We posted in 2022 how Outlook was trying to consolidate all its various “Outlook” options to consolidate feature sets and code bases. In 2023 we told you that (likely) sometime in 2025 a new version of Outlook would replace the older “classic” version of Outlook. And we’re starting to see the results of all that now.
Your Windows system may have two versions of Outlook on it: “Outlook (Classic)” and “Outlook (New)”. Or you may start seeing prompts to “Try New Outlook” inside the older app. And you can go ahead and give it a shot, but there are some serious show-stoppers at the moment for some folks that will keep you from enjoying your new Outlook experience:
- Offline support isn’t nearly as robust as the classic version. It’s very limited what you can do if you don’t have an internet connection.
- You can’t do mail/email merges from Microsoft Word to new Outlook.
- It doesn’t support on-premises Exchange servers (we don’t recommend running those, but it is a show-stopper for folks).
- Shared Mailbox support is still not fully realized, but it’s being worked on.
- There is currently no .PST support for folks who archive and browse those types of files. It’s being worked on as well.
- If you use any Outlook add-ins (for things like a label printer, for example), those add-ins won’t work in the New version and will have to be converted to a Web Add-in.
- Outlook rules aren’t fully implemented yet – at least not the level that classic has them.
- And it obviously looks and acts a whole lot differently compared to the Classic version which (other than some color changes) has mostly worked the same for decades.
Microsoft has a list of what’s been implemented, what hasn’t, and what’s upcoming in the new Outlook.
Long story short, Outlook (New) isn’t fully usable for many use cases yet so we recommend you hold off installing it for the moment. That being said, you can have both versions installed and running happily at the same time on the same computer and you can use one or the other at any time. Maybe you’ll like the new Outlook – but at least the classic version will be around should you hate it.
For the record, home versions of Office 365 are forcing folks to the new Outlook sooner rather than later and you may not be able to switch back. Commercial versions are going to default to it very soon, but you’ll still be able to switch back and use the Classic version until 2029, per Microsoft’s timeline (hopefully by then there will be feature parity). More information from Microsoft on switching back and forth between the versions.