How to Test the Future Look of Microsoft Outlook

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Microsoft’s applications for Outlook and email from Windows, Mac and the web will receive major changes in the coming months as part of the company’s “One Outlook” initiative. Why wait, though? You can get a preview of what will become your Outlook experience right now.

By the end of this year, you can expect Microsoft to standardize the user experience in Outlook applications on Mac, Windows, and the web, as well as in Windows 10 Mail & Calendar applications. Then, in 2022, each of these applications will be passed to a new client “Monarch”, meaning that you will use the same application on all platforms.

Seconds Windows Central, Microsoft says the new Monarch client will add more OS-level integrations for Windows and Mac, including “offline storage, destination sharing, notifications,” so the new Outlook will feel like a native app across all desktop operating systems or web browsers you use.

The launch of these changes will be slow, but you can get a preview of the new cross-platform interface if you install the new Progressive Mail (PWA) web application today.

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How to install Outlook PWA on Edge Chromium:

  1. Go to outlook.com.
  2. Click on “…” to open the menu
  3. Go to Applications and click “Install this site as an application”.
  4. The PWA will open once the installation is complete.

In Google Chrome:

  1. Open outlook.com in a new tab.
  2. Click on “+” at the far right of the URL bar (it may take a few moments to appear. Try clicking on the URL bar if it doesn’t appear).
  3. Click on “Install” when asked.

Compared to Windows 10 Mail and Calendar apps, the look of Outlook PWA is much simpler. It doesn’t have the visual customization options you can use to tweak Outlook in cheeky ways, but it’s much cleaner and includes the same email features as well as calendar and task list views. The similarity should make the transition to the PWA, or finally to the new user interface of the various Outlook and Mail applications, much easier.

Illustration of the article entitled Test Drive Microsoft Outlooks Future Look

Screenshot: Brendan Hesse

Outlook PWA also includes easily accessible shortcuts to other MS applications such as Word, OneDrive, One Note, Meet, and Skype. You can even manage your Xbox Live and Skype accounts from your profile settings if they use the same email address.

This is already a much more robust surface-level integration into the MS ecosystem, and I’m curious to see how it will expand once Monarch launches in 2022.

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