Is Outlook buggy or is it that I don't go deep into instructions?

[UTUSN]

For years I used the then free Outlook Express, which was fantastic. Eventually it was discontinued, and gmail came along. Fine, sort of. I find gmail to be buggy and clumsy to navigate.

So several months ago I decided to bite the pay bullet and got Outlook. To my surprise, it has been nowhere as smooth to navigate as the old, free Outlook Express.

Fairly often, while typing moderately long e-mails, I get a STUCK experience. It starts with with whatever I do with the keyboard, the heaviness of my touch or whatever, such that the display ZOOMS in to small typeface. The font stays the same but the display shrinks. Then the keyboard goes non-functioning. The cursor goes non-existent, just cannot do any typing.

I've tried double tapping or swiping closed or open to get things back and nothing works. I invariably end up highlighting the whole message, Copying, then Pasting it into a new blank email, discarding the first one.

As for gmail, it has far fewer font size options and the Contacts is a disaster. But I'm really asking about Outlook here. Thanks for anything.