I've used both outlooks, Gmail, and a few other clients, and I think the problem isn't that these are all bad but they are all trying to solve a bad problem. So there never will be a good solution just good enough for someone. There are lots of other problems where we blame the tools and never have a universally loved tool: task planning (Jira), and ERP (Oracle) are some examples.
What I would be happy with is if I could use markdown (sans html tags) everywhere. In my emails, in notes, hell I would love if I could use it in word.
What I would be happy with is if I could use markdown (sans html tags) everywhere. In my emails, in notes, hell I would love if I could use it in word.
I'm using Outlook at work but I will 100% jump to Thunderbird if/when the classic Outlook becomes unusable. No way I'm sharing my data with their 700+ partners.
Man I'd have just started doubling the cost every year. Wanna keep using some old software we don't really want to support? Better pay up!
You'd be surprised how quickly "it's not possible" turns into "oh we'll get right on that"
You'd be surprised how quickly "it's not possible" turns into "oh we'll get right on that"
In the Glorious Future, is it going to be impossible to use proprietary software without an internet connection?
That is, does every piece of hardware we own become (vehicles, appliances, computers, accessories, &c) a spyware vector?
That is, does every piece of hardware we own become (vehicles, appliances, computers, accessories, &c) a spyware vector?
OC remains superior for power users. For example, if you fly a lot, offline mode barely works on New Outlook, but is rock solid on Classic. In day to day use, the density of emails and other information on the screen is far higher in OC than New, and no amount of tweaking the view density can get New close to OC.
Classic also supports really powerful programmability, such as forms and custom views, and although I accept that the golden age of MAPI has long passed, its a shame that nothing in New comes close.
However, that speaks to Microsoft and their vision for what they call Modern Work. In this vision, it is Teams that is the center of the universe. Teams is the thing that gets the platform treatment with plug-ins and apps and polish. Outlook is relegated to something the old business people use, and as the generations shift from writing long form messages to thinking anything over a paragraph is tl;dr, I can see Outlook dying off in a few years.
Classic also supports really powerful programmability, such as forms and custom views, and although I accept that the golden age of MAPI has long passed, its a shame that nothing in New comes close.
However, that speaks to Microsoft and their vision for what they call Modern Work. In this vision, it is Teams that is the center of the universe. Teams is the thing that gets the platform treatment with plug-ins and apps and polish. Outlook is relegated to something the old business people use, and as the generations shift from writing long form messages to thinking anything over a paragraph is tl;dr, I can see Outlook dying off in a few years.
New Outlook still doesn't support RSS/Atom feed...
outlook classic is one of the few pieces of microsoft software that isn't abominably bad
it's reasonably performant, doesn't crash more than once a day, has a very customisable UI (easily altered for maximum information density), can be scripted and has zero AI slop
(cf. teams)
so of course they're sunsetting it
it's reasonably performant, doesn't crash more than once a day, has a very customisable UI (easily altered for maximum information density), can be scripted and has zero AI slop
(cf. teams)
so of course they're sunsetting it
Now, if they could just drop Outlook and Teams…
Meanwhile my ISP still offers a webmail client which doesn't require JS at all, and it's been like that for nearly 3 decades, proving that it is absolutely possible.