15 productivity features in the new Outlook for Windows
Hello, Outlook community. I’m Vicki Milton, a Principal Product Manager on the Outlook team. Over the last year, we’ve added important capabilities across areas such as offline support, shared mailboxes, and PST files. Alongside those milestones, we've continued to deliver smaller improvements that help people work more efficiently throughout the day. This article highlights 15 productivity features in the new Outlook for Windows that can help you stay organized, reduce routine effort, and keep important work moving. Mail features Email remains central to how many people manage communications, priorities, and follow-up. Outlook includes familiar tools for composing and organizing messages, along with newer capabilities that can help reduce friction and make inbox management more efficient. Pin a mail: Keep important messages easy to find. The Pin feature keeps a selected email at the top of your inbox so it remains visible as new messages arrive. This can be useful for items you need to reference often or do not want to lose track of, such as travel details, approvals, or active requests. By keeping priority messages in view, Pin can reduce time spent searching and help you stay focused on current work. Snooze a mail: Return messages when they are relevant again. Snooze lets you temporarily remove an email from your inbox and have it reappear at a time you choose. This can help keep your inbox focused on messages you can act on now while ensuring follow-up items come back when they are timely. It is particularly useful for requests that depend on additional information, scheduled tasks, or work you plan to handle during dedicated focus time. Add multiple categories at the same time: Organize messages with fewer steps. If you use categories to manage incoming mail, Outlook makes it possible to apply more than one category in a single action. This can help when you need to capture multiple types of context, such as project, priority, or follow-up status, without reopening menus repeatedly. It is especially useful when processing a large number of messages. Sweep: Reduce repetitive inbox cleanup. Sweep lets you create automatic actions for messages from a specific sender. For example, you can delete promotional mail after a set period, keep only the latest message in a thread, or move recurring updates to a folder. This can help reduce manual cleanup and keep your inbox more focused on items that need attention. Schedule Send: Write on your schedule and deliver at the right time. Schedule Send lets you prepare messages when it is convenient for you and send them later at a time that works better for the recipient. This can improve visibility, support more intentional communication, and reduce the need to rely on reminders or leave messages in Drafts. Simplified folder sharing: Share folders more simply. Sharing a mail folder has traditionally required extra permission steps, especially for nested folders. Now, when you share a folder, Outlook can automatically apply the visibility permissions needed for its parent folders. This can reduce setup effort, help avoid access issues for recipients, and make folder sharing easier to complete with confidence. Calendar and meeting features For many people, the workday is shaped by meetings, schedule changes, and the need to stay aligned on what comes next. Outlook includes calendar and meeting capabilities that can help simplify planning, reduce coordination overhead, and make follow-up easier. Follow a meeting: Stay informed without attending live. The Follow RSVP option lets you indicate that you will not attend a meeting but still want access to the recap. This can be helpful when schedules overlap or when a meeting is useful to monitor without joining in real time. It can help you stay connected to outcomes and shared materials while keeping your calendar more manageable. Save calendar views: Return to the calendar setup you need more quickly. Saved Views let you store specific calendar combinations and switch back to them without rebuilding the same view each time. This can save time for people who move frequently between personal, team, and project schedules. It also can make it easier to review the right set of calendars for different planning tasks. Improved meeting tracking: Work with meeting responses more efficiently. Outlook includes tools that make it easier for organizers to review and manage meeting responses. You can sort attendee lists, search for names in the Tracking view, and copy or download response details when needed. These capabilities can be especially useful for larger meetings where attendance information needs to be reviewed quickly. Meeting recap: Find follow-up materials in one place. After a Teams meeting, the calendar event in Outlook can surface a Meeting recap with links to the recording, transcript, and shared files. This can make it easier to review what was discussed, confirm details, or catch up afterward. By keeping these materials together, Meeting recap can reduce the time it takes to get oriented after a meeting. Filtered views: Reduce visual clutter in your calendar. Filters let you hide meetings you are not attending and limit the distraction of declined or informational events. This can make it easier to scan your schedule, identify conflicts, and focus on the meetings that need your attention. For people with full calendars, it can help make planning more straightforward. Change a recurring event: Update future meetings while preserving earlier ones. When plans change, Outlook lets you edit the current event and all following events in a recurring series. This can make it easier to adjust details such as time, location, or agenda going forward without changing the record of past meetings. It can simplify updates for organizers and reduce disruption for attendees. Personalization and settings Settings can play a practical role in day-to-day productivity. A few adjustments can make it easier to focus, move between accounts and calendars, and work in a way that fits your preferences. Here are several settings-related features that can help make Outlook feel more streamlined and manageable. Rename your email accounts: Make the right inbox easier to recognize. If you use multiple accounts in Outlook, you can assign each one a custom name. This can help you tell accounts apart more quickly, reduce the chance of sending from the wrong inbox, and make navigation simpler as you move between accounts during the day. Modern themes: Choose a look that supports comfort and clarity. Outlook includes theme and color options that let you tailor the experience to your preferences. Visual settings can influence readability and comfort, especially for people who spend much of the day in email and calendar. Options such as Dark Mode and color customization can help make the interface feel easier to use over time. Keyboard shortcuts: Keep familiar ways of working. In Outlook, you can choose the shortcut style you prefer in Settings. This can help you maintain existing habits, reduce adjustment time, and complete common tasks with fewer steps. For people moving from classic Outlook or Outlook on the web, shortcut flexibility can make the transition more consistent. These features reflect a broader effort to help people work more efficiently in the new Outlook for Windows. Whether you are managing a high volume of email, coordinating a full calendar, or tailoring the experience to match your workflow, these updates are designed to reduce effort and improve day-to-day productivity. For more information and step-by-step guidance, see the Microsoft Support articles and the Learning Path.
The New Outlook Notifications for email with rules not working. Missing features
I have to use the New Outlook to be prepared for the eventuality when Microsoft forces the change. I'm missing notifications for emails coming in when it has mailbox rules to organize it. The Notification Center in Windows is ok, but there should be a way in the rules to set a notification in a window like the Reminders window. being able to set a specific sound would be beneficial as well. I've had to resort to using Categories and constantly checking Outlook to see if I missed anything. This has resulted in missing many time-sensitive alerts and emails. Such as a Midnight internet outage at a business-critical building on my day off. Resulting in 6 hours of downtime during business rather than a resolution before business opening.
Outlook Android “Sync Contacts” disabled for Microsoft 365 Business Standard tenant
I am the Microsoft 365 tenant administrator. Outlook and Authenticator work correctly on Android. The “Sync Contacts” toggle inside Outlook is disabled/greyed out. Native Exchange setup hangs on “Retrieving account information”. No Intune license available (Business Standard tenant). How can I enable Outlook contact synchronization with Android Contacts?
Outlook delegated inbox
We have 10 users all have newer Dell windows 16gb 256gb at least laptops all users use classic outlook at the moment. they all use two monitors with the laptop They are all currently in three inboxes one inbox for order inquires, one inbox for orders which is delegated and the one we have issues with and there personal inbox. They like to use a inbox as a work queue users find the email they want to work on forward it to there personal email and move the email out of the queue inbox. While using the queue inbox as an archive. Everyone has cache turned off nothing is downloaded locally for the shared inbox. We originally had each user on the team sign into the inbox with the same credentials not best practice but this team started with two people and quickly grew. We now have users delegated to the inbox we run into several issues. The outlook drags with everyone in the inbox The outlook does not keep kept up say someone deletes an email someone sitting right next to that person would still see the deleted email in the shared inbox. Causing duplicated works Delegated inbox moves deleted items to users personal inbox same with sent items. Analytics and reporting and archiving is a whole other issue but not what I am honestly looking for help with. MSP wants to get users on a mail handler but the team does not want to have another tab open even when an extra monitor was offered. They also do not like the idea of going back in forth between two different inbox systems. " we basically will have two outlooks" Team wants something light weight even asked if there was some sort of extension for outlook. Storage wise it has a 50gb storage with an online archive archiving takes place every 3 months. the storage stays at 60-80% if it hits 90% or over the inbox is almost not functional. We thought storage and usability corelated but today we had issues at 70% continually. I know i sound green please be as brutal as needed my pride is less important than this issue. In the off chance someone has been in a similar issue would appreciate any insight on how they navigated it and really wanting to learn.
Forgotten email password request being seen coming from a different email account
When at http://account.microsoft.com/ to reset a forgotten password for a Microsoft Exchange account with a registered domain email account the code being sent is being seen as a forgotten password reset request for my http://hotmail.com/ email address. Why is that and how can I have my forgotten password request be seen coming from my domain email account?Synchronization issue in New Outlook for Mac – ״Failed to refresh subscriptions.״
Hello, I am using Microsoft 365 (Exchange Online) on Mac, running macOS 26.1 (Tahoe). My Outlook client is: Outlook for Mac Version 16.103.3 (25113013), with a Microsoft 365 Subscription license. Since yesterday morning, in the New Outlook interface, my inbox has suddenly appeared empty, and I constantly receive the following error message: “Failed to refresh subscriptions.” It’s important to note: In Legacy Outlook, everything works perfectly. The web version and the Outlook app on my mobile phone also work well. The issue persists regardless of the network I am on (home, office, cellular, etc.). Troubleshooting steps I already tried: • Updating Outlook to the latest version • Removing and re‑adding the account • Clearing cache and preferences • Formatting my Mac and reinstalling everything from scratch Unfortunately, none of these steps has resolved the issue. Is this a known bug, and is there a recommended workaround or an upcoming fix? Appreciate assistance on that issue.
Exchange Online: Sudden mass quarantine of legitimate emails (tenant‑wide impact)
Hello, Since last Thursday , we have been experiencing a sudden and significant increase in quarantined emails across our Exchange Online tenant. Key observations: - Hundreds of legitimate emails are being quarantined every day - The issue appears tenant‑wide and affects multiple senders and recipients - No recent configuration changes were made (Exchange mail flow rules, Defender for Office 365 policies, or security presets) - Messages are being classified as spam/phish even though they are clearly legitimate - Manual release is currently required, which is operationally unsustainable and error‑prone - Business‑critical communications are being delayed or missed as a result We have an active Microsoft support case open, but the root cause is still unclear. I would like to ask the community: - Are other Exchange Online tenants seeing a similar spike in quarantined legitimate emails since last week? - Has Microsoft acknowledged any backend or filtering model changes or service issues related to quarantine or Defender for Office 365? Any confirmation or shared experiences would be greatly appreciated, as we are trying to determine whether this is an isolated tenant issue or a broader service‑related problem. Thank you.
Add-in without Connected Experience
I've developed an Outlook Add-in using the new web tech based approach (not a legacy COM Plugin). One of our customers wants to use said Add-in, but they have the requirement that they can't enable the "Connected Experience" for their Outlook. Is it possible in any way to use an Outlook Add-in without having to enable the "Connected Experience" or is this just not an option?
