Microsoft Announces New Features for Outlook on Mobile, Desktop, and Web

[MacRumors]

Microsoft is rolling out several new features for Outlook users this week and in the next couple of months. The announcement comes hot on the heels of Google's recently launched Gmail redesign, and promises changes to the company's Outlook desktop and mobile apps, as well as its webmail service.

First up is new support for synced draft folders, which will allow Outlook users to draft a message on their mobile device and finish it on their desktop computer, or vice versa. Another addition is a new chat-like Quick Reply box at the bottom of the screen, for quickly responding to messages while keeping their content in view.

Microsoft is also introducing a "Favorite people" feature to go with its existing support for identifying groups and email folders in Outlook. It's a lot like the way VIPs work in Apple Mail, but uses tags rather than stars.

Elsewhere, the company is adding the ability to view Office 365 Group events in Outlook, as well as access to a group's OneNote Notebook. Events will be trackable in the group's contact card, while the Notebook access relies on the OneNote app being installed.

Other business-focused features coming to the mobile app include the ability to add organization directories to your Outlook contact information, and proxy support for companies who choose to block direct access to the internet from mobile devices.

Improvements to Outlook Calendar have also been announced, including bill pay reminders for Outlook.com that appear as calendar items if a bill is identified in a received email (similar to how travel reservations are recognized by the webmail service), as well as location support and meeting room booking options for iOS. Lastly, Outlook for Mac is getting time zone support for calendar entries that involve travel across different time zones.

The updates start this week and are part of a phased rollout for iOS, webmail, and Mac over May and June, with more features planned for Outlook in the near future, as detailed in Microsoft's Office 365 roadmap.

Article Link: Microsoft Announces New Features for Outlook on Mobile, Desktop, and Web

 

[bkkojak]

Fix all of my already marked as not spam emails going to spam and I might take outlook.com serious. 365 is their main focus but why give me 50gb no ad webmail and it’s not close to giving me the idea I can use it as my primary mail without checking spam more than my inbox.

 

[Poob Bubes]

I’ve been waiting years for them to introduce push support for Inbox subfolders and still nothing. That’s the one feature holding me back from using this.

 

[rodpascoe]

Just moved back to GSuite. Nothing beats Google's anti-spam.

 

[RockTheGlobe]

I remember when Outlook for iOS came out, there was a big hullabaloo about security issues, but I haven’t heard anything about that since like 2015. Has the company made any updates or changes to address people’s concerns?

 

[HowieIsaacks]

There are a lot of flaws in Office 2016 for Mac. One big one that keeps some of my customers on Office 2011 is that Excel doesn't respect page breaks when printing. The spreadsheet shows the page breaks, but when a user prints, Excel just ignores the page breaks and allows content to continue to the next page instead of keeping it all on one page as the user defined. This does not happen with 2011. Therefore, I have to allow them to keep 2011 and 2016 running side by side, which prevents me from upgrading them to macOS High Sierra. Also, Outlook 2016 is total crap. It launches slow. It frequently has database issues that pop up when users try to launch the app. It does a lousy job of caching content. I prefer Apple Mail. It doesn't have these problems.

 

[gaanee]

It's baffling why Microsoft took such a long time to implement Draft folder sync.. it's such a basic feature to have and given that Outlook syncs other folders except Drafts, so when you on the desktop composing Gmail in the browser and you save it in the Drafts folder, thee was no way to continue on that in the Outlook app.

It was a decent app and still one of the fastest to get new email notifications, even Google's own Gmail app misses that, but Microsoft seems to have gotten into releasing weekly 200+MB updates with generic bug fixes release notes and not much improvement.

The release notes still don't mention Drafts syncing, so better wait to get a confirmation.

 

[canadianreader]

Gmail is unbeatable and years ahead of outlook.

 

[bluecoast]

That’s great although I’m hoping that office 2018 Outlook seems a little more closely connected to iOS outlook. They seem like different products ie:

Why can’t I snooze mail on desktop outlook but I can on iOS outlook?

Having said that, can Apple just add a snooze function to iOS and macOS mail?

Mailbox came up with this in 2012 didn’t it? Surely it can’t be that hard, right?

 

[BWhaler]

Bill pay reminders?

How about adding the ability to create recurring meetings in iOS?

Companies should be slapped sometimes...

 

[goshya]

Still no decent search in Outlook for iOS.

Ridiculous.

 

[latts]

And of course STILL no support for iCloud calendars and contacts on Office 2016 for Mac!!!! Available for iOS but when oh when on the Mac!

 

[QuarterSwede]

synced draft folders, which will allow Outlook users to draft a message on their mobile device and finish it on their desktop computer, or vice versa

This is a big one for my workplace. I have to be mobile and regularly start an email on a desktop and get pulled away urgently but need to finish it as it’s urgent as well. Currently it doesn’t sync that in-progress draft.

[EDIT] Wait, is this just for the Outlook app and not Office365?

 

[C DM]

Gmail is unbeatable and years ahead of outlook.

In what way(s)?

 

[gaanee]

Can anyone confirm whether the new Outlook version syncs Gmail Drafts folder on the browser or is it just with Outlook desktop app?
In the later, the sync functionality is not very useful.

 

[DeepIn2U]

It's baffling why Microsoft took such a long time to implement Draft folder sync.. it's such a basic feature to have and given that Outlook syncs other folders except Drafts, so when you on the desktop composing Gmail in the browser and you save it in the Drafts folder, thee was no way to continue on that in the Outlook app.

It was a decent app and still one of the fastest to get new email notifications, even Google's own Gmail app misses that, but Microsoft seems to have gotten into releasing weekly 200+MB updates with generic bug fixes release notes and not much improvement.

The release notes still don't mention Drafts syncing, so better wait to get a confirmation.

That's funny ...

Apple still has yet to implement this from/to iOS to/from MacOS even with current GM build of High Sierra.

Compose a draft using your icloud account on your iOS device (say iPhone).
Then check in drafts on another iOS device (say iPad) or on your Mac.
Notice nothing is there?

 

[invenoveritas]

I remember when Outlook for iOS came out, there was a big hullabaloo about security issues, but I haven’t heard anything about that since like 2015. Has the company made any updates or changes to address people’s concerns?

Yes, great question. My work blocks the outlook ios app bc it was storing org mail on external org servers to index it without proper consent or optout option.

 

[gaanee]

That's the case with most 3rd party email apps: Outlook, Spark, Edison, Astro, Gmail, Yahoo....
Have to check iOS Apple's Mail app whether it stores your emails on their servers or just fetches from your email provider like like Gmail.
And maybe that's also the reason why 3rd party email apps have better new email notification compared to Apple's Mail app.

Yes, great question. My work blocks the outlook ios app bc it was storing org mail on external org servers to index it without proper consent or optout option.

 

[jbellanca]

All I want are voting buttons, but for some reason, they just won't add them to the Mac version.