Microsoft have been pushing out a new version of Outlook for a while now.
You’ve seen the toggle offering the chance to trial it.
It seems to be an acquired taste and we’ve seen a few people revert to the old ‘classic’ version.
Mircosoft have been encouraging us to use the new version, and we’re now hearing that Microsoft will start forcing the new version on commercial users, starting April 2026.
Missing New Outlook Features
There are some things the new version simply can’t do. One of my favourite shortcuts is to drag emails into my calendar to turn them into appointments. The new version doesn’t do this, so I’ve gone back to the old version.
It also seems a bit unintuitive about importing appointments such as webinars and other ’ocs’ files – it does it, but it seems harder than it needs to be.
For more information, refer Feature comparison between new Outlook and classic Outlook – Microsoft Support
Can you opt out of New Outlook?
Microsoft say you can – go to the file menu, options, general, new outlook options.
The problem with this is that we don’t see that ‘new outlook options’ topic.
There is a manual way of doing this in the machine registry. We’re happy to help you with this if you would like.
Can you run both versions of Outlook side-by-side?
Yes! They work perfectly well alongside each other, even on the same computer at the same time.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to doing that. Run new Outlook and classic Outlook side-by-side – Microsoft Support.
Classic Outlook Support
Finally, as best we can tell, Outlook (classic) for Windows will remain supported until at least 2029. That means there is time for the new version to catch up on the missing functionality.