A new update is coming to Outlook for Windows. Microsoft have refreshed its look to “focus on what matters”. Their press release says:

“Many small changes in the message list help highlight the things that matter. For example, names are bolded and flagged messages stand out with a yellow background. And with a little more padding and text treatment to create a clearer visual hierarchy, scanning your inbox is easier and focusing on important messages is easier than ever. Message subjects are more prominent in the reading pane and the header now takes up less space, leaving more room for your content.”

As you can see from the image above and video below, this leads to a less cluttered interface, particularly achieved by hiding the majority of the buttons content in the “ribbon”.

As Microsoft now favour delivering software as a service, they have the opportunity to constantly tweak (and hopefully) improve, rather than having to wait for seminal update releases (which were previously every three years, eg Office 2013, Office 2016). Hopefully this will be of benefit to Outlook users, giving a cleaner interface so you can focus on the content of messages and what you are working on.