Microsoft Details its Roadmap for the New Outlook for Windows

Microsoft’s new web-based Outlook for Windows is almost ready to replace the Mail and Calendar apps on Windows 11 and Windows 10. If you haven’t tried it yet, there’s a toggle in these apps that lets you switch to the new all-in-one client, which is also available to download separately from the Microsoft Store.

If this new web-based client is the future of Outlook of Windows, it will coexist with the classic desktop app for a couple of years. Microsoft made it clear that the new Outlook for Windows is still a work in progress, and yesterday, Microsoft shared a list of features to look forward to in the web-based client.

The Outlook for Windows roadmap includes “some of the things that we are working on in the next year, some of which are already on the horizon and may be on that roadmap list,” said Caitlin Hart, Principal Program Manager at Microsoft. It includes basic features including drag and drop and offline support, as well as forward-thinking additions such as an integration with Microsoft’s Copilot AI Assistant:

• Auto capitalization
• Collapsible headers in the message list
• Conditional formatting
• Copilot
• Drag and drop emails and attachments to the desktop
• Dictation
• Preserve declined meetings
• EML file support
• File tab in Outlook search
• Folder reordering
• Inking (Draw tab) while composing an email
• MSG file support
• Offline support
• Outbox folder
• Picture formatting
• POP3 account support
• PST file support
• Message Recall
• S/MIME
• Save as for attachments (choose folder to save to)
• Share local files from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
• Shared calendar notifications for work accounts
• Teams tab in search

If you’re coming from the classic Outlook for Windows or even the UWP-based Mail app, switching to the new Outlook for Windows may feel like a downgrade. Even though it’s pretty basic, the Windows Mail app supports unified inboxes and has a cleaner interface.

The new Outlook for Windows, on the other hand, looks a lot like Outlook on the web or its free version of consumers, Outlook.com. Unfortunately, that also means that you’ll also see ads in this new Outlook for Windows app unless you pay for a Microsoft 365 subscription.