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Microsoft revamps features for Outlook for Mac 15

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Outlook 15Microsoft released Outlook for Mac 15, departing from its history of bundling the application with its Office for Mac suite. Also new was that the release was targeted exclusively at Office 365 customers and not made available as a standalone product. It required activation via online subscription and offered no method for entering a serial number for perpetual use of the product.

The application was referenced in Office Blogs simply as “Outlook for Mac”. It was not referenced as Outlook 2015, avoiding any hint about the name of the next version of Office for Mac—presumably “Office for Mac 2015″. The only versioning Microsoft has provided is “15.3” as shown in Outlook’s About Outlook menu.

While the application includes some major under the hood changes, the interface is practically the same as its Outlook 2011 predecessor. It boasts little new functionality. New functionality that was added was almost exclusively for Office 365 customers. Some long-standing features were actually removed too.

Update: Outlook 15 requires OS X 10.9.4 or later.

Update: In addition to Office 365, Outlook 15 supports POP, IMAP and Exchange Server 2010 SP2 or higher.

What’s new?

Visibly, not much was new apart from cosmetic changes such as an overall color change to Microsoft’s signature blue and white, font changes, updates to icons and a few user interface tweaks. Its backend support, though has greatly changed.

Update: Outlook now has pre-emptive threading using Apple’s Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) threading model introduced in OS X 10.7. GCD puts the responsibility of managing threads on the operating system rather than with the application. The application is faster and more responsive because the OS X operating system performs more efficiently on single-processor machines and the application can utilized multi-processor hardware.

Update: Outlook 15 was designed to work independently of Outlook 2011. It’s a self-contained application that shares no code or common files with its predecessor. For the purposes of testing and aclimating to the new version, end-users can run both Outlook 15 and Outlook 2011 side-by-side at the same time.

Following are some of the new features in Outlook 15.

Activation

Outlook now requires online activation via an Office 365 subscriber account. Initial launch of the newly installed application welcomes the current user and displays information about faster search. It then walks through several screens for connecting to an Office 365 account.

Outlook 15 Welcome Outlook 15 Search Outlook 15 Sign In Outlook 15 Account Name Outlook 15 Sign In Complete

Activation does not apply to all users on a computer. Each user must run the activation process under his own OS X user account, however, multiple activations on one computer count only as one activation.

Profile

“Profile” is Outlook’s new name for “identity” used by Outlook 2011 and Microsoft Entourage. Microsoft use to store identities, folders containing the user’s mail data and other Office data, within the home folder’s Documents folder. Outlook’s profile is stored in the home folder’s Library folder. The specific path to the profile is:

~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook 15 Profiles/Main Profile

Update: Important to note is Outlook is now is sandboxed according to Apple’s sandboxing guidelines. The new path reflects this change.

With Outlook 2011 and Entourage, a user could manage his identity by holding the Option key as he launched the application. That feature no longer exists. Instead, Microsoft has buried its Outlook Profile Manager.app utility inside Outlook’s app bundle”

/Applications/Microsoft Outlook.app/Contents/SharedSupport/Outlook Profile Manager.app

Outlook Profile Manager

Database

Most notable about Outlook is Microsoft now stores the indexing database in a SQLite database rather than a proprietary format. A SQLite database is a self-contained database requiring no server backend and its source code is public domain. Individual mail messages, attachments and other Outlook data are still stored in a folder hierarchy, which is indexed by the database for faster retrieval. Microsoft claims the new database format provides better overall performance.

Missing from the Outlook Profile Manager.app tool is any method for repairing the database. Microsoft no longer makes this a feature of Outlook for Mac. When Outlook detects the SQLite database needs repair, it will prompt the user.

Also missing is the Microsoft Database Daemon process that ran in the background. The daemon was responsible for much of the process in Outlook 2011 and Entourage. Outlook no longer includes a background process. That also means Outlook Reminders has no method for displaying alerts for upcoming events or other reminders when Outlook is not running. The application must be running for those to work.

Apps

Office 365 includes a new feature called Apps, which are cross-platform widgets that work not only in a web browser but supporting mail clients like Outlook. Apps extend functionality based on the content of a message. They can display an inline Bing map, integrate with contact management systems such as SAP and Google contacts or even track package shipments.

Apps are added to an Office 365 account online and then appear in Outlook. To add or remove apps, click the Manage Apps button at the top of a message body in Outlook.

Manage Apps

This opens a window to Office 365. Log in to the account and click the plus sign ( + ) to add apps from the Office Store or using a URL provided by a third party vendor.

Add / Remove apps

When a message contains data an app recognizes, Outlook will display buttons above it and offer the user choices.

Actionable Items app

Archives

Outlook still doesn’t include an automatic archive feature to move messages of a certain age to an archive folder. However, Exchange and Office 365 include a server-side feature to do this. An administrator must enable archiving and set the rules. Once set, a weekly process runs to move messages to an online archive location, preserving the folder hierarchy of the archived messages.

Online archives act like a separate mail account where only headers are downloaded to display the senders and receivers of messages along with the subject line. Once a message is selected, Outlook downloads the message body and displays it. This keeps old messages on the server and off the computer but readily accessible so long as the Mac is online.

Outlook automatically connects to the Online Archive folder. To access it, just scroll to the “Online Archive – Account Name” folder in the account list in the left navigation pane.

Online Archive

Calendar

Apart from appearance changes, the calendar does include one new feature, which is local weather at the top right corner of the window. By default, it relies on OS X’s Date & Time settings to determine the local city, but the user can manually choose to display weather for a specific city.

Calendar weather

What’s changed?

That’s what’s new. What’s different about Outlook 15 and what features are changed?

Appearance

Outlook sports Microsoft’s blue and white color scheme used across current Outlook products including Outlook Web App (OWA) for Exchange and Office 365 and Outlook.com, Microsoft’s free email service. Compare Outlook, OWA and Outlook.com:

Outlook 15 Blue & White OWA Blue & White Outlook.com Blue & White

The message list also sees a slight makeover, placing emphasis on people rather than subject and includes a single-line message preview for messages already downloaded. Compare a message list item in Outlook 15 with Outlook 2011:

Outlook 15 message list item

Outlook 15 message list item

2014-11-02_14-14-09

Outlook 2011 message list item

Categories

Categories aren’t new to Outlook but syncing category names and colors to Exchange and Office 365 is new. Choose Message > Categories > Edit Categories in Outlook and Exchange categories now appear as a separate list.

Exchange Categories

That list in Outlook corresponds to categories displayed in OWA or other compatible Exchange or Office 365 mail clients.

Exchange and Office 365 Categories

Conversations

Outlook 2011 had a basic method for sorting messages within the same thread by subject and grouping them together as Conversations. While this worked well for the most part, it had unexpected consequences such as grouping unrelated messages together when they had the same or no subject line.

Outlook now uses conversation and message ID mail headers to group messages. This displays related messages together and has the potential to display related messages across multiple folders. Mailing lists that don’t include these headers in their messages stand to be very difficult to follow in Outlook. When sorting by Conversation, Outlook will simply display messages by timestamp without sorting because it will see every message as an individual conversation.

Update: Exchange push

Like Entourage 2008 and Outlook 2011, Outlook 15 connects to Exchange using the Exchange Web Services (EWS) protocol. One disadvantage with the protocol was Microsoft had to program the applications to check for new messages about every minute. Because of this, end-users often noticed a delay between the time they received a message on a mobile device and on the desktop. They perceived this as Entourage or Outlooking being “slow”.

Exchange 2013 and Office 365 end-users benefit from “push” notifications with Outlook 15. Outlook 15 should now notify end-users as soon as new messages arrive on the server.

Notifications

Outlook utilizes OS X’s Notifications feature to display banner alerts for incoming mail. Similar to Outlook 2011, notifications only display when the application is in the background.

Notifications

To review recent notifications, open the Notification Center by clicking its icon in the upper right corner of the screen.

Notification Center

Send-a-Smile

Internally, Microsoft has used its Send-a-Smile tool to enable testers of its products to quickly send feedback about its products. In Outlook 15 it has moved the Help > Send Feedback tool, which use to direct a user to a web page, to a smiley face in the upper right corner of the application’s main window where he can choose either “Tell Us What You Like…” or “Tell Us What Can Be Better…”

Send-a-Smile

The tool then opens a simple feedback window that includes a screenshot of the current application window. The user can enter his comment and optionally include the screenshot and his email address when sending the report.

Feedback window

Signatures

Like Categories, signatures are not new to Outlook but Microsoft added a couple highly requested features. Signatures now change as the user changes the sending account in the From drop down menu of a mail message and the user can set independent signatures for new messages and replies/forwards.

To create a signature and assign it to an account, choose Outlook > Preferences > Signatures. Create the signatures in the top portion of the window and then assign signatures to accounts in the bottom portion of the window.

Edit signatures

Choose a different account in the From drop down menu of a new mail message and the signature changes to the signature of the second account.

Old signature  New signature

What’s gone?

Some features are now gone from Outlook 15. Certain features were deprecated while others may have been omitted due to development constraints. Microsoft has made no announcements about missing features or whether they will be returning in future builds.

AppleScript menu

The AppleScript menu no longer appears to the right of the Help menu. AppleScript support is not missing from the application, however, it now has no way of enabling a user to invoke scripts without leaving the application and double-clicking the scripts or running the AppleScript Editor or using a third party tool.

Update: Because of Outlook’s new sandboxed architecture, some AppleScripts may no longer work as expected. For example, an AppleScript called by a rule in Outlook to copy the text of a message can open Microsoft Word (an non-sandboxed application) and paste the content, however, it cannot call TextEdit (a sandboxed application) and paste the content there.

Also, Outlook 15 does not include Automator actions.

Import/Export

Outlook 15 only supports importing from Outlook 2011, an Outlook 2011 archive (.olm file) or Windows personal folder (PST). It no longer supports importing or upgrading from Microsoft Entourage and no longer supports importing a text file for contacts.

The ability to export to an Outlook archive file is completely gone. Dragging and dropping a mail folder from the Outlook window into the Finder, though, does still export that folder and its contents to a .mbox archive file. This is a one-way operation as of version 15.3 with no way to then return that .mbox archive to Outlook.

Junk E-mail Protection

Microsoft has removed junk e-mail protection from the product leaving only a Safe Senders and Blocked Senders list for in-application junk protection. It recommends junk e-mail protection be handled at the server level.

Update: Junk E-mail Protection is turned off only for Exchange 2013 and Office 365 accounts. It still functions for POP, IMAP and Exchange 2010 and lower.

My Day

The stand-alone task manager application that debuted in Entourage 2008 and continued in Outlook 2011 is not included.

Schedules

Schedules controlled the timing for Send/Receive functions as well as routine maintenance such as emptying Deleted Items folders at specified times of the day or sending all waiting mail when Outlook was quit.

Microsoft moved schedules for POP accounts to within the individual account settings themselves.

Send/Receive

With schedules moved into individual accounts, the Send/Receive command no longer enables the user to Send/Receive for just one account. Invoking the command is now all or nothing.

Sync Services

Apple deprecated Sync Services around OS X 10.7 and removed it completely in OS X 10.9. Microsoft did not include support for legacy OS customers.

What now?

Outlook 15’s release was a surprise, especially with customers awaiting an overdue full Office for Mac suite. Microsoft was also clearly targeting its Exchange and Office 365 audience by including features that work only with these products lines.

Another surprise was Microsoft’s announcement on its Office Blogs site that it would release a public beta of its next Office for Mac suite in the first half of 2015. That’s something it has done with products for Windows but never with any of its Mac products. And it explicitly stated the final release of the next version would be sold as both a subscription and perpetual license.

This version of Outlook seems to be testing the waters for future software releases and may be indicative of Microsoft’s approach that its Office 365 subscribers, who are its more profitable customers, will be the first to receive anything new. It’s dangling a carrot to entice more customers to its online platform.


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