For Outlook fans, today is a good day. Microsoft introduced a new user interface and a series of features for Outlook.com on May 21, according to Winbeta.org.
In a post on the official Office blog, the Outlook team laid out all of the changes to the system, which are designed to let you “make the most of the moments that matter to you.” Most notably, the Outlook inbox has been refined to enhance collaboration and productivity.
Clutter is a new tool that will be geared toward sorting messages (mainly the ones you want to ignore) into a separate folder. As you continue to use Outlook.com, the tool becomes more intuitive and learns your preferences.
Suggestions in Outlook will now help you find exactly what and who you want as you communicate with your colleagues. With Refiners, you’ll be able to manage all of your search results based on factors such as sender and folder. To make things a bit easier, highlighting has been introduced. This will make it easier for you to find specific keywords as you scroll through large masses of text.
If you want a rich preview of a link in Outlook, you can now get it by simply pasting the URL into your message. Outlook will also allow you to pop out, read, and compose messages (sound familiar, Gmail users?), and inline images can be copied and pasted directly into the body of your email.
Bing Maps, My Templates, and Suggested Meetings have been built into Outlook.com for increased convenience and synchronicity. Other add-ins such as Uber and PayPal will be coming to Outlook soon, as well.
Finally, collaboration has been simplified with the latest round of updates. You can now convert files into a shared OneDrive link by clicking and dragging, and navigation in Outlook.com’s calendar has been simplified.
If you can’t wait to start toying with all of these new features, Microsoft says that opt-in details will be shared in the coming weeks, so keep an eye on the Office blog.
