Microsoft is previewing a new version of Outlook for Windows, to replace both the Outlook desktop application and the built-in Mail application for Windows 10/11. The new version has a modern interface and various new features.

By making these new features available within the new desktop application, Microsoft aims to bring it inline with the functionality of Outlook online (aka OWA). These features, which can already be used in the online version, include the ability to:

• Schedule sending of emails
• Pin emails to the top of the inbox
• Snooze emails; moving the email from your inbox to the ‘Snoozed’ folder then back at a set time
• Join Teams meetings directly by clicking the meeting notification
• Synchronise rules and email signatures between the application and online
• Quickly attach documents stored in the cloud using @ followed by the file name
• Create a task list combining calendar events and selected emails in the ‘My Day’ view
• More easily add/use Google accounts and Google calendars
• Cancel a message for up to 10 seconds after clicking ‘Send’
• ‘Sweep’ messages to quickly clean up old emails
• Use integrated Microsoft Loop features (Microsoft’s new collaboration platform)

For Windows users, we recommend using the traditional Outlook desktop application for the time being – until full functionality for the new version has been rolled out. As the new version is currently in preview stage, some important features – including offline access – are not yet available and others are still in development. There have also been reports of bugs with commonly used features – such as accessing shared mailboxes and marking emails as read/unread – therefore we don’t deem the new version ‘ready to use’ quite yet.