I actually hate the new Outlook for Windows

[Darth GTB]

I honestly always felt like the native MS Office Outlook was very clunky and I'd always had issues with inbox rules disappearing and rules applied to an email address that was also used as a group having rules being applied to all members instead of only when that address is the email author.

For that reason I've been using the web solution for office email as well since 2014 I think. Since 2020 I moved my personal email from GMail to outlook.com too. I had created a better address for myself back when outlook.com was first published, but only now it is useable. My GMail now works only as an OpenID to log in to places

That being said, outlook.com is far from being perfect and I agree MS is wrong to publish desktop apps that are nothing more than a web app. One of the reasons you already mentioned, resources. You are running another dedicated browser. That's why it takes so much ram. It's like you have one more chrome eating your ram now.

They did the same with MS Teams. While the web app used to work better than the desktop, right now both are equally bad. Same build in both, they levelled them at the lowest point

BTW, the main reasons I can see why companies would be doing that is because then they only need one dev team for both products and also because the web app is a target for ad blockers. Outlook.com has ads that can be blocked in a browser, but can't be blocked if you publish it as an app.

My tip to everyone: instead of using Spotify, outlook, etc. as a windows app, use a Chromium based browser to create a PWA (or Shortcut depending on the browser) that opens like a dedicated window. You can pin that to taskbar/start menu and your browser extensions will work in them too. It's same experience as the apps with no ads and will consume less ram because the browser is already running for you know, browsing

 

[Darth GTB]

I'm not waiting any longer for a "final build" to share my thoughts on this app. In short, it's terrible. I hate it, and I want the old Mail & Calendar back.

I actually hate the new Outlook for Windows : Read more

You don't have to wait for a final build. Functionality-wise, it's not going to change in the final build. What's in preview mode isn't the app, but the port. You may see performance improvements in the final build, but you won't see feature or UI/UX changes

 

[Darth GTB]

Jumped in here to add my voice in support for all this. Hated it since I first tried it out, ages ago - and not just this one, but everything else they're replacing with web apps. Now I can't even use the old Mail/Calendar anymore. And have you tried the new Weather app? Even worse, for all the same reasons. MS is trying so hard to make Windows as a pseudo ChromeOS clone, it's kinda insane.



Re: performance btw - the whole shtick is MS pushing its advertising even more on the user. Plastered in both Outlook and Weather, and I imagine it's going to be everywhere else as well. Of course that's gonna bring performance down even more.

Other than that, I've never understood this mania with web apps anyway. From what I've seen, they're the same as the websites... in which case I might as well just open those from the browser, like I've been doing all my life.

Jumped in here to add my voice in support for all this. Hated it since I first tried it out, ages ago - and not just this one, but everything else they're replacing with web apps. Now I can't even use the old Mail/Calendar anymore. And have you tried the new Weather app? Even worse, for all the same reasons. MS is trying so hard to make Windows as a pseudo ChromeOS clone, it's kinda insane.

Re: performance btw - the whole shtick is MS pushing its advertising even more on the user. Plastered in both Outlook and Weather, and I imagine it's going to be everywhere else as well. Of course that's gonna bring performance down even more.
Other than that, I've never understood this mania with web apps anyway. From what I've seen, they're the same as the websites... in which case I might as well just open those from the browser, like I've been doing all my life.

There are 2 main reasons why companies (and not developers) choose to do that:
- Now you only need one dev team. You build the web app and boom, the desktop one automatically gets the update. You just need to upgrade the shell from time to time, which is just a browser in disguise probably built with Electron, to keep up with security updates
- Ads. You can't use an ad blocker in these. So, what I do instead, since now both are essentially the same, I create a Shortcut (or PWA depending on the browser) for that webpage and pin it to the taskbar and/or start menu. It will open like a dedicated window and will share the same core engine as the main browser window, so the ram issue will be lower. Also, with that, all extensions will be available, which means, ad blockers. I use many other websites in this way.

 

[TheFerrango]

Other than that, I've never understood this mania with web apps anyway. From what I've seen, they're the same as the websites... in which case I might as well just open those from the browser, like I've been doing all my life.

It's so you get to claim you also developed an app, when all you did was repackage the website and add a few extra trackers

 

[Cosmocronos]

"I actually hate the new Outlook for Windows" translation: 'I can't handle change'

“I cannot, I do not have and I do not want to handle a “change” that make my experience worse”
Fixed for you…

 

[bobovuk]

To add to the growing list of problems with the new Outlook, not syncing read/unread status with Gmail: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...or-gmail/d2f7069d-8709-4123-bb17-100e942789a6

 

[Imperium]

I don't know if it's the same with other people, but for me personally the Outlook app's notifications behaviour is inconsistent.

Summary:

If the app is running and I receive an email to my Microsoft account > notification banner and sound.

If the app is not running and I receive an email to my Microsoft account > notification banner but no sound.

If the app is running and I receive an email to my linked Google account > notification banner and sound.

If the app is not running and I receive an email to my linked Google account > no notification banner and no sound.

It's a minor problem, but still annoying.

 

[MBY]

Wow, could hardly disagree more! While yes, I have some small issues with notifications, touch, and performance, the app has actual features. Mail & calendar was barely usable. It wouldn't open emails with actual HTML in them or at least not display them right. No integrations with plugins at all. Could barely handle calendar invitations. No persistent tabs or multiple windows (at least not if it closed and re-opened again). No pinning. All in all, it was so useless that I was installing Outlook.com as a web app until I could get my hands on New Outlook.
Then I tried the classic Outlook. I honestly could not use it - I kept having profile problems. I kept trying to fix it, but the level of going through old Windows settings was just a constant headache.

 

[tom bae 2023]

Not only the new mail app is bad ,also, the new calendar UI is worst for Touch screen . and hard to use . even with mouse and keyboard , it is still bad.

 

[bradavon]

People hate change.

Sure some liked Windows Mail and Windows Calendar but they were not popular because objectively they sucked.

I get people hate change but it can also be good.

 

[TechFreak1]

The webapps are just terrible, they are really clasping at the bottom of the barrel here to scrounge up some profits.

I've had to migrate almost all my email address onto a laptop as I can no longer use my 950XL as an email client. The mail app has a limit of how many accounts you can add and yes, I've gone way beyond that limit as I used to work on the go including working on contracts and books...

I have a seperate e-mail account for all my book writing and notebooks... but I missed the notification email to login to keep / save everything in one drive because of the idiotic focused inbox b.s.. Now, all the books I've been writing and working on over the years have now been lost to the ether So, yeah less I think about all those years of writing lost the better otherwise I will start swearing.

Additionally, due to the focused inbox crap, I almost missed out on quite a few important emails too as I've had to manually search them up and respond to them.

I still miss the Windows Mobile 10 outlook client as nothing else comes close when it comes to seeing important email at a glance.

People hate change.

Sure some liked Windows Mail and Windows Calendar but they were not popular because objectively they sucked.

I get people hate change but it can also be good.

True, also some changes can be absolutely attrocious and a million step backwards when it comes to productivity.

 

[bradavon]

Horrible experience not having unified mailbox

It's not a finished product.

 

[bradavon]

The webapps are just terrible, they are really clasping at the bottom of the barrel here to scrounge up some profits.

This isn't about the web apps though. Which are no better or worse than the Gmail web app.

I disagree New Outlook is no different to a web app. It is.

True, also some changes can be absolutely attrocious and a million step backwards when it comes to productivity.

Absolutely but the central argument seems to be the Mail and Calendar apps were good when they aren't either.

 

[bradavon]

I think MS are mindful it's going to be hated when in a few years it'll be replacing Classic Outlook for Windows app.

We don't know if New Outlook will become bettter but we do know people hate change.

Until then just use Classic Outlook. Windows Mail and Winows Calendar are NOT good experiances, you're just used to them.

 

[paulw3]

I don't exactly hate it but it has a long way to go before it is usable for me. I am the secretary of two sporting organizations that unfortunately use Gmail for their email service. Outlook 365 client won't do Gmail contacts so I tried this new Outlook and it does. It even syncs them across multiple PCs. However when I setup a Contact list and try to send an email to it I get "This message can't be sent right now. Please try again later." Later never comes. It work fine if the contact list is via an outlook.com account just no gmail.com

 

[GraniteStateColin]

You missed the single biggest issue with "New Outlook". It's breaking the law. You went thorough all this to write an article about why you like it and didn't know that?

If you enter email credentials into New Outlook, for ANY email server around the world (on-premise Exchange, Yahoo, Hotmail, Google, etc), it's not that it uses that information to access the email server and being the data to your app.

Nope, instead it grabs the credentials, and downloads your email data to the central Microsoft 365 servers, and your New Outlook is nothing but a portal to view the data at Microsoft 365 servers.

Don't believe me? Setup a on-premise Exchange server behind a firewall, use New Outlook to access it, then Uninstaller New Outlook completely. Now go check your firewall logs, you'll see Redmond and other Microsoft 365 data center IPs constantly accessing your email data, copying it to their servers and keeping it despite you no longer using New Outlook.

Microsoft is breaking every security law in existence by doing this, HIPAA, SARBOX, etc. They are keeping your logins to your email services that are NOT Microsoft 365, and downloading your email data from that point forward, forever, whether you use New Outlook again or not. Changing your password after using New Outlook will show the firewall is no longer having email data requested by the data centers Microsoft owns.

Microsoft won't be punished for this, because they are likely setting up to catalog/cache the entire world's email even if you don't subscribe to Microsoft for email service, and we all know there are government back channels perfectly fine with this since they'll be able to see anyone's email.

@Kiaser , I don't have data to the contrary, but I don't believe this. As we say in physics: amazing claims require amazing data. If you're going to claim that the theory of gravity is wrong, you need a lot of data to back it up. Same thing here: If you're going to claim that MS is capturing and using login and passwords to pull on-premises Exchange Server account data, you have to come with a lot more than just a firewall data about IP access.

IF MS were doing this, it would be a massive scandal. Again, I have no data to prove they're not, but the burden is on you to prove such an outrageous claim. I am near certain this is false.

 

[GraniteStateColin]

New Outlook has additional problems that I think are more critical to at least some of us than the aesthetic and RAM usage points Zac made:

1. In nearly EVERYTHING else, you can right-click on a misspelled word to get the replacements. Not in New Outlook. Doesn't follow UI standards that are at least as old as Windows XP and still running strong in everything else with Windows 11.

2. Perhaps related to #1: the menu key button, which I use primarily to correct spelling errors also does nothing in New Outlook. That alone makes it unusable for me to compose messages.

3. Drag and drop messages to folders doesn't work properly. In Windows Explorer, Outlook, and just about everything else in Windows if you drag and drop onto a windows pane where the drop list is longer than the height of the window, then you can scroll the list by dragging to the top or bottom of the window. This ensures you can access the whole list even though it's longer than the window. In New Outlook, it never scrolls.

4. As New OUTLOOK, it should also bring at least some of the functions we Desktop Outlook users use. It doesn't really have any of them -- no Rules, no macros, no advanced filters. It's much more like a broken Mail & Calendar app and is not remotely worthy of the Outlook name.

New Outlook feels like a barely usable alpha test product. I also agree with all of Zac's points, but think these 4 (especially #1 and #3) are much more severe as core UI functional problems.

 

[GraniteStateColin]

I think MS are mindful it's going to be hated when in a few years it'll be replacing Classic Outlook for Windows app.

We don't know if New Outlook will become bettter but we do know people hate change.

Until then just use Classic Outlook. Windows Mail and Winows Calendar are NOT good experiances, you're just used to them.

@bradavon , I'm fine with this if the concept is that New Outlook is just still in alpha testing and is nowhere close to general release, but that's not what we're hearing from Microsoft, who has said publicly that it's getting close to ready for release and users should begin moving to it. New Outlook has virtually none of the power features that make Outlook distinct from little mail programs like Mail & Calendar. It doesn't support rules, plugins, full customization of the ribbon, categorization, integration with Teams, MAPI for shared contacts with other Windows apps, etc.

For me personally (I realize we don't all use it the same way), it's worse than pre-alpha in terms of UI: it intentionally CHANGES Windows and Office standards, like right click on a misspelled word to select a replacement. New Outlook uses a left click for this, which is just inexcusable for me. Maybe my frustration on that borders on irrational, but it seems to speak to a complete disregard for preserving established UI standards. The fact that mindset is even tolerated scares me that the team behind it has nothing but disdain for the users.

There are many UI failures like this in New Outlook (e.g., doesn't support menu key, doesn't use standard drag & drop) that people have been reporting since its first release and MS has made ZERO progress in addressing any of these. Again, maybe I'm reading the wrong message into this, but this seems to me to indicate that there is leadership behind the New Outlook who has nothing but disdain for standards and UX. "We're doing it this way because I want to, no matter what users want."

 

[GraniteStateColin]

I honestly always felt like the native MS Office Outlook was very clunky and I'd always had issues with inbox rules disappearing and rules applied to an email address that was also used as a group having rules being applied to all members instead of only when that address is the email author.

For that reason I've been using the web solution for office email as well since 2014 I think. Since 2020 I moved my personal email from GMail to outlook.com too. I had created a better address for myself back when outlook.com was first published, but only now it is useable. My GMail now works only as an OpenID to log in to places

That being said, outlook.com is far from being perfect and I agree MS is wrong to publish desktop apps that are nothing more than a web app. One of the reasons you already mentioned, resources. You are running another dedicated browser. That's why it takes so much ram. It's like you have one more chrome eating your ram now.

They did the same with MS Teams. While the web app used to work better than the desktop, right now both are equally bad. Same build in both, they levelled them at the lowest point

BTW, the main reasons I can see why companies would be doing that is because then they only need one dev team for both products and also because the web app is a target for ad blockers. Outlook.com has ads that can be blocked in a browser, but can't be blocked if you publish it as an app.

My tip to everyone: instead of using Spotify, outlook, etc. as a windows app, use a Chromium based browser to create a PWA (or Shortcut depending on the browser) that opens like a dedicated window. You can pin that to taskbar/start menu and your browser extensions will work in them too. It's same experience as the apps with no ads and will consume less ram because the browser is already running for you know, browsing

I do indeed do that for several web sites (all the streaming services, Facebook, a visual voicemail page, etc.), but I would never suggest that any of these are as good as a native app written for the target OS.

MS seems to be developing an anti-Windows mindset with its own products. Most desktop users are on Windows. Nothing against Mac, but that's a relatively small part of the world of computer users (and I'm intentionally ignoring mobile because apps designed for touch have very different UI needs). And yet, MS makes generic builds that don't leverage Windows features or align with Windows design language. It seems as if MS is becoming MORE siloed with internal teams working almost antagonistically toward one another.

This pains me to say. I'm definitely an MS fan, even after they dropped the Duo 2 (which I'm still using). I want MS to succeed and love most of the new things they do, but the New Outlook is emblematic of MS inflicting software on users based on the whims of one particular internal team rather than helping its users by working with other teams to improve the overall library of their capabilities.

 

[gilezzz]

As much as I hate the UI and the slow speed of the new Outlook, I have to recognize that it takes MUCH LESS space on my SSD. The original mail app used to take a few Gigs of space, and as I own a rather old laptop that was a lot for the poor SSD. So I accept the shortcomings and enjoy the free SSD space.