Introducing the new Outlook for Mac
Published Nov 06 2019 09:45 AM 116K Views
Microsoft

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 experiences that are designed for simplicity, reliability, and customization. Available in Insider Fast, we plan to release additional updates over the coming months. Our goal is to exceed the expectations of the most demanding executives and power users with improved performance and new functionality and look forward to learning from our customers who choose to try the new Outlook for Mac preview. The updated experience is carefully crafted and specifically designed with the power of Microsoft Services to provide suggestions and insights that are relevant to you, and simplicity to enable you to customize the experience.

Improved performance increases productivity
Built on the same Microsoft sync technology utilized by Outlook for iOS and Android and Windows Mail, the new Outlook for Mac is faster and more reliable, bringing advanced performance and unlocking exciting new capabilities. It provides quick syncing of your Office 365, Outlook.com, and Google accounts to the Microsoft Cloud, and switching over to the new Outlook experience is as easy as the click of a button. The Microsoft sync technology enables more relevant search results, reduced email load times, and allows us to bring you the latest and greatest functionality from Office 365.

Preview the new experience now when you sign up for Insider Fast. Once in Insider Fast, simply turn on the “New Outlook” toggle and check out all the updates. Microsoft sync technology enables you to switch quickly between the new Outlook for Mac experience and the current version in prod, making it easy to compare the differences for yourself and try new features and functionality as they are released.

Simplify how you organize your day
The productivity power of Outlook is at your fingertips with updated capabilities that make Outlook for Mac easier to use.

It’s about focusing on simplicity, and the new functionality helps make reading and writing emails a breeze. We’ve helped make creating a new message faster by adding the ability to insert a table, add an image, and use the rich text editor in the new message compose area so you don’t have to leave the main window.

The message list allows for single line viewing and full conversation views of threads regardless of what folder they’re in. This way messages you may have moved to different folders are collated into a single view so you can see the entire thread in the message list enabling you to get to any part of the conversation quickly. Additionally, if there’s a conversation that you’ve been included in but no longer want to see new messages, we’ve added the ability to ignore them.

As an integral part of the Office 365 experience, we’ve added Groups to the Outlook for Mac Calendar where you can create and manage events on behalf of the Group just like you can with your work or personal calendar in Outlook. Plus, if you’re a member of many Groups, you will be able to see more of your Groups in the folder list, beyond the existing limit of 10.

We are introducing small notifications about email status such as when your emails have been sent. With insights at glance, you know you’ve successfully got things done.

 

The new Outlook for Mac main mail canvasThe new Outlook for Mac main mail canvas

Enhanced personalization so you’re in control
One of the Outlook design principles is to make Outlook feel native to your preferred operating environment. In Outlook for Mac, that includes using toolbars. We are adding more flexibility to personalize the existing ribbon. You can choose which commands to display on the new customizable toolbar and which ones to hide. This helps reduce your visual clutter and helps you focus on what’s most important.

Microsoft Search has arrived in Outlook for Mac, the same engine that also powers other Outlook and Office 365 experiences , giving you consistent suggestions and faster results. The Search bar is now located at the top of Outlook for a consistent experience across Office, and by simply clicking into the Search bar, you get recent history and people suggestions that make it easy to find information that matters.

We are very excited about the new capabilities to allow for a deeper Search experience. We’ve added advanced filters, that includes keywords, date ranges, and people, to help you find exactly what you’re looking for in a fraction of the time.

We understand that everyone uses email differently, which is why we’ve added the ability to manage how you view your main email canvas. To help you see all the essentials of your day in one snapshot view, we’ve done something new for Outlook for Mac and integrated My Day into the main mail screen. My Day brings your agenda and a 30 day calendar to the right side of the main canvas.
Whether you like to focus on your day as a whole or prefer to see what’s up next on the agenda, this helps you stay on top of your commitments without leaving your email. Choose between your work, shared, or other calendars, and take action right in the pane, such as joining a meeting or sending an RSVP. This consolidated view helps keep you productive and focus on what matters.

You can also adjust the My Day and Folder list panes based on your preference so you can view either more or less of your message list or reading/compose panes.

When a meeting invite shows up in your inbox, you can now respond and send quick responses straight from the reading pane. Even scheduling meetings is easier, with information that is most relevant to you, such as icons that indicate attendee and location availability, and suggested locations that populate while you type. Simply drag the time block on the calendar grid when creating a meeting and instantly see availability without going into the detailed Scheduling Assistant. The new Outlook for Mac helps you schedule meetings that work best with everyone’s schedule, in just a few clicks making it a sleek, streamlined, and easy to use experience.

The new Outlook for Mac has been designed to make it a better experience for our users - with a simpler, more elegant user experience that gives you a chance to personalize more than ever before.

 

The new Outlook for Mac Calendar and quick event compose paneThe new Outlook for Mac Calendar and quick event compose pane


Experience the new Outlook for Mac
The new Outlook for Mac leverages powerful and simple design principles that give users control to customize their experiences and get things done quickly. It helps you access your mail and calendar quickly, schedule and respond to meetings with ease, find what you’re looking for with Search, and bring better organization to your mail. It has the capability updates you’ve been asking for in a customizable and easy to use experience.

Sign up for Insider Fast now and be the first to try it. As part of Insider Fast, you can help shape the future of Outlook for Mac by checking out the new experience and providing feedback – we love to hear what you think. Let us know what you want to see next and give us your thoughts on new features and functionality as they continue to be released. If you have questions or want more information about the new Outlook for Mac, visit our website or support page.

 

Read our March update and check out the new features added.

 

*The new Outlook for Mac is supported by mac OS 10.14 Mojave and above. Only available for Office 365, Outlook.com, and Google accounts.

143 Comments
Copper Contributor

This is awesome! One quick question has the "All Accounts" feature been removed?

Copper Contributor

This is going to be great! Can you clarify how do I get the new Outlook? I have Office 365 for Mac installed, and I'm already on Fast updates, but the AutoUpdater does not provide me with a capability to download the new Outlook for Mac. Where do I download it from?

Brass Contributor

Switched back immediately because Shared Mailboxes don't appear to be accessible.

 

Brass Contributor

What is the build number for this new version?  I just updated via Insider Fast and got 16.32, which looks just like the older Outlook for Mac.

Brass Contributor

Will there be support coming for Office Add-ins?

Copper Contributor

I've had to switch back to the old format because the unified inbox is not working in this build. As an educator, I have quite a few email accounts to keep track of and having the incoming emails aggregate in one place is crucial.

Copper Contributor

I switched back to the previous version just to compare, but now I can't switch back to the new version.  What's the trick?

Brass Contributor

@NathanRodgers @there should be a switch near the search field in the top right corner.

Brass Contributor

Switched back. Pretty half-baked!

No Contacts, Tasks or Notes. Also no Delivery or Read receipts...

Come on MS, these must be considered a core part of Outlook?!

Brass Contributor

@wrighta16 - c'mon, for an early public beta is it very impressive. The whole foundation of the platform has been re-done and my experience so far is that performance is dramatically improved, especially search and syncing..  

You can certainly keep using the current release, but kudos to the development team for the effort they've put in so far, this is a great sign.

Brass Contributor

Maybe I just have higher expectations of the features that should be included in a product before releasing it to the public. To have to switch to the old version to access contacts!? Wouldn't that be considered an essential feature for any release? In my view, sorry but this release shouldn't have left the dev labs... 

Brass Contributor

@wrighta16 - this version was made available through Office Insider Fast, which requires opt-in and is very clearly identified as:

 

Best for Insiders who want to use the very earliest builds to identify issues and provide feedback about new features still in development. Insider is ideal for those who don't mind the bit of risk involved in using unsupported builds.

It's not, as you wrote "released to the public," quite the contrary - this is a way for the Office Mac development to get critical feedback on the implementation of new design, UI/UX, features. I posted something about this new version on twitter yesterday, and several members of the Dev team reached out personally and encouraged me to share my impressions, said it is very valuable for them to hear from real-world (and in my case, very long time) Mac Office users and helps them prioritize which issues to work on.

Brass Contributor

I don't necessarily disagree with what you're saying.

However, in my humble opinion, as someone running software development projects, you draw a line for a release (whatever state of completeness that is), and whatever features are required to go in to that release (above the line) are agreed and delivered.

For me, even to make this Insider Fast release, I would have had Contacts above the line and included. An email client without 'Contacts', Hmm...!

Happy for all to have & share their opinions on it. That's mine. Great to hear dev's are listening. As you say they are looking for feedback and that's mine... :)

Copper Contributor

Downloaded as part of the Insider Fast program and I don't like several aspects of the new approach for the following reasons

 

What concerns me in the current build of 16.32 (19110600) is the complete absence of being able to customise columns and appearance.  

 

Specifically, I just want to work in a list of emails by arranged by date, emails on the right, folders on the left.  I don't find Grouping by Conversation helpful at all so I never use that feature.  

 

I don't want to have a Reading Pane as I prefer to open individual messages and display more emails in list view.  I also work in public spaces so I don't necessarily want email contents to appear by default.  Nor do I want my My Day/Calendar in view as a column since I can use Cmd-2 to bring up the calendar just as easily.  

 

Whilst I know that I can hide the RP and the My Day column, my issue with the New Outlook message view is that it still displays the first part of the message in preview which makes every line the same length and is just too much clutter on screen.  Worse, I cannot adjust the width of the columns to my liking.  'From' is way too narrow, 'Subject' is too wide and I can't seem to find a way to add 'Categories' (which I use a lot) to the default view.

 

Please can you give us the option to switch off 'first line preview' and let us choose our own columns and widths and keep the column headings. I don't see any benefit in making the Filter command a drop down.  I much prefer just being able to click on the column headings to sort alphabetically or by date otherwise you have to keep going back to that filter button which is kind of annoying.

 

I guess this is a fundamental part of the new design but the benefit of a toolbar over the old ribbon, since the different ribbon components had more aggregate commands than seems to be the case with toolbar buttons, seems very overstated.

 

I hope this feedback, although not terribly positive, is helpful.

 

 

Copper Contributor

It appears that you cannot disable Focused Inbox in the 16.32 version?

Brass Contributor

@AustinRiggs In Outlook Preferences, choose the Accounts tab, you can deselect Focused inbox. 

Copper Contributor

Switched back also because in our organization we use heavily smart folders and not available. I hope this feature will be available in the new version and appears fast in the upcoming builds. 

Brass Contributor

Reliable search results has been an on-going problem for Outlook for Mac over the years.  Can anybody tell if the new version of Outlook is relying on the Spotlight index or rather is Outlook performing its own indexing?  My testing of search with the new version has provided expected results which is super exciting.

 

mark

Copper Contributor

I've just updated to new version, but don't see New Outlook button.
Any ideas?

2019-11-20_15-42-58.png2019-11-20_15-43-30.png

Copper Contributor

I have the exact same issue. Any idea how I can get the 'New Outlook' switch to show?

 

I'm on the Insider Fast setting.

Copper Contributor

I cannot seem to upgrade to 16.32. I am stuck on 16.31. I have enabled Insider Fast via the Auto Update tool and toggled between production, slow and fast. I just want to get v16.32.

 

Checking configuration...
{
    AutoUpdateVersion = "4.17.19111002";
    ChannelName = InsiderFast;
    HowToCheck = AutomaticDownload;
    LastCheckForUpdates = "Nov 21, 2019 at 1:25:05 PM";
    ManifestServer = "";
    RegisteredApplications =     (
                {
            "Application ID" = MSau04;
            ApplicationPath = "/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/MAU2.0/Microsoft AutoUpdate.app";
            VersionOnDisk = "4.17.19111002";
        }
    );
    StartDaemonOnAppLaunch = true;
    UpdateCache = "";
}

Sadness....

MACBOOK:MacOS ldyer$ ./msupdate --install --apps OPIM2019 --version 16.32.19111900
Detecting and downloading updates...
No updates applied

I re-installed Office and it updated all apps to 16.32 except for Outlook, fml.

Screen Shot 2019-11-21 at 2.40.03 PM.png

 

 

UPDATE: This was an issue with Microsoft and has been fixed on their end :)

Copper Contributor

For those that cannot enable it you have to go under help and then choose try new outlook. Kinda hidden got me too at first :)

 

Copper Contributor

I'm also not able to see the "new experience".  I just updated to 16.33, yet still see no button in the upper-right to enable the new views.  What am I missing?

 

Thanks much!

Brass Contributor

@menkalos Try looking under the Tools menu. You might see an item called "New Outlook".  At this point you are not missing much as most of the basic features are still not available.

Brass Contributor

Confirmed no New Outlook button showing in 16.33 for me either.  The option isn't found under any menus either.

 

OS X 10.14.6

Copper Contributor

Thanks for the announcement @Jessica_Wilczek!

 

Could you let us know when this will be released to the public (i.e., as part of the general release)?

 

Also, looks like the new UI doesn't yet support Add-ins -- for instance the "Get Add-ins" button is no longer present -- is this correct? If so, when will support for Add-ins be added?

 

Thanks.

Brass Contributor

Given the regular stream of Insider Fast Updates, is there any release notes to cover these releases?

As the new 'Preview' lacks so many features of the full Outlook, many are having to revert until these are added and working, yet we won't know that something has been included in a release unless we switch the new 'Preview' back on and check ourselves.

Seems that a roadmap and/or timely release notes would help in this scenario...

Copper Contributor

Great update, however the lack of a unified inbox forces me to revert to the older version!

Copper Contributor

Has there been any changes to cache function? Disable or set specific cache period, like in the Windows version?

 

Copper Contributor

Am unable to access the new outlook even though I updated it to the latest version of Mac on outlook (insider fast: Ver 16.33 updated as on 12/4). The earlier option used to be Help --> Try new Outlook which no longer appears for me

Brass Contributor

The "New Outlook" button suddenly appeared for me earlier this week.  I'm liking what I see so far.

Unsure why the option to disable Focused Inbox is under Account settings.  It would be more intuitive to have that setting under General or Reading.  It used to be available on the "View" menu as well.

Copper Contributor

It would be nice to be able to set the order of folders in Favorites. Awesome interface, especially love the My Day on the left.

Copper Contributor

how do you know the total number of messages in your inbox (for example). when I get a new message I see a number next to my inbox folder. but how do I know the total number of read and unread messages in a particular folder?

Brass Contributor

@cdpresto "how do you know the total number of messages in your inbox (for example). when I get a new message I see a number next to my inbox folder. but how do I know the total number of read and unread messages in a particular folder?"  You can vote on that feature in the uservoice.  

https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/924856-the-new-outlook-for-mac/

 

 

Brass Contributor

I have noticed two issues:

 

1.  when using the share button from other office apps to send a file (e.g., use share button in word to send the word file by email using Outlook) - the email will be generated but won't send - just stays in the outbox

 

2.  When dragging files from the new outlook to a folder in the finder - something is going on with the permissions where the file is set to read only.  

 

Really like the search functionality.

Copper Contributor

Has anyone been able to access the new outlook with the recent insider fast updates?

Copper Contributor

I'm using the latest version 16.33 (MacOS 10.15.2) and the button to switch to new outlook cannot be found anywhere. Any idea to help ? :(

Brass Contributor

@happin3ss @Following this thread, updating does not seem to be the trigger for access to the new outlook. I have had it since version 16.32. If I recall correctly, it appeared without an update prompt. 

Copper Contributor

I too was missing the New Outlook button but now I do have it.  This may have something to do with how you download the app.  I could not see the New Outlook toggle when I had downloaded the app from the Apple App Store.  I then installed Outlook from the Office 365 portal and the New Outlook option appeared.  This may be a limitation on stable releases that Apple controls.  In any case if you've downloaded Office/Outlook from Apple App Store try logging into your Office 365 account online and downloading the app from there.  It worked for me.  

 

Separately, some comments on the release so far:

- Really needs the unified inbox (and other unified folders) for multiple accounts as in prior Outlook.

- Would like the option to generate replies in new window by default instead of in preview window. 

- Would like to be able to organize the Favorites list (seems to stick folders in any order it wants then you can't move them).

- Search needs to apply to all mailboxes.  In this release the search only applies to the mailbox you are presently in.  

 

Otherwise seems to be coming along nicely.  

Copper Contributor

I've been waiting for the calendar pane since switching to Mac from Windows 3 years ago.  This is amazing!!!

Copper Contributor

today,  1/3/2020, I updated to the latest version,16.34 (20010106). I then needed to switch back to the old UI, i've done this before to access features not yet available in the new UI, and now I am unable to see the toggle button to switch back to the new UI. I don't see the option to enable the new look under any of the menus or in the preferences. anyone else seeing this with the new version? 

Brass Contributor

Just downloaded the new build this morning (1/7/20).  When sending an email, the program is not recognizing text in the subject line.  outlook asks if I want to send an email without a subject line - even though I have typed text into the subject line.  

 

mark

Microsoft

@markh31  - With the new Outlook for Mac, we have moved away from using Spotlight and are using Microsoft Search for indexing and overall search technology.

Microsoft

@wrighta16  The Release Notes for Insider Fast builds, which can be found here, will cover all of the updates regarding the new Outlook for Mac. These Release Notes can also be found on the Office Insider page.  For the roadmap, we are planning to use the Microsoft 365 roadmap Insider filter to track when we estimate the release of features coming soon to the new Outlook for Mac experience.   

Microsoft

@sonyp @alfmena  @thevivek  @Kim Mortensen 

We are currently working on bringing a variety of features to the new Outlook for Mac. When new features become available, we will publish them in the Release Notes, so be sure to keep an eye out for new releases. We are also planning to use the Microsoft 365 roadmap Insider filter to track when we estimate the release of features coming soon to the new Outlook for Mac experience.  

In the meantime, feel free to let us know what features you are looking forward to via one of our feedback forums in UserVoice or within Outlook. We monitor these channels closely and appreciate any feedback you provide!

Brass Contributor

I am finding the new search works really well in the new Outlook  We have had a lot of problems with the current shipping version of Outlook and search not working.  Will the new Outlook support plugins like the current shipping version does?   I think that is a pretty important feature for Outlook.  The new Outlook does not appear to have such a capability right now.

 

mark

Microsoft

@paulrenshaw-tls @Amafortas @wrighta16  @wifinomad  @liamblack  @StephenTMeyer  @markh31  @raton2019  @stirlingm 

Thank you so much for your feedback, everyone! We really appreciate it and have made note your comments. If there are any other features you’re looking out for or want to provide your feedback on, please utilize our feedback forums in UserVoice or within Outlook. In the meantime, be sure to check our Release Notes to stay up to date on new features as they are released.

Microsoft

I’m sorry to hear some of you are having trouble trying out the new Outlook for Mac. If you take a look at our support site, you’ll see that you must have all of the proper system requirements to see the new experience. Please make sure you have the correct system requirements for Office as well as the following:

  • macOS version 10.14 (Mojave) and later
  • Outlook version 16.32 (19110306) and later
  • An Office 365, Outlook.com, or Google account
Copper Contributor

I am on MacOS 10.15.2 and on Outlook 16.33 with Office365 enterprise license. but still the 'New Outlook' option is missing. 

 

Copper Contributor

Hi@Jessica_Wilczek , not only me but many of my colleagues have the same problem. We are all using macOS 10.15.2 with Office 365 Business and picked the update as Insider Fast. We've switched successfully to new Outlook and then switch back to the old Outlook since there is a few missing feature (we used it with the version 16.32). After switching back, there is no switch button to new outlook anymore even for now we are using the 16.34.

 This can be 100% reproduced, I've tried it on 2 Macbook Pro of my colleagues, so please help us to get the message to the DEV team. Thank you

Version history
Last update:
‎Jul 27 2020 02:20 PM
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