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Microsoft Announces Outlook for Mac Redesign, Improvements to iOS and watchOS Apps

No IMAP and no iCloud email? So it's less functional that it was before?

How challenging or resource intensive could it be for one of the largest software companies on earth to add IMAP email support here? There's no shortage of tiny developers that have launched IMAP clients, yet somehow Microsoft couldn't implement it in the new Outlook at launch.

Even more amazing when you consider that it's already in the existing version of Outlook.

Disappointing - seeing as I've used Entourage/Outlook for the past twenty years, and soon I won't be able to anymore…
 
dborja said:
For anybody beta-testing the update, does Outlook now sync with Mac OS Contacts and Calendar?
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Couldn't care less about that... who voluntarily uses Apple services for anything that matters, let *alone* for Contacts and Calendar?
As for MS, they have yet to figure out that CardDAV even exists, despite the standard being ten years old. CalDAV is even older, at thirteen years, and they haven't figured that out either.
 
posguy99 said:
Couldn't care less about that... who voluntarily uses Apple services for anything that matters, let *alone* for Contacts and Calendar?
As for MS, they have yet to figure out that CardDAV even exists, despite the standard being ten years old. CalDAV is even older, at thirteen years, and they haven't figured that out either.
Click to expand...

Oh I don't know... millions of users do?
 
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I almost spent money on a new calendar app... two technically since I was going to buy for Mac and iOS, but that may have to wait until this comes out. I like Outlook on iOS. It’s so antiquated on Mac, so this is kind of exciting.
 
I've been using the Beta Edge/Outlook for quite some time. I do like the layout as it follows the more business look of Windows in general. Cleaner, uncluttered, nicer fonts, and outstanding balance of color and space. It's also scaled better for viewing like' the Windows interface. Anytime I use Safari or Apple Mail, I always have to toggle up to get the right screen appearance with the sizing of icons and text. In my opinion, Microsoft does a better job in this regard.
 
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RammyXX said:
Wished Outlook for Mac supported HTML code for signatures. I can get HTML signatures to work in macOS Mail, but there's no way in Outlook.
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Outlook can use HTML signatures, if you create the signature through AppleScript. Standards support is quite poor though. Achieving a signature that can be both sent and received through most common clients requires a very simple design and quite a lot of finesse.

If including an image/logotype I like linking it to a webserver that also does UserAgent sniffing and serves up SVG for clients that support it while falling back to PNG for those that don't.

Installing HTML signatures in Apple Mail is much for of a pain if you ask me. I had a pretty good AppleScript solution going a few macOS versions ago, but each layer of sandboxing Apple adds continually screws things up…
 
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"Microsoft: We made it pretty!

Enterprise users: Can we have feature-parity with the Windows version? It's been almost 20 years since Voting Buttons were introduced in Outlook 2003 and we still don't have them in Outlook Mac.

Microsoft: No, we made it pretty!

Seriously, enterprise users just want feature parity. "

Literally every damn day. If I wanted "Pretty" I'd tell users to use Apple Mail, or any other client. We tell them to use Outlook because it works best with Exchange, but then we have users need to do things that you can only do on Windows Outlook...
 
This kind of thing really bugs me. It looks gorgeous, but I think that Microsoft's #1 goal should be to make the Mac and Windows versions of the Office apps identical. Right now, the Windows versions are far, far superior. Since Office's #1 competitor, Google Docs, is web based it's identical on every device and really has a leg up over Office in that regard.

I regularly use Office on both Mac and PC and the experiences are vastly different between the two, I don't think moving them further away from each other is necessarily the most user-friendly idea.
 
ghostface147 said:
It has come a long long way since the early insider builds. They’ve really listened to consumer feedback. The current version of Outlook pops out a window to reply to an email where the new one doesn’t. You can click on the pop out icon to make it happen, but it’s not an option you can set. That kinda sucks. Also, when I do pop out that window, it shows in the old version of Outlook.

I also don’t have the ability to reply from a different inbox if I have multiple inboxes. I have to be in that mailbox to reply.
Click to expand...

You can reply from a different Inbox if you use the pop-out reply window.
 
tansy said:
You can reply from a different Inbox if you use the pop-out reply window.
Click to expand...

Yeah I’ve noticed that, but I feel that the new Outlook gives us an option to pop out by default when clicking reply. Also, still can’t create contact groups.
 
It looks terrible. The menu bar is too thick. The spacing is too great, and the contrast is insufficient.
 
I have been testing the new outlook for months now and it just does not compare to its Windows counterpart. This pains me to say, because I cannot stand Windows, but unfortunately find myself needing to go back to my Windows work laptop.

In their attempt to make it look modern, nice and flashy, they have destroyed productivity. There is so much wasted space. The amount of information available in a single view is severely limited on the Mac version.
 
Does anyone know if it brings back the ability to turn categories on and off like you could in Outlook 2016 that they cut (because they are apparently insane) from Outlook 2019? Since this is a core piece of functionality from Google Calendar, I don't really understand what they were thinking. I've resisted going to Outlook 2019 specifically because of that single change.
 
oh gosh they better not stuff this up. Like many other corporates I rely on outlook every minute of each day...
 
petvas said:
No there are two separate apps, with completely different base code. Do not expect that Microsoft will unify the code...Two different teams working on two different products. the iOS version might be ok for the iPhone but on the iPad is severely crippled..
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Why there are 2 separate apps , since the new Xcode can compile the same app to MacOS and iPadOS ?
 
This looks very good indeed.
Unifying the code base with iOS is a major step and should improve sync performance -
it would be great, if Apple did the same for the Mail-App.
Mail-Apps (and Calendar-Apps) Exchange sync continues to be buggy (at least in complex setups) - while the iOS client works flawless.
Unfortunately MacOS and iOS rely on different sync technologies (EWS vs. Active Sync) - MacOS users (at least some) pay the price for that.
 
So I'm giving it a go via Insider Slow. First major issue I see is that Recent Addresses isn't working. It's not using my existing database for Recent Addresses (which works fine with the old MS Outlook) and it's not seemingly storing any new ones either.
 
There are also some regressions that are just unacceptable:
* No support for online archives
* no support for Smart Folders!!!
* not possible to create desktop based rules, only server based.
 
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