Microsoft Outlook For Mac Update

Posted on by



Microsoft has finally started rolling out their long-awaited major update to Outlook the MacOS.

Microsoft Outlook For Mac Updates

  • Outlook 2016 for Mac, the latest iteration of the email and calendaring app, is a worthwhile upgrade for existing users. But if you don't already use Outlook, the new edition probably won't offer.
  • Note: AOL and Verizon customers who need to update their account settings after AOL's recent change to their server settings should see the section Update your email settings in Outlook for Mac. When checking your encryption settings, make sure they're set to SSL, SSL/TLS, or Auto and not TLS only. Add a new account quickly.

Microsoft Outlook Updates For Mac Os Mojave

Microsoft has been working on the update since November 2019 with Insiders, but WindowsUnited reports that the company has now started rolling out the update to regular users with a pop-up inviting them to upgrade.

Besides a new interface, the new app has a number of improvements including:

Microsoft has plugged some key gaps in its 'new Outlook' for macOS, currently in preview and given a fresh update just a few days ago, but the product still has puzzling omissions that drive users back to the old version. How to try the new experience Join Office Insider and choose level: Select Check for Updates to install the latest Insider update. Open or restart Outlook, then turn on the New Outlook switch. Outlook for Mac. Learn more Outlook for Windows. Follow us on Twitter @Outlook to get the latest news and updates. Follow us on twitter. Microsoft Outlook with a Microsoft 365 subscription is the latest version of Outlook.

  • Improved synchronization – Based on Microsoft’s synchronization technology that also supports Outlook Mobile, the new Outlook for Mac synchronizes your messages with improved speed and reliability.
  • Search Improvements – Search is now built using the same engine used for other Office 365 experiences, so you can quickly find exactly what you’re looking for.
  • New E-Mail and Events Composition Features – All new E-Mail and Event Composition features that improve your productivity through enhancements like an easily accessible formatting bar, suggested times and places.
  • My Day – A new addition that gives you a view of your agenda or calendar events right from your main mailbox and includes a 2 week calendar view that gives you a quick overview of your upcoming events.
  • Customizable Toolbar – The new toolbar brings your most frequently used commands to the fore and is fully customizable.
  • Mail tips – Get more information about your mail, such as: For example, as a warning if you notify people with automatic replies turned on, send an e-mail to recipients outside your organization, or send an e-mail to a large audience.
  • Snooze “ – For those moments when you don’t have time to read or answer an email. Just “snooze” it and pick the time best for it to reappear in your inbox as an unread email.

Outlook 2016 For Mac

It’s not all good news, however. The new app is still missing some features present in the current app, including support for Exchange, iCloud, Yahoo Mail and IMAP/POP.

Microsoft is likely rolling out the update in waves, so it is recommended to wait for the upgrade prompt.

Microsoft has plugged some key gaps in its 'new Outlook' for macOS, currently in preview and given a fresh update just a few days ago, but the product still has puzzling omissions that drive users back to the old version.

The revised Mac Outlook was first revealed at the Ignite event in late 2019. It appears to be a complete rebuild of the Mac email client, geared towards Office 365, but the question administrators will be pondering is whether important features in the existing Outlook will ever appear in the new one.

The history of Outlook on the Mac is inglorious. Microsoft and Mac go back a long way. Excel, for example, was a Mac application two years before it appeared on Windows. When it came to Outlook though, Mac users lost out. Outlook on Windows goes back to 1997, but the first full Mac version did not appear until Outlook 2011, and even that was not very good, slower than the Windows version and missing some features, such as Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).

VBA has never come to Outlook on the Mac, but a 2014 release was much improved, as Microsoft began to push the idea of Office 365 everywhere rather than keeping users hooked on Windows.

The new Outlook for the Mac in its first preview (click to enlarge)

Fast-forward to today, and there is not that much missing in Outlook 365 for Mac versus Windows, VBA aside.

All that is set to change with the latest new Outlook Mac as the pendulum swings away from making the Mac Outlook close to the Windows one, and towards giving Mac users a more distinct experience. It is also a matter of protocols. The existing Outlook Mac uses Exchange Web Services (EWS) which is being phased out.

Outlook on Windows generally uses MAPI over HTTP, perhaps the nearest thing to a native Exchange protocol. Microsoft is not happy with either and for its 'modern' mail client in Windows 8 and Windows 10 it developed a new sync protocol. In the past this was sometimes called Hx but it seems now to go by the name Microsoft Sync.

When Microsoft acquired Accompli in 2014, whose product became Outlook Mobile, it used its own protocol but that too now uses Microsoft Sync. According to presentations at Ignite 2019, this new sync protocol is designed specifically for mail-related data and makes the best even of poor connections, prioritising recent data.

The move from EWS to Microsoft Sync enables new features and improved performance, and no longer downloads the entire mailbox to the local machine. System requirements are for macOS 10.14 Mojave and Office 365, Outlook.com or Gmail email accounts.

See Full List On Docs.microsoft.com

The snag with a rebuilt Outlook for Mac is that having nearly caught up with Windows Outlook, it is now far behind in terms of features. It is in preview and some will reappear, but it is unlikely to be the full set. It hardly qualifies as a mail client in its current incarnation, with no support for standard protocols like POP3 and IMAP, nor any way of connecting to on-premises Exchange.

Microsoft 365 For Mac, Office For Mac

Imagine OLE reinvented for the web and that's 90% of Microsoft's Fluid Framework: We dig into O365 collaborative tech

See full list on docs.microsoft.comREAD MORE

'We don't support on-prem yet but it's going to come soon,' said Microsoft in November 2019; six months on it is not there yet. On the plus side, it not only looks pretty, with full support for the Mac's Dark Mode on Catalina, but also performs well, with a fluidity that frankly feels unusual in a Mac Outlook product.

Features of the new Outlook for Mac include a new unified inbox view that avoids clicking between accounts, if you have several configured. You can now reply to emails inline ('nested compose'), a convenience feature that has been in Windows Outlook for some time. There is a new 'ignore conversation' option. Creating meetings uses a new simplified dialogue that you can expand as needed.

As for the new features added in the June update, these include add-in support (a big deal), sensitivity labels for classifying confidential data, a People view for managing contacts, an option to create an event directly from an email, read receipts, and a 'coming soon' promise of the ability to open shared calendars and to encrypt emails with S/MIME.

The actual preview release did not quite live up to the promise. In particular, the People view is not yet enabled, thanks to some last-minute bug that was discovered. One gets the new Outlook by signing up to the Office 'Insider Fast' channel, and after the new version downloads and installs, one can switch back and forth by toggling a 'New Outlook' switch. If the user attempts to use a feature such as the People view, a message pops up inviting the user to switch back, wrecking the fluid experience but that is what one gets for trying a preview.

The current preview is not fully usable, but fortunately switching back is quick

The problem of Outlook on Windows being different from Outlook on Mac will get worse

Outlook

Microsoft has not specified a release date for the new Outlook Mac but a few things are clear. First, it will be the best Outlook yet, perhaps on any platform, in terms of appearance and design. This is not a high bar: Outlook on Windows is a mess from a user interface perspective, and has dialogues buried within that have not changed for decades. Performance also looks promising.

Second, Outlook Mac will be focused on cloud, especially Office 365, though it also already has good support for Google mail. Teams integration will also be strong and Microsoft has demonstrated features like converting an event to a Teams meeting, handy in times of lockdown.

Lastly, the problem of Outlook on Windows being different from Outlook on Mac will get worse. What if Microsoft replaces the Windows version with a similarly rebuilt product? Perhaps it will; but the difficulty is that Outlook is baked into the Windows ecosystem and forms part of workflows, some automated with COM technology, that will break if Microsoft replaces it. Custom add-ins, VBA projects, ancient APIs that remain for legacy reasons, all mean this will be a tricky application to replace.

Creating a meeting in the new Outlook Mac: just drag in the calendar and this simple dialog pops up

Outlook on Windows is perhaps the most annoying of Microsoft's Office products, yet the job it does is a critical one, bringing together email, calendar and tasks, and providing collaboration features like shared calendars and contacts. Some legacy features, like Exchange public folders, made their way into Office 365 where they have become something of a burden to Microsoft.

The new Outlook for Mac, when it comes out of preview, will represent Microsoft's current thinking on how Outlook should look and behave in the cloud era, but it will be some time before that can apply in Windows as well. ®

Get ourTech Resources