Outlook in Office 365 vs “The New Outlook”?

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[petesmst]

I subscribe to Office 365 and make regular use of Outlook for managing my mail, calendar, contacts and notes.  I have also synced my Outlook Contacts and Calendar with my iCloud account.  (Under about in my account it is described as Microsoft Outlook for Microsoft 365 MSO)

When I open Outlook, I am invited at the top right-hand corner of the window to “Try the New Outlook”.   Why would I do this?  The functionality is nowhere near that of Outlook for Microsoft 365.

Any comments would be welcome.

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• This topic was modified 1 year, 7 months ago by petesmst. Reason: corrected formatting errors

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Lars220

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Hi petesmst:

My understanding is that this “new” Outlook for Windows progressive web app (PWA) will eventually replace the basic Mail UWP (Microsoft Store) app currently bundled with Win 10 / Win 11. I personally think it’s idiotic that Microsoft is trying to persuade users who have a M365 subscription or paid for a perpetual edition of MS Office 2016 / 2019 / 2021 C2R to beta test this PWA for them.

See oldfry’s 11-May-2023 topic No Choice on the New Outlook Update? for more user feedback.

The 07-Oct-2022 AskVG article [Tip] Show or Hide “Try New Outlook” Toggle Option in Microsoft Outlook Titlebar includes a registry edit you can create to hide that “Try the New Outlook” toggle switch. Diane Poremsky (M365 MVP) recommended the same registry edit in her 12-Feb-2023 post in Dennis Stover’s How to get rid of new tool bar saying: Try the new Outlook in the MS Answers forum and many users have replied back that creating the value HideNewOutlookToggle (type = DWORD, value = 1) in the registry key at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Options\General will hide that toggle.
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Lars220, RetiredGeek

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@Imacri:  Many thanks.  Yes, I’ve seen similar notifications elsewhere.  My issue is that currently “the new Outlook” is nowhere near as functional as Outlook in Officer 365.  This gives rise to two questions:

 

1.  Will “The New Outlook” eventually be equivalent in function to Outlook as included in Office 365?  If not,
2.  why is “The New Outlook” currently being offered from within Outlook for Office 365?  In other words, why would I currently shift to “The New Outlook” and effectively downgrade the functionality presently available to me in my paid subscription?

My Rig: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core CPU; ASUS Cross Hair VIII Formula Mobo; Win 11 Pro (64 bit)-(UEFI-booted); 32GB RAM; 2TB Corsair Force Series MP600 Pro 2TB PCIe Gen 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD. 1TB SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2 NVME SSD; MSI GeForce RTX 3090 VENTUS 3X 24G OC; Microsoft 365 Home; Condusiv SSDKeeper Professional; Acronis Cyberprotect, VMWare Workstation Pro V17.5. HP 1TB USB SSD External Backup Drive). Dell G-Sync G3223Q 144Hz Monitor.

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petesmst wrote:

Will “The New Outlook” eventually be equivalent in function to Outlook as included in Office 365? …

Hi petesmst:

We’ll have to wait and see since it’s still under development. For now, the “new” Outlook for Windows progressive web app (PWA) has limited features and is only intended to be a replacement for the free Mail app currently offered with Windows 10 and 11. As far as I know there are no plans to replace the “classic” Outlook app that comes with Microsoft 365 (and perpetual editions of MS Office 2016 / 2019 / 2021 C2R) with the “new” Outlook for Windows PWA in the near future, but according to the 12-Sep-2023 How-To Geeks article The Classic Outlook for Windows Isn’t Going Anywhere (for Now) that could change in a few years as more features are added.

petesmst wrote:

… why is “The New Outlook” currently being offered from within Outlook for Office 365? In other words, why would I currently shift to “The New Outlook” and effectively downgrade the functionality presently available to me in my paid subscription?…

The short answer is “you don’t want to switch” – unless you want to be a beta tester for Microsoft.

I don’t know why anyone who is already paying for a Microsoft 365 subscription (or a perpetual edition of MS Office 2016 / 2019 / 2021 C2R) would want to switch to this “new” Outlook for Windows PWA, at least in its current state. For now now Microsoft is inviting users to turn that “Try the New Outlook” toggle switch ON to test out it’s features and provide them with feedback. As far as I know, if you don’t like the “new” Outlook for Windows PWA there should be a toggle to switch you back to your “classic” Outlook 365 app as instructed in the MS support article Toggling Out of the New Outlook for Windows Preview, although I’m not sure the switch back is still that simple now that the “new” Outlook for Windows PWA is out of beta.

As I noted in post # 2558311 of oldfry’s topic No Choice on the New Outlook Update?, the “new” Outlook for Windows PWA was installed on my system (I still don’t know how this happened) in May 2023 and it was listed in my Start menu as a Preview (Beta). It is now available to everyone as a free download <here> on the Microsoft Store, but the 22-Sep-2023 How-To Geek article The New Outlook for Windows Has Arrived notes that:

“… The updated Outlook is based on the Outlook.com web app, with the same basic layout and integration with Microsoft 365 services. It has a simplified and sleeker interface compared to the legacy Outlook application, and it works with email addresses from Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud, or any other provider that supports IMAP. There are also a few features that were unavailable in the old Mail and Calendar Windows apps, such as scheduled email, pinning emails to the top of your inbox, and a unified “My Day” view that shows your upcoming calendar events and tasks. It also renders HTML emails much better than the older Mail app or classic Outlook.

Microsoft’s new email app is just intended to replace the Mail and Calendar apps in Windows right now. The company plans to continue adding new features until it’s also comparable to the classic Outlook for Windows (the paid app included in Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Office before that), at which point it will replace the classic Outlook as well. Microsoft said earlier this month that there’s “not a strict timeline yet” for that transition, but it might happen around 2025 or 2026….”

My MS Office Home and Business 2019 C2R includes the “classic” MS Outlook 2019. There are many advanced features I don’t use in MS Outlook 2019, so if there are major improvements to this “new” Outlook for Windows PWA before my MS Office 2019 reaches end of support on 25-Oct-2025 I might consider purchasing a less expensive perpetual edition of MS Office in 2025 that does not include MS Outlook (e.g., MS Office Home and Student 2025) and just use this new Outlook for Windows PWA as my email client. However, this isn’t something I have to worry about for another two years.
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windbg

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@Imacri:  Thanks.  The bottom line is, I can’t understand why/how Microsoft can be suggesting users try “The New Outlook” from within existing Outlook for Microsoft 365 accounts, since it requires a “downgrade” in functionality.

It’s crazy to currently have three “versions” of Outlook: “Outlook for Microsoft 365”,  Microsoft Outlook (as in Outlook.com), and “The New Outlook”.

Outlook within Microsoft 365 is far more then an email client.  The others are essentially email clients only.

My Rig: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core CPU; ASUS Cross Hair VIII Formula Mobo; Win 11 Pro (64 bit)-(UEFI-booted); 32GB RAM; 2TB Corsair Force Series MP600 Pro 2TB PCIe Gen 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD. 1TB SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2 NVME SSD; MSI GeForce RTX 3090 VENTUS 3X 24G OC; Microsoft 365 Home; Condusiv SSDKeeper Professional; Acronis Cyberprotect, VMWare Workstation Pro V17.5. HP 1TB USB SSD External Backup Drive). Dell G-Sync G3223Q 144Hz Monitor.

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There is a longer-term plan to replace the Outlook desktop app in Office with this new Outlook. Check out this video from Microsoft – Update on the new Outlook for Windows – YouTube. At one point they talk about implementation plans and timing.

--Joe

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petesmst

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@joep517:

Many thanks.  A very useful video clip; it answers most of my questions.  Much appreciated.

My Rig: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core CPU; ASUS Cross Hair VIII Formula Mobo; Win 11 Pro (64 bit)-(UEFI-booted); 32GB RAM; 2TB Corsair Force Series MP600 Pro 2TB PCIe Gen 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD. 1TB SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2 NVME SSD; MSI GeForce RTX 3090 VENTUS 3X 24G OC; Microsoft 365 Home; Condusiv SSDKeeper Professional; Acronis Cyberprotect, VMWare Workstation Pro V17.5. HP 1TB USB SSD External Backup Drive). Dell G-Sync G3223Q 144Hz Monitor.

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You’re welcome. Just remember, this is Microsoft. So, even publicly stated plans can and often do change.

--Joe

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@joep517

Indeed, fully aware of that!

I have tried “The New Outlook” after selecting it from within Outlook for Microsoft 365.  I switched back almost immediately.

The current “New Outlook” currently cannot make use of ones existing Outlook data files; and it cannot sync with iCloud, thus denying me access to synced calendar, notes and contacts on my iPhone.  This is potentially going to be a major issue down the line, since I see (from the video link you provided) that .com add-ins will NOT be supported in the final product.  Whether or not some other means of syncing such data will be introduced, remains to be seen.

My Rig: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core CPU; ASUS Cross Hair VIII Formula Mobo; Win 11 Pro (64 bit)-(UEFI-booted); 32GB RAM; 2TB Corsair Force Series MP600 Pro 2TB PCIe Gen 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD. 1TB SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2 NVME SSD; MSI GeForce RTX 3090 VENTUS 3X 24G OC; Microsoft 365 Home; Condusiv SSDKeeper Professional; Acronis Cyberprotect, VMWare Workstation Pro V17.5. HP 1TB USB SSD External Backup Drive). Dell G-Sync G3223Q 144Hz Monitor.

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I started the new Outlook and it began setting up email accounts. My main and only email account ends with yahoo.com.au. The AU on the end is a problem as it started to set it up as yahoo.com. I managed to stop it otherwise I would have had a useless app that couldn’t use my email.

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