During Ignite last year we announced an opt-in experience so you could try the new Outlook on the web, give us feedback, and help us shape the changes in one of the most used productivity apps in the world. To those who tried the new experience during this opt-in period and submitted feedback and suggestions, thank you!
During the last 8 months, thanks to you, we’ve made many improvements throughout the product and today we are excited to announce the new Outlook on the web is ready.
We are humbled by the millions of people who depend on Outlook every day to connect with others, organize their days, and get things done. Let’s look at some of the main features.
Email is the heart of Outlook and where people spend a significant part of their day. We have designed the new mail experience around you and the people that are important to you – You can personalize your experience, have a little fun, do things faster, and keep those people front and center with new and updated features:
Categories
It’s now easier to identify , right from your message list. Categories make it easy to tag, find, or organize your messages. Add multiple categories to a message, add a category as a favorite, or use Search to find it.
Clearly identify Categories in your message list
Dark mode
Personalize your inbox with dark mode for those times when your eyes are a little tired. Don’t worry, you can “turn on the lights” when you want to read a specific email or when composing one.
Find dark mode in Settings and turn on the lights whenever you need to
Expressions
Sometimes you are out of words, luckily, images are worth a 1,000 of those. Add emojis and GIFs to your messages right from Outlook.
Go to the smile to find emojis and GIFs
Favorites
Favorite what is most important to you and put it front and center in your inbox. You can favorite a contact, a group, or a category by to them so you can have easier access and see the message count for each. Once you favorite them, they sync to Outlook mobile too!
Once you favorite an item it shows up in your Favorites and syncs to Outlook mobile
Quickly get to the emails you are composing or reading
Do you jump from writing one email to the next to reading a different one? Now it’s easier to keep track of that. When you create new messages Outlook will keep a tab for them at the bottom of the reading pane, so you can start as many as you need, go back to reading a previous email, and still find the one you were writing.
You can find new messages at the bottom of the reading pane
Time management is key to getting things done and to efficiently organize your day. Recently we announced new features in Outlook to help you save time with intelligent technology - Whether you are trying to organize meetings, figure out where you have to go next, or finding a future event, Outlook is here to help you stay organized.
Calendar Search
Now you can search across multiple calendars. Search for a person, keyword, or location and Outlook will show all the matching events across your calendars. You can also use the filters to adjust which calendars you’d like to search, or the timeframe you’d like to search in.
Search across multiple calendars
Quickly create events
Creating a meeting is now easier. Right from the calendar surface with one click bring the quick compose form, invite people, find a room, and even get suggested times for when everyone is available.
Create a meeting faster
Focus on today
There is just so much you can pay attention during the week. In order to help you with that, we are making today and tomorrow front and center by dedicating more surface in your calendar to them so you can easily identify your upcoming events with a quick glimpse at your calendar.
Today and tomorrow are front and center to help you focus
Snooze an email
There are moments in which you don’t have time to properly address an email and wish it would have arrived at a different time. For those moments when the time is not right, Outlook now allows you to snooze an email for a more convenient time. When you snooze an email, it leaves your inbox and re-appears as an unread message at the top of your inbox on the time and date you selected.
Snooze an email to a more convenient time
Upcoming events in month view
Seeing your calendar in month view gives you a good sense of what days or weeks are busier, and now it’s also easier to keep track of your day’s events while still seeing the big picture. In month view, Outlook also shows you how long you have until your next event.
Quickly identify your next event in your calendar’s monthly view
Online meetings get more options
You likely create or attend several online meetings during your workday, so we want to make your online meeting experience as streamlined as possible – This means options on how to create your meetings, easily join an online meeting, and quickly check how many people are attending the meeting.
- Create an online meeting
We’ve updated our backend to more closely reflect your organization’s online meeting policies. Depending on what services you are enabled for, you will see 1 of 3 options: i) A drop down menu to “Add online meeting” where you can select between a Skype or Teams meeting, ii) a toggle to create a Skype meeting or iii) a toggle to create a Teams meeting.
Go to Add online meeting to select your provider - Join an online meeting from the event peek
Joining an online meeting from the place where you keep track of your day should be easy. And now it is, just go to the meeting event and you can join in one click right from the event peek.
Join an online meeting right from the event peek - See attendees’ responses to a meeting
You can now easily identify who is invited to the meeting and see everyone’s response. We’ve added a quick summary in the event peek and in the full meeting invite attendees are grouped attendees by their response. If you use the event peek, you can see attendees’ details if the meeting has less than 3 attendees or a summary of responses if there are more.
See attendees’ responses in the event peek
Outlook has more than email and calendar, it’s your one place where you can connect with people, organize your day and tasks, and get things done with integrations across Office.
Tasks now sync with To-Do
The new Tasks experience now syncs your tasks with To-Do and across some Office apps like Planner in your “Assigned to me” list. Do you flag emails to remember to follow up on them? Now when you flag an email, it will be created as a task in its own “Flagged email” list in To-Do!
See flagged emails and tasks assigned to you in the new Tasks experience
Again, we want to thank you for giving us feedback and helping us shape the new experience in Outlook on the web. We hope the features and design of the new experience help you organize and get things done faster, so you can spend a little less time in your inbox and more time in the things that matter.
We’ll have more things coming but we want you to keep helping us shape Outlook, so let us know what you think. We love hearing from you, so please, give us feedback in our UserVoice channel or using the “Smile” feature on the top right corner.
Thanks!
Frequently asked questions:
Q. Who will see the new experience?
A. Starting in late July, Targeted Release customers will notice that the opt-in toggle has been removed and they can only see the new experience
Q. My organization has blocked the opt-in toggle. Will I still see the new experience?
A. Yes. When your organization is upgraded to the new experience, the previously available option to block the toggle will no longer work.
Q. Why can't I see the new Outlook on the web?
A. Your organization might have blocked the opt-in toggle for the new experience. Once your organization is upgraded, you will see the new Outlook.
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