Upcoming Outlook for Windows app opens to more testers

Microsoft has a preview out for its "Unified" Outlook for Windows app for all users on its Office Insider program, and said it will be available for those on the Windows Insider program in the near future. This new Outlook for Windows was first unveiled in May, when it was made available only to a restricted group of testers …

[WolfFan]

I use Outlook because I have no choice… other than OWA, which stinks, or Thunderbird, which is worse. I need a cross platform email client.

On Macs I can use Apple Mail, which has its problems but is better than Outlook. Windows Mail has achieved the miracle of being worse than Thunderbird. Someone at Microsoft actively hates email.

[PandyH]

On-premise / hosted Exchange services

But does it support non-365 Exchange servers?

The “new” Outlook on Mac does not, which considering it supports IMAP and Gmail natively but not their own, long-standing e-mail servers is very surprising.

[ComputerSays_noAbsolutelyNo]

My impression from the Mail app is to stick to Outlook whenever possible.

Can't say exactly why.

[NATTtrash]

Improvements?

Not using Outlook, but are these really earth shattering improvements?

Also added are tips that let users know about new features as they are rolled out...

Yay! Clippy!

...and Microsoft claims that the Outlook for Windows has been given a simplified Ribbon user interface designed to provide a sleeker look and feel that is easier to navigate.

Oh, great, Ribbon </tongue_in_cheek>

These include: the ability to support multiple email accounts within the same app, including both work and personal; support for third-party email accounts such as Gmail; offline capability; search folders; and support for web add-ins.

That is just adding POP/ IMAP data right? I mean, that is already possible for decades, or am I reading this wrong? Then again, it would be great if Microsoft stopped making calendar invites useless if somebody decides to do their email through IMAP (with EWS fortunately not an issue), labeling "new email notification" messages from Protonmail as junk consistently, even after clicking "Mark not as junk" for months, and "See what is new on SharePoint" messages as junk, after they were marked repeatedly as junk by $USER. </grumpy>

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Improvements?

Do Superdrug do a porcine lipstick?

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Improvements?

Outlook is fundamentally unfixable, so the real question for me is what marginally-useful features have they broken or removed?

I haven't been able to work up the nerve to enable the preview of the updated client. It seems very unlikely it won't be worse than the already-terrible old one.