Microsoft lets you swap New Outlook's looks with the face of Outlook Classic

Microsoft is rolling out a setting that makes Outlook on the Web and New Outlook for Windows look and feel like Classic Outlook through a theme that tweaks the visual style and layout. "This update is designed to help users who are transitioning from classic Outlook by providing a more familiar experience while maintaining the …

[Paul Herber]

For how long?

Going in 3 .... 2 ..... 1 .....

[Peter2]

If Microsoft would actually put the features required in the new outlook, then people would consider it.

As it is, any users of Sage50 or any other similar software which tries to send an email through outlook either have to use classic outlook, or another mail program because new outlook does not support the required functionality.

If they push things by forcing people onto new outlook before adding the requisite functionality then they are going to lose every customer of desktop outlook who's integrating with emails via desktop apps for a start. And that's got to be a non trivial percentage of the userbase.

[graeme leggett]

Just tried the New Outlook style for 5 minutes

can't import settings such as favourites in the folder list

Doesn't import quicksteps

Doesn't offer New Task, New appointment, only "event"

doesn't display todo in a compact list with items completely in red text so I can ignore deadlines properly

had to be told the correct Country region, and even then doesn't offer Written out dates, you select 01/09/2026 style in dropdown to get "21 Aug"

(Minor niggle - has Copilot turned on by default.)

What's the lost productivity of a large office switching over and each worker spending 30 minutes trying to get Outlook back to how they were used to?

[Anonymous Coward]

Other than it being a bucket’o’shite ….. it’s not bad.

[anothercynic]

Indeed. It's a bucket of shyte. Can't do text-only emails either... all HTML now.

[anthonyhegedus]

Sage

Agree, it's terrible that they block things like Sage - typical Microslop. But let's face it, why the hell does Sage rely on decades-old functionality of Outlook, when they could rewrite it to work with its own client - just as an option at least?

[Doctor Syntax]

Zawinski's law

Every program was supposed to develop until it could read email.

Maybe that should have been send email instead.

[Rockets]

There's so many SMB apps that use MAPI or COM to send a email from the app. I know MYOB AccountRight doesn't work with New Outlook and that's used by 25% of small businesses in Australia alone.

[fronty]

But... but... but...

I tried New Outlook, it's shit.

Why are they even getting rid of Old Outlook? It works great and has all the features we need.

Unless New Outlook has feature parity why do they expect people to switch over?

[Sartori]

Re: But... but... but...

I agree, wholeheartedly with every word you typed. However, as an IT bod where I work, I set people's new laptops with a 'Classic' shortcut by default, and there's definitely around 25% of people who tell me they hate that one and prefer the new one, so I oblige.

If people ask me which one is better I'll usually just say well you can have the new outlook or the one that works properly(ish).

[BasicReality]

Re: But... but... but...

> I tried New Outlook, it's shit.

But the old one was too.

[malfeasance]

Re: But... but... but...

True enough. Until you’ve tried the others and then you realise that while it is awful its still the best (much like democracy).

My biggest gripe the last time i tried new outlook was the failure of custom views in calendar.

Because reasons i have a custom view that allows me to drag appts into a group that no longer has reminders.

I do not need your default reminders buzzing my phone/destkop/watch whathave you.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: But... but... but...

You could ask the same about Windows 10. Actually, there were earlier versions that were already usable..

[Rockets]

Re: But... but... but...

The only thing I've found that's better with New Outlook is better performance with large mailboxes.

But like you said it's missing heaps of features still, it better than it was when they first started pushing it bare bones on users. Like there's no message size column. There's no dedicated button to bring up the Global Address Book, you have to click on To: button in email & then you still have to search rather than a list come up. The window panes and column sizing isn't as customisable as Outlook Classic. And search I've found to be woeful, I went searching for email I knew exact details for, searched for it, it wasn't found, manually looked for it and when I found it had the exact details I'd searched for. I'll be clinging to Outlook Classic till the end.

[workrabbit]

Office is needs refinement

Microsoft Office has become such a disaster and disappointment across the entire product line. No user interface consistency. Very poor fit and finish. Abandonment of core functionality and applications. Over reliance on web technologies. It’s been a steep downgrade since Office 2010.

[blu3b3rry]

Re: Office is needs refinement

MS Office has been on a steep downgrade since Office 2007 when they introduced that f$cking ribbon!

[anthonyhegedus]

Re: Office is needs refinement

The whole of everything that company does is “poor fit and finish”.

Everything they do is so incredibly complex behind the scenes that there’s no one team that can be in charge of it all. Every team has to make allowances for potential problems left by other teams - sanity checking everything.

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

I would happily use something that is basically just old school Lotus Organizer with email in it. So long as it wasn't the bloated horror Lotus Notes became, obviously.

[Roland6]

You mean Organizer + cc:Mail ...

When MS Office was just Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Access - that was my office desktop.

Probably 90+ percent of the functionality we use today was in those old products...

[Dave K]

Step in the right direction

A small step in the right direction then. The missing functionality is obviously one major problem (still), but having tried New Outlook, I also find that the interface is simply too largely spaced out compared with the more compact Outlook Classic. Probably not a problem if you just have Outlook open by itself on a big monitor, but if you've got it sharing only half a second screen with Teams for example, there's way too much wasted space and gaps in it for my liking and I can see far less info at a time than I can with Outlook Classic.

I wonder if they've also added back an option to move the buttons for "Mail", Calendar" etc. back to the bottom of the left bar. It's crazy that these take up so much space down the left in New Outlook. I know that's also the default for Classic Outlook these days, but at least you could bump them back to the bottom where they take up less space.

[RMclan]

One improvement in New Outlook

I'm not sure if it's New Outlook vs Classic Outlook, but we have found that the search facility when logged into the online version of Outlook at outlook.office.com is much better than searching for things in the desktop app.

I've seen it where the most recent email in a folder has come from a particular person, but when you search the folder in the desktop app for that person's email address it returns no results found, not even that top most email. Search the same folder for the same email address on online version and it will return every email from that person.

One of my users has the desktop app open and the online version, searches in the online version, clicks reply against the email she found, saves that response as a draft, then opens the draft in the desktop app to complete the email, because apart from the search she hates doing anything in the online version.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: One improvement in New Outlook

They can fix the search in the web to make it like Classic. This is an obviously an error, search needs to be shit and results should be displayed in a shitty way.

[Anonymous Coward]

Isnt New Outlook just Web Outlook?

Are they not doing it so they only have one Outlook to maintain, the one in the browser and the one in the WPA.

Maintaining 2 Outlooks costs 2x more Ai Tokens. Once they cut over they just halved their costs.

For the New vs Classic complainers, its obvious that 95% of the features are available in new outlook (to some extent). And New outlook has features which Classic can only dream of... such things as: What's new, Schedule a meeting with Copilot from an email thread, Prepare for your meeting with Copilot, Favorite groups, Snooze.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/getstarted/feature-comparison-between-new-outlook-and-classic-outlook

[stiine]

Re: Isnt New Outlook just Web Outlook?

I don't know. Does it drop you at a designed-to-be-useless blank window after you send an email like the web interface does? WTF Microsoft, why in hell can't you just return me to where I was. While you're here, perhaps you can explain why, when I search for messages, the resulting screen has no damn delete button. Did you terminate the project manager who approved this design? Why not? If I click on the Teams link, WTF are you opening Teams and displaying a banner telling me that a new version of Teams is available? I'm already in Teams. If you took me to the old version when I clicked on your link on your webpage, its your fault.

[Mr Dogshit]

Re: Isnt New Outlook just Web Outlook?

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical Microslop

putting lipstick on a pig and saying 'look, shiny shiny' yet underneath, it is still pure bovine excrement that has been left to fester for six months.

[Bebu sa Ware]

putting lipstick on a pig … it is still pure bovine excrement

Porcine excrement surely ?

Although MS is arguably a chicken·shit outfit but it is consistently punching well above its weight in World Series Bullshit Bingo. Certainly a contender.

[cFortC]

Worthless without PST's or conversion utility

I have decades of PST's from previous consulting work. Currently using Outlook 2021 perpetual.

No Outlook replacement will work for me until PST's are supported or a clean conversion utility is provided.

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Worthless without PST's or conversion utility

If you, or a friend, set up an IMAP server then you can copy all the emails in your psts to that and it is usable with any email client.

It's definitely a non-trivial undertaking for the average user, but it is also definitely a long term solution. IMAP isn't going away.

[JWLong]

Call It What they Will ..........................

I won't touch either version anymore. The online version sucks camel balls, and they break the classic version every other month to try and force people over to the web waste.

I'm ThunderBird all the way now! It just works ..........!

[johnB]

.pst files

I never understood the logic of building these giant monolithic files & it put me off Outlook.

Putting all ones eggs into a single basket just seems wrong.

I still don't understand & it still puts me off Outlook.

MS's forcible injection of ads on my one (free) Outlook account makes me even less likely to ever want to use it.

[X5-332960073452]

Re: .pst files

Also, most of those injected ad's are scams, mainly about expired anti-virus subscriptions.

[BartyFartsLast]

Or, YKnow

You could just stick with classic and leave the steaming turd that is the new outlook unused

[Anonymous Coward]

Binned

I binned Outlook in 2007 when m$$$ wanted to charge me an additional £99 to purchase it when my new PC came with Office 2007.

I bought Office 2010 Home & Student for my children when they needed a computer for school. That would have been another £198 [kerching] had I bought outlook, then another £99 for my wife's computer so a total of £396 for email clients, which were bundled with previous versions of Outlook IIRC?

I currently use Thunderbird and a separate note taking app (permanent license) and haven't missed Outlook at all.

The fact that M$ release new versions that either aren't completely compatible with previous versions or else lack popular / well used features of previous versions shows how bad M$ have become. New versions should only be released when they have the the equivalent functionality and compatibility of previous versions.

TBH I didn't like the ribbon when it arrived in 2007 and that pushed me straight into Open Office at the time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Outlook Data Files

98GB of historic PST files and a client that can’t ingest them or search them with no native conversion tools….what a disgrace Microsoft has become.

[Anonymous Coward]

Call it what it is

"New Outlook" should be "New Outlook Express" - it's the hamstrung, crippled cousin of actual Outlook (which has its own issues, but nowhere near as severe)

Have people actually forgotten about Outlook Express already? It was only retired 20 years ago with the introduction of "Windows Mail" in Vista (not that either were any good)

[BassX]

Looks to me like they're using the classic "house flipper" tactic - make it look good on initial inspection, then after you've bought it discover that the foundations are frail and the walls are crumbling, all while they're laughing all the way to the bank...

If I wanted to use OWA I'd open a browser. I'm dreading the day we get the notification that everyone gets switched in 12 months - the classic app works well, and very few people actually want the new Outlook (the amount of our users who've left visible feedback in the 365 admin center complaining about it vs users who like it are about 20:1). Unfortunately Microsoft are so deaf to user needs and complaints these days that they'll steamroll everyone regardless.

[Mr Dogshit]

"transitioning"

Transitioning my arse.