Download Box Tools for Mac Download Box Tools for Windows. Quickly create new notes, access ones you recently edited, and bookmark favorites. Work with others in the same note and make revisions in real time. Plus, track changes and reference past drafts with version history. The Outlook for Mac experience, now available for preview in Insider Fast, has been updated to enhance performance and elevate productivity. The new Outlook for Mac is powered by the Microsoft Cloud and connects using Microsoft sync technology. It brings updates across Mail, Search, and Calendar exp.
At Ignite 2019, Microsoft announced an all-new Outlook for Mac experience with redesigned UI, improved performance and several new features. Back in June, this new Outlook experience was released as part of Insider Fast Build 16.38 (20052800) for Outlook for Mac users. Yesterday, Microsoft announced the release of the new Outlook for Mac for Insider Slow users. You can get the new Outlook for Mac via a toggle switch on the top right corner of your Outlook main window.
This new update brings several new features and capabilities including support for add-ins, sensitivity labels, people view, people search, improved calendar and more. Find the full change log below.
What’s new in Outlook for Mac:
Improved sync – Built on top of Microsoft sync technology, which also powers Outlook Mobile, the new Outlook for Mac syncs your messages with improved speed and reliability.
Search enhancements – Search is now built using the same engine that powers other Office 365 experiencesso you can quickly find exactly what you’re looking for.
New mail and event compose experiences – Entirely new mail and event compose experiences that help improve your productivity with enhancements such as an easy to access formatting bar, suggested times, and locations.
My Day– Anew addition thatbrings you a view of your agenda or calendar events right from within your main mail canvas, and includes a 2-week calendar view to give you a quick glance at your upcoming events.
Customizable toolbar – The new toolbar puts your most used commands front and center and is fully customizable.
Mail Tips– Get more information about your mail, like a heads up if you’re messaging people with automatic replies turned on, sending an email to recipients outside your organization, or sending an email to a large audience.
Snooze?– For those moments when?you don’t have?time?to?read or respond to an?email, simply? “snooze”? it?and select the time that works best?for it?to?show up in your Inbox? again? as an unread email.
Easily snooze messages or perform quick swipe actions directly in the message list.
Unified inbox?– Combine the multiple mailboxes?you manage?into one single inbox, making it easier for you to view everything that is important in one place.??
Sensitivity labels – Protect sensitive information across your organization. Classify messages based on their confidentiality and sensitivity to ensure those viewing your email understand how they should treat the information enclosed.
Add-ins?– Install and use your favorite add-ins and enhance your productivity within Outlook. Add-ins that work with Office JavaScript??API 1.6?and below are fully supported. We are currently working on support for API 1.7+.?
Actionable Messages?– The new Outlook for Mac supports the familiar experience of?Actionable Messages created with Adaptive Cards, enabling quick actions directly from your inbox, such as filling out a survey or approving an expense report.
People view? – The new Outlook for Mac comes with a completely revamped People view. Explore contacts that are important to you, you collaborate with often, and even those you may want to follow up with?– all from the same place.?Easily create new contacts and make updates to existing entries directly from this new view.?
Create new contacts and view them alongside other important?colleagues.
Teams meeting toggle?– This toggle will be available when you quickly create a?new calendar event. By switching the toggle?on?you can more easily make any meeting a Teams meeting.
Meeting Insights?–? Outlook helps you show up prepared to your meetings by suggesting emails and files that are relevant to the event or attendees.?
Explore the most recentfeature releases
Since the release of the new Outlook for Mac in Insider Fast last fall, we have been continuously updating the experience to bring you brand new capabilities and an updated look and feel. The past couple of months have been no different, with our most recent updates including:
Rules – Easily manage your inbox by setting preferences to automatically flag, move, delete, or take other actions on specific email messages you receive.
Access Tasks and Notes – Keep track of what’s important by flagging an item for follow-up, adding to your to-do list, or jotting something down on a sticky note.
Send button updates–After testing and gathering user feedback, we have moved the send button to the top of the mail canvas for an improved experience when composing a message.
Additions to People search – Quickly take action when searching for a contact by starting an email, chat, or call with someone directly from the search results.
Group header view–Tailor your message list to fit your needswith the ability to show or hide group headers basedon your preferences.
Every meeting online – Set your Calendar preferences to ensure all your newly scheduled meetings are online via Teams or Skype.
Edit your preferences to ensure every meeting you schedule is online.
Coming soon…
S/MIME– Enhance the security of your email with digital message encryption, extra protection that ensures emails can only be opened by recipients that have the correct key.
Mailbox delegation– Allow others in your organization the ability to manage your calendar and edit, schedule, and respond to meetings on your behalf.
Shared mailboxes– Access all mail from shared mailboxes that you have added to Outlook.
Open shared calendars – See all your commitments in one place with the ability to open shared calendars you have been added to and see them alongside your personal schedule.
Source: Microsoft
Microsoft has plugged some key gaps in its 'new Outlook' for macOS, currently in preview and given a fresh update just a few days ago, but the product still has puzzling omissions that drive users back to the old version.
The revised Mac Outlook was first revealed at the Ignite event in late 2019. It appears to be a complete rebuild of the Mac email client, geared towards Office 365, but the question administrators will be pondering is whether important features in the existing Outlook will ever appear in the new one.
The history of Outlook on the Mac is inglorious. Microsoft and Mac go back a long way. Excel, for example, was a Mac application two years before it appeared on Windows. When it came to Outlook though, Mac users lost out. Outlook on Windows goes back to 1997, but the first full Mac version did not appear until Outlook 2011, and even that was not very good, slower than the Windows version and missing some features, such as Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).
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VBA has never come to Outlook on the Mac, but a 2014 release was much improved, as Microsoft began to push the idea of Office 365 everywhere rather than keeping users hooked on Windows.
The new Outlook for the Mac in its first preview (click to enlarge)
Fast-forward to today, and there is not that much missing in Outlook 365 for Mac versus Windows, VBA aside.
All that is set to change with the latest new Outlook Mac as the pendulum swings away from making the Mac Outlook close to the Windows one, and towards giving Mac users a more distinct experience. It is also a matter of protocols. The existing Outlook Mac uses Exchange Web Services (EWS) which is being phased out.
Outlook on Windows generally uses MAPI over HTTP, perhaps the nearest thing to a native Exchange protocol. Microsoft is not happy with either and for its 'modern' mail client in Windows 8 and Windows 10 it developed a new sync protocol. In the past this was sometimes called Hx but it seems now to go by the name Microsoft Sync.
When Microsoft acquired Accompli in 2014, whose product became Outlook Mobile, it used its own protocol but that too now uses Microsoft Sync. According to presentations at Ignite 2019, this new sync protocol is designed specifically for mail-related data and makes the best even of poor connections, prioritising recent data.
The move from EWS to Microsoft Sync enables new features and improved performance, and no longer downloads the entire mailbox to the local machine. System requirements are for macOS 10.14 Mojave and Office 365, Outlook.com or Gmail email accounts.
The snag with a rebuilt Outlook for Mac is that having nearly caught up with Windows Outlook, it is now far behind in terms of features. It is in preview and some will reappear, but it is unlikely to be the full set. It hardly qualifies as a mail client in its current incarnation, with no support for standard protocols like POP3 and IMAP, nor any way of connecting to on-premises Exchange.
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'We don't support on-prem yet but it's going to come soon,' said Microsoft in November 2019; six months on it is not there yet. On the plus side, it not only looks pretty, with full support for the Mac's Dark Mode on Catalina, but also performs well, with a fluidity that frankly feels unusual in a Mac Outlook product.
Features of the new Outlook for Mac include a new unified inbox view that avoids clicking between accounts, if you have several configured. You can now reply to emails inline ('nested compose'), a convenience feature that has been in Windows Outlook for some time. There is a new 'ignore conversation' option. Creating meetings uses a new simplified dialogue that you can expand as needed.
As for the new features added in the June update, these include add-in support (a big deal), sensitivity labels for classifying confidential data, a People view for managing contacts, an option to create an event directly from an email, read receipts, and a 'coming soon' promise of the ability to open shared calendars and to encrypt emails with S/MIME.
The actual preview release did not quite live up to the promise. In particular, the People view is not yet enabled, thanks to some last-minute bug that was discovered. One gets the new Outlook by signing up to the Office 'Insider Fast' channel, and after the new version downloads and installs, one can switch back and forth by toggling a 'New Outlook' switch. If the user attempts to use a feature such as the People view, a message pops up inviting the user to switch back, wrecking the fluid experience but that is what one gets for trying a preview.
The current preview is not fully usable, but fortunately switching back is quick
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The problem of Outlook on Windows being different from Outlook on Mac will get worse
Microsoft has not specified a release date for the new Outlook Mac but a few things are clear. First, it will be the best Outlook yet, perhaps on any platform, in terms of appearance and design. This is not a high bar: Outlook on Windows is a mess from a user interface perspective, and has dialogues buried within that have not changed for decades. Performance also looks promising.
Second, Outlook Mac will be focused on cloud, especially Office 365, though it also already has good support for Google mail. Teams integration will also be strong and Microsoft has demonstrated features like converting an event to a Teams meeting, handy in times of lockdown.
Lastly, the problem of Outlook on Windows being different from Outlook on Mac will get worse. What if Microsoft replaces the Windows version with a similarly rebuilt product? Perhaps it will; but the difficulty is that Outlook is baked into the Windows ecosystem and forms part of workflows, some automated with COM technology, that will break if Microsoft replaces it. Custom add-ins, VBA projects, ancient APIs that remain for legacy reasons, all mean this will be a tricky application to replace.
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Creating a meeting in the new Outlook Mac: just drag in the calendar and this simple dialog pops up
Outlook on Windows is perhaps the most annoying of Microsoft's Office products, yet the job it does is a critical one, bringing together email, calendar and tasks, and providing collaboration features like shared calendars and contacts. Some legacy features, like Exchange public folders, made their way into Office 365 where they have become something of a burden to Microsoft.
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The new Outlook for Mac, when it comes out of preview, will represent Microsoft's current thinking on how Outlook should look and behave in the cloud era, but it will be some time before that can apply in Windows as well. ®