In a couple of years, maybe. Maybe more, maybe less. But probably a couple of years.
Microsoft has a new Outlook experience on the horizon. The new Outlook email client is planned to replace the legacy experience, bundled with Microsoft 365, as well as the standard Mail and Calendar apps. Microsoft has been working towards rolling out the new Outlook experience to users, but it looks like the company has hit a bit of a snag in that direction. In fact, right now, it doesn’t seem like Microsoft knows exactly when it’ll actually phase out the older app.
The new Outlook’s product leads have released a video talking in depth about the new Outlook for Windows, but one part specifically caught our eye, and it’s that Microsoft doesn’t seem to have a hard-set date on when it will phase out the older app. Margie Clinton, Principal Group Product Manager of Outlook, said that “there is not a strict timeline yet.” She did mention that “it’s probably on the order of a couple of years out, maybe not two, maybe a little bit more than two years,” but other than this, Microsoft is unwilling to commit to a specific date, saying that it’s “because it’s going to be determined on overall readiness based on us delivering the core capabilities to the to the point where we believe that we’re ready for opt out.”
Microsoft said a few months ago that the new Outlook experience would begin replacing Windows’s built-in Mail and Calendar apps starting in August. That hasn’t seemed to start yet, though it is accessible to most Windows PCs using the preview toggle in the Mail or Calendar apps.. The company had also previously said that support for the Mail and Calendar apps would be ended by the end of 2024, and it looks like Microsoft is also backing off that timeline.
The development of the new Outlook experience has been complicated, since Microsoft wanted to make it more than just a web app, but it looks like we’ll need to wait a bit longer for the new experience to actually fully take over. The good part is that the new Outlook is already in a pretty advanced stage, and trying it out is as simple as enabling a toggle.
Source: Microsoft (YouTube)