What’s new and coming to Microsoft Outlook – Ignite 2024
Since its launch, Copilot in Outlook has helped you manage and triage your email, providing drafting assistance, summaries, and insights to help you save time. Whether you need help drafting the appropriate email response, schedule meetings in a few clicks, find key information in an email thread, or make sure your message has the right tone and clarity, Copilot can help you achieve your goals. During Ignite, we added to our efforts to help you manage your inbox, and showed you how you can manage your meetings easier using Copilot, and also dived into the latest updates to the new Outlook for Windows and what to expect in the coming year. Let’s take a look at the capabilities we announced this week! Manage meetings easier with Copilot in Outlook We spend a lot of time in meetings during our work hours, sometimes as high as 60% of our time can be spent between meetings, emails, and chats. Even scheduling a meeting can take up to 15 mins, but Copilot can make this a little easier. Copilot now helps you schedule 1:1s and focus time, just ask Copilot to find some time with someone in your org and it will find the optimal time. Because Copilot is grounded on your organization’s data, it knows who your close collaborators are so you can ask Copilot something like “Schedule a meeting with my manager for next week” or “Schedule a meeting with Caitlin for next week” and Copilot will know to whom you are referring. Do you need time to finish a project? No problem – Ask Copilot to find reserve focus time for next week, “Find 3 hours of focus time next week before Wednesday”, and done! Now you can focus on your project. Schedule one-on-one meetings using Copilot in Outlook Meetings can make it easier to make decisions, iron details, or discuss ideas but sometimes it’s hard to keep them on track and focused. Making sure your meeting has an agenda can help you stay on track and make sure you are tackling the important points – Copilot can draft an agenda for you based on your input, just open the meeting invite, select “Draft with Copilot”, and provide some input like “Review the Contoso project, introduce a new team member, and discuss sales plan”. Copilot creates an agenda which you can easily edit. Once you are ready, just remember to send the invite. Use Copilot in Outlook to draft an agenda for your meeting Sometimes, you need to schedule a meeting with more than one person, but have you had to schedule a meeting to bring a long email to a conclusion? Reading and summarizing long email threads is time consuming and finding time between multiple people can be challenging, unless you have Copilot. Without leaving the conversation, Copilot can help you schedule a meeting to bring that long email thread to closure – Just select the “Schedule with Copilot” button and Copilot will get you ready for that meeting, it will i) Summarize the entire thread, ii) Create an agenda, and iii) find a time that works. Quick and easy, schedule a meeting in just a few clicks. Get help from Copilot to schedule a meeting based on an email conversation A new way to draft emails We all need some help sometimes writing an email, whether you are having writer’s block to start or you want to rewrite some parts of it – The new drafting with Copilot experience can help. We’ve updated the drafting experience to make it native to the compose window in Outlook, added suggested prompts so you can kick off your draft without even typing, and allow you to rewrite parts of your message with Copilot. Is it hard to choose which draft iteration is the best one? No worries, we’ve added the ability for you to review and choose between all the suggested drafts. So, whether you need a little help to get started or a lot of help to make sure you have the best message, Copilot has you covered. New Outlook for Windows showing the new drafting with Copilot experience What is new andcoming to the new Outlook for Windows The new Outlook for Windows is a reimagined experience designed to be more agile and innovative. With faster feature deployment and availability, it brings the latest Microsoft 365 Copilot capabilities and delivers a consistent experience across Windows. As we continue to work on your feedback to bring you the best experience for the new Outlook for Windows, there are some updates we want to share. Where we are We reached General Availability for commercial customers this year and are still in opt-in phase with optional policies for organizations that want to move their users into new Outlook. To see all our adoption content please visit https://aka.ms/newOutlookAdoption and continue sending us your feedback at https://aka.ms/newOutlookFeedback to help us prioritize our work. What to expect Over the past few years, we have been in an opt-in phase for the new Outlook. As we plan to transition to an opt-out model, some organizations have already begun migrating on their own. We anticipate that small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with Microsoft 365 for business plans will begin to be moved into this phase starting in January 2025, and with customers withMicrosoft 365 for enterprises licenses following in 2026. Importantly, there will still be an option to revert to the previous version if needed. In the coming year, we expect more organizations to expand their piloting and planning efforts for the new Outlook. During this phase, we encourage you to file DCRs and submit feedback both within the app and through your account teams. Graph showing the current state and estimated timelines What to do next The new Outlook migration journey has 3 main steps. Pre-migration, migration, and post-migration. Pre-Migration: During pre-migration, admins and their IT teams should learn as much as they can about the migration - What the migration entails and the implications for their organization. This also involves early migration piloting. Migration: The migration step is when the migration is executed. Piloting continues and the migration process evolves and becomes more extensive. Post-Migration: Finally, in post-migration, IT is wrapping up the activities from the second step. They’re also decommissioning the previous experience and learning to improve subsequent migrations. Graph showing the migration stages for the new Outlook for Windows Plan your migration Review the migration kit - https://aka.ms/newOutlookAdoption Admin control options - https://aka.ms/newOutlookControlRelease Learn about policy management - Policy Management - Deploy Office Prepare to manage updates and set up early adopters on Targeted Release Transition from COM to web add-ins - Migrate from COM to web add-ins and review a list of available web add-ins. We hope all these updates help you be more productive, save time, and plan your migration to the next phase. Please, keep sending us your feedback – It really helps us focus our work. Thanks!SOLUTION: New Outlook removed "switch back to old outlook" button.
This is for anyone else who no longer sees the button to switch back to the old outlook. I have included step by step photos to get back to the old outlook! First click "Help" at the top left. Below "Help" should bring up another menu, now select "Feedback". Now look to the very right and you should see the option to select a feedback option, select "Report a problem". Now you should see a box where you can type what the problem is, make sure to clearly mention that you cannot switch back to the old outlook, the button is missing and you want to switch back to the old outlook, this is important because when you submit this answer it will scan your message and generate possible solutions. Once you've filled out the box with your problem, scroll down, click yes or no on both options (it doesn't matter what you choose but you need to select an answer for both), then click "Submit" at the bottom. It will diagnose the problem and match you up with one or more possible solutions, make sure you see this one below that says "toggling out of the new outlook for windows preview", DO NOT CLICK "Yes" AT THE BOTTOM or it will end the feedback and assume you got your answer and you will need to restart this process. Instead you need to click on the arrow that is circled in this picture. Freedom awaits, now click on "Do it for me" and it will automatically take you back to the old outlook. Congratulations! You've graduated from this circus of chaos and confusion.Farewell, and may your future endeavors be as comforting and delightful as a slice of warm, homemade buttered bread.Mail & Calendar Apps Will Be Replaced with New Outlook for Windows December 2024
Original Publish Date: June 2023 |MC650424 Revised Date: August 30, 2023, based on Microsoft's Updated Message See text in red font. Microsoft's revised announcement states that the Mail and Calendar Apps will no longer be supported at the end of 2024 and will become the New Outlook for Windows. In the meantime, users are encouraged to try theNew Outlook for Windows while they can switch back and forth between the Mail App and New Outlook versions. At the beginning of 2024, all Windows 11 devices will include the Free version of New Outlook for Windows as the default mailbox application. Supported Accounts: The new Outlook for Windows can currently support Microsoft 365 consumer accounts such as Outlook.com, Hotmail.com, and Live.com, as well as Microsoft 365 work or school accounts and Gmail. In the near future, we plan to add support for Yahoo!, iCloud, and other email providers through IMAP and POP. Stay tuned. For those who want to learn more about the exciting features of the New Outlook, head over to New Outlook for Windows - YouTube for a series of how-to videos. And don't miss out on the advantages of being an early adopter - check out this must-see videoto encourage a smooth transition. Share how you use the classic feature to give Microsoft constructive feedback on missing features. To do so, select the Help option in the ribbon while in New Outlook. Microsoft Message Center Details In Part MC590123 · Published Jun 2023. Revised to include new information August 30, 2023 We will replace the Mail and Calendar apps in Windows with the new Outlook for Windows by the end of 2024. After this change is implemented: Users can no longer use or download the Mail and Calendar apps. Users with a Microsoft 365 or Office 365 subscription with access to the Microsoft 365 desktop apps can use the new Outlook for Windows. Users can use the new Outlook for Windows with any personal email account (Outlook.com, Gmail, etc.), even without a subscription. If you would like to prevent users from adding their corporate email accounts to the new Outlook, you can follow the instructions in this document to disable the application for a single user, group of users, or the whole tenant: In mid-September 2023, we will begin auto-migrating Mail & Calendar app users to the new Outlook for Windows with an option to go back if they choose. Users can return to the current Mail & Calendar apps by clicking the toggle in the new Outlook for Windows. We also want to reiterate that these changes will not affect your organization’s use of classic Outlook for Windows. What you need to do to prepare: There is nothing you do to prepare now, but we recommend you: Let your Microsoft Windows users know about the change to the Mail and Calendar apps Start trying and testing the new Outlook for Windows Read this support article -Getting started with the new Outlook for Windows Read this article communicating the change -https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/outlook-for-windows-the-future-of-mail-calendar-and-people-on-windows-11-715fc27c-e0f4-4652-9174-47faa751b199 Read this article:Windows Mail, Calendar and People are becoming Outlook - Microsoft Support ======= My Dedicated New Outlook Video Series: https://youtu.be/d7bEb20pCZU |https://youtu.be/ehUp2usOVqo | https://youtu.be/tOZXXpcw1c0 #traccreations4e
New Outlook Deleting/Not Recognising Hyperlinks (Bentley project wise)
New outlook does not seem able to parse project wise links which start with PW://. But not only that it doesn't recognise them as links at all. Emails received with PW:// links are simply ignored and treated as plain text. Replying to the email, the link then is correctly formatted as a hyperlink, but right clicking and 'edit' the link field is blank. This is on any email account. Switching back to legacy outlook and the emails are fine. This is in both outlook for windows and outlook for Mac.
Automatic Activation of Automatic Responses when selecting "Out of Office" as the Appointment Status
Why doesn't outlook automatically activate "automatic responses" when an user sets an appointment on the calender with an "out of office" status. Literally the entire premise for automatic responses is for when an user is out of the office, so how is this not an existing feature? Another option would be to have a checkbox or an option to select "send automatic responses" when creating the appointment, or upon selecting "out of office" as the "show as" status.
Duplicate emails in INBOX
I have emails being auto-forwarded from a business Rackspace IMAP account. Every once in a while I received an email from another Outlook user that duplicates even if I read it or delete it...it still floods in and jams up my inbox so that I no longer have room in my Rackspace account and it turns away incoming emails. SO FRUSTRATING! 1. Why is this happening? 2. How do I find these duplicate emails once the glitch occurs (I dont always know it is happening)? 3. How do I stop an incoming email from duplicating?
