by 
Written by Mary Jo Foley,
Credit: Microsoft
Microsoft has launched the new Outlook for Windows client in testers in the Office Insiders Beta channel. Microsoft announced on May 17 the availability of the new Outlook for those with business and training accounts Microsoft 365 / Office 365 – one week after the release of the new “One Outlook” / Project Monarch client.
Company officials said that only test takers who are paid customers, have their commercial or training mailbox as the default sender account in classic Outlook for Windows and are in the Beta channel will see the “Try the new Outlook” switch in the upper right corner Outlook for Windows.
The new client, as expected, looks and feels very much like the current Outlook Web / Outlook.com client. It also has new features such as message reminders. a calendar table; a single view for email, calendar and commitments. and support for a trial version of Loop components. The new Outlook client also allows users to quickly attach files and documents stored in the cloud to their emails using the “@thenameofthefile” convention to see the options.
Loop components are renamed and updated Fluid Framework components – tables, notes, tasks, or even a customer sales record in Dynamics 365 – that can be embedded in conversations, emails, meetings, documents, or pages. The log table is the evolution of the technology formerly known as “Outlook Spaces” and codenamed Project Moca.
Many of the expected new features of Outlook are still missing in this preview version. Multi-account support and offline support are “under development”. Support for Outlook.com, Gmail, iCloud, and other iMAP accounts is referred to as “under development,” along with existing Outlook features such as Quick Steps and search folders. POP support is listed as a feature under consideration, while the US Government Cloud, Outlook data files (.pst) and folder rearrangement are listed as scheduled.
The new Outlook, known at development as “Project Monarch” and “One Outlook”, is intended to integrate the Windows, Web, and Mac databases for Outlook. This new version of Outlook has been tested internally at Microsoft for months.
Earlier this year, my contacts told me that Microsoft would announce the new Outlook this spring and receive a trial version of Windows Insiders on the Dev and Beta channels by the end of March or the beginning of April 2022.
Microsoft released a new preview of Outlook for Mac late last year.
