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New Outlook for Mac

Microsoft has released a new version of Outlook for Macintosh computers with new features but it’s not available to everyone.

This Outlook is separate from Outlook 2011 that comes with Office 2011 for Mac.

It’s called Outlook for Mac version 15 and is only available to Office 365 subscription/rental customers.  Office 365 Personal, Home, University and commercial customers can get Outlook for Mac now.

Hold it!

We’re trying Outlook for Mac now and it’s a curious beast.  Installation and migration isn’t simple at all.  The ‘help’ page on ‘Running Office for Mac 2011 side-by-side with Outlook for Mac for Office 365’ tells you almost nothing that’s useful.  In fact the title on the web page has almost no relation to the pages content.

We suggest Office for Mac users/Office 365 subscribers wait a few days.  We’ll publish details of our experiences and there’s sure to be Apple forums full of comment too.  Let others be the guinea pig.

The Promises

Outlook for Mac for Office 365 (another variation on the product name) is mostly aimed at bringing more Exchange Server capabilities to Outlook for Mac.  There’s also an attempt to make the Mac product more like its Windows relative.

Microsoft says there’s a new threading model and database improvements to make the connection to the mail server faster.  Push email is now supported so new messages appear in your Inbox very quickly.

Outlook for Mac supports ‘proper’ Categories so the same names and colors will appear in Outlook for Windows and Mac as well as Outlook Web Access.

We can confirm that there’s ‘improved scrolling and agility when switching between Ribbon tabs’.

Searching through an Exchange account is now possible for archived mail.

Despite the name and the headline claims, the new Outlook for Mac does support POP and IMAP accounts as well as Exchange Server.

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