There is a way to stop Outlook (new) from being forced onto Windows 10 computers, but you have to act now before Microsoft does.
There’s a registry entry that will block the February 2025 security update from forcing Outlook (new) onto your Windows 10 computer. See New Outlook coming to Windows 10, like it or not.
Go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsUpdate\Orchestrator\UScheduler_Oobe
Add a registry key:
BlockedOobeUpdaters
Type: REG_SZ
(String)
Add this as the data
["MS_Outlook"]
(including the brackets and quote marks!)
The result should look like this:
Important Notes
Don’t panic is Outlook (new) is installed on your Windows 10 machine as part of the update. The app should sit there idle and not interfere.
In particular, Outlook (classic) will continue to run normally. Outlook (new) is NOT a replacement … not yet anyway.
Thanks to Susan Bradley from Ask Woody for confirming this registry hack does work.