Microsoft Outlook facts for kids
.svg){kind=icon}
Microsoft Outlook app icon
|
|||||||||
An email inbox in Outlook (New UI, 365/Office 2024), running on Windows 11
|
|||||||||
| Developer(s) | Microsoft Corporation | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Initial release | January 16, 1997 | ||||||||
| Stable release(s) | |||||||||
|
|||||||||
| Operating system | Windows, macOS, Android, iOS | ||||||||
| Type | Personal information manager | ||||||||
| License | Trialware | ||||||||
Microsoft Outlook is a helpful computer program from Microsoft. It's like a digital assistant that helps you manage your emails, schedule events, and keep track of your contacts. You can find it as part of the Microsoft 365 software collection.
Outlook is very popular for sending and receiving emails. But it does much more! It also helps you with your calendar, managing your daily tasks, and organizing your contacts.
You can use Outlook by yourself on your computer or phone. Big companies also use it to help many people work together. They can share mailboxes, calendars, and folders to make teamwork easier.
Contents
Exploring Outlook Versions
Outlook took the place of older Microsoft programs for scheduling and emails. Over the years, many different versions of Outlook have been released. Each new version often brought exciting new features to help users.
Here are some of the main versions of Microsoft Outlook for computers:
| Name | Release date |
|---|---|
| Outlook 97 | January 16, 1997 |
| Outlook 98 | June 21, 1998 |
| Outlook 2000 | June 27, 1999 |
| Outlook 2002 | May 31, 2001 |
| Outlook 2003 | November 20, 2003 |
| Outlook 2007 | January 27, 2007 |
| Outlook 2010 | July 15, 2010 |
| Outlook 2013 | January 29, 2013 |
| Outlook 2016 | September 22, 2015 |
| Outlook 2019 | September 24, 2018 |
| Outlook 2024 | (Released with Office 2024) |
Microsoft Outlook
Outlook is a key part of the Microsoft Office collection of programs. It helps you manage your emails, store contacts, schedule events on a calendar, and keep track of your tasks. It can work alone or connect with other Microsoft tools like SharePoint for sharing files.
What Was New in Outlook 2002
Outlook 2002 brought several new features to make managing your digital life easier:
- It helped you finish email addresses faster with Autocomplete.
- You could add colors to calendar events to organize them better.
- It made it easier to schedule meetings with groups of people.
- You could now put links directly in email subject lines.
- It worked better with Outlook.com (which used to be called Hotmail).
- Searching for emails became much better and faster.
- It connected with MSN Messenger, a popular chat program at the time.
- The program ran faster and smoother overall.
- You could preview emails better without opening them.
- All your reminders for appointments and tasks appeared in one helpful window.
- It had important security updates. This included automatically blocking attachments that might be unsafe.
What Was New in Outlook 2003
Outlook 2003 introduced more helpful features for users:
- Autocomplete suggestions became even smarter, helping you with just one letter.
- A new "Cached Exchange mode" made it faster to work with emails, especially for business users.
- You could use colored flags to quickly mark emails.
- A "Desktop Alert" would pop up to let you know about new emails or events.
- It added filters to help fight against unwanted spam messages.
- Images in HTML emails were blocked by default. This helped stop spammers from knowing if your email address was active.
- Later updates added ways to block emails from certain countries and protect against phishing, which tries to trick you into giving away personal information.
- You could expand group email lists to see everyone included.
- It offered "Information rights management" to help protect sensitive information.
- It worked well with tablet computers, including handwriting recognition.
- A new "Reading pane" let you quickly read emails without opening them fully.
- "Search folders" helped you find emails based on specific rules.
- It added support for Unicode, allowing more languages and characters.
What Was New in Outlook 2007
Outlook 2007 brought many big changes, including a fresh new look:
- You could now preview attachments like Excel, PowerPoint, and Word files without opening them.
- Setting up a new email account became much simpler with "Auto Account Setup."
- Sharing your calendar was improved, letting you export it as an HTML file for others to see.
- It had better spam filtering and anti-phishing tools.
- You could overlay multiple calendars to easily see conflicts in your schedule.
- The program got a completely new look with the "Ribbon" interface.
- "Instant search" helped you find emails and information very quickly.
- It could gather RSS news feeds, so you could read news right in Outlook.
- A "To-Do Bar" showed your calendar, flagged emails, and tasks all in one place.
- You could save items as PDF or XPS files.
- Word 2007 became the default program for viewing and writing HTML emails.
What Was New in Outlook 2010
Outlook 2010 continued to add useful features:
- It had an improved "conversation view" that grouped related messages together.
- You would get a reminder if you were about to send an email without a subject.
- "Quick Steps" let you perform several actions at once with a single click.
- The "Ribbon" interface was now in all parts of Outlook.
- A "Social Connector" helped you link to social networks and see updates from your contacts.
- Spell check was added to more areas of the program.
- You could manage several Exchange email accounts in one Outlook profile.
- The "To-Do Bar" was improved with visual alerts for conflicts.
- You could zoom in and out on your calendar and mail views.
What Was New in Outlook 2013
Outlook 2013, released in January 2013, brought these updates:
- An "Attachment reminder" would pop up if you mentioned an attachment but forgot to add it.
- It added support for Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), which helped sync emails and calendars better.
- Improvements were made to how it handled cached email data.
- The "People hub" helped you manage your contacts more easily.
- The program started up faster than before.
What Was New in Outlook 2016
Outlook 2016 introduced these new features:
- You could link to files stored in the cloud as attachments.
- The "Groups" feature was redesigned for better teamwork.
- "Search cloud" improved how you search for information.
- A "Clutter folder" automatically moved less important emails out of your main inbox.
- It added support for Email address internationalization, allowing more types of email addresses.
What Was New in Outlook 2019
Outlook 2019, released in September 2018, included:
- A "Focused Inbox" that separated important emails from less important ones.
- You could add multiple time zones to your calendar.
- The ability to "Listen to your emails" was added.
- Email sorting became easier.
- It could automatically download cloud attachments.
- A "True Dark Mode" was added for a different visual theme.
What Was New in Outlook 2024
Outlook 2024, released with Office 2024, brought further improvements:
- Searching for emails, calendars, and contacts became even better.
- It offered more ways to send emails that are easy for everyone to read.
- You got more options when creating new meetings.
- You could quickly reply to an email with a reaction, like a thumbs-up.
Outlook for Mac Computers
Microsoft has made several versions of Outlook for Mac computers. For a long time, these versions were mainly for email accounts used in companies. They were not always part of the regular Microsoft Office package for Mac.
Before Outlook for Mac, Microsoft had an email program called Microsoft Entourage for Mac users. It was similar to Outlook but worked differently, especially with company email servers.
Entourage was later replaced by Outlook for Mac 2011. This version worked much better with the Windows version of Outlook. It was the first version of Outlook made specifically for macOS.
In October 2014, Microsoft released a new Outlook for Mac as part of Office 365. This is a subscription service that gives you access to Office programs as soon as they are updated.
A "New Outlook for Mac" client became available for testing in 2019 and for public use in October 2020. It has a new design and works differently inside, including its own search feature. It requires macOS 10.14 or newer.
In March 2023, Microsoft announced that Outlook for Mac would be available for free. This means you no longer need a Microsoft 365 subscription to use the program.
Outlook for Phones and Tablets
Outlook also has versions for mobile devices like phones and tablets. The first mobile version was released in April 2014 by a company called Acompli. Microsoft bought Acompli in December 2014.
On January 29, 2015, the Acompli app was renamed Outlook Mobile. It shared its name with the desktop Outlook program and the Outlook.com email service. This was the first Outlook app for phones and tablets that included email, calendar, and contacts.
The Outlook mobile app brings together many features you might find in separate apps. It has four main sections: "Mail," "Calendar," "Files," and "People." The "People" section shows your frequent contacts. The "Files" section gathers recent attachments and can connect to cloud storage like Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive.
The app supports many different email services, including Exchange, iCloud, Gmail, Google Workspace, Outlook.com, and Yahoo! Mail. You can use several email accounts at once.
Emails are sorted into two inboxes: "Focused" for important messages and "Other" for everything else. You can easily add files, locations, and calendar events to your emails. Swiping gestures help you manage your messages quickly.
Like the desktop version, Outlook mobile lets you see appointment details and schedule meetings. It also includes features like a three-day calendar view.
Security for Mobile Outlook
Outlook mobile temporarily stores some of your information, like emails and calendar details, on secure Microsoft servers. This helps the app work faster and offer features like search. For company email accounts, these servers act as a single user to get your emails.
Some organizations have had concerns about how the app handles data. This has led some, like the European Parliament, to block the app on their company email servers. Microsoft also offers a separate Outlook Web Access app for Android and iOS.
Outlook Groups
Outlook Groups was a mobile app for Windows Phone, Android, and iOS. It was designed for people using Office 365 at work or school. The app helped turn email conversations into group chats. You could create groups, mention contacts, share Office documents, and work on them together.
The app was launched in September 2015. It received updates to add features like sharing multiple images and deleting conversations. However, Microsoft stopped supporting Outlook Groups on May 1, 2018. Its features were then moved into the main Outlook mobile app.
How Outlook Handles Web Content
Outlook 2007 changed how it displayed HTML emails. It started using the same engine as Microsoft Word 2007. This meant that some advanced web design features in emails might not look exactly as intended. However, emails written in Word would look just right.
Outlook for Windows has limited support for modern web design rules (CSS). This means that designers often have to use older methods to make emails look good in Outlook.
Understanding TNEF Files
When Outlook and Exchange Server send messages, they sometimes use a special format called Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format (TNEF). This format helps them keep all the details of an email, like special formatting or calendar invites. If the person receiving the email also uses Outlook or Exchange, they can easily read this information.
However, if someone uses a different email program, they might see an attached file named "winmail.dat." This file contains the TNEF data. Without Microsoft software, other programs might not be able to fully understand this file, making the email seem incomplete. There are tools available that can help open these "winmail.dat" files.
Calendar and Contact Sharing
Outlook supports some standard ways to share calendar and contact information, like iCalendar and vCard. However, it doesn't always support all the newest features of these standards. For example, it supports an older version of vCard. Outlook also has its own special additions to these standards.
Security in Outlook
Microsoft has worked hard to make Outlook more secure. Starting with Office Outlook 2003, new security features were added. For example, Outlook 2003 did not automatically show images in HTML emails. This helped protect users from tracking and unwanted content. It also had a built-in filter for junk mail. Later updates added even more protection against phishing scams.
Outlook Add-ins
Outlook add-ins are small extra programs that you can add to Outlook. They help add new features or automate tasks. These add-ins can be created by Microsoft or other companies. They are not usually supported in the web version of Outlook.
Social Connector
The Outlook Social Connector was a free add-in for older versions of Outlook. It allowed you to connect Outlook with social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn. This feature was later built directly into Outlook starting with Microsoft Office 2010.
New Outlook for Windows
In May 2022, Microsoft announced a preview of a new Outlook for Windows. This new version is based on the web version of Outlook. It aims to create a more unified experience across different platforms. Microsoft began moving users from the older Windows Mail and Calendar apps to this new Outlook. The older apps were retired on December 31, 2024.
The new Outlook for Windows was made available to all existing Outlook users and users of the free Mail and Calendar app.
Some users have noted that the new Outlook might not perform as fast as older versions. There have also been discussions about how it handles emails from non-Microsoft accounts. Unlike previous versions that downloaded emails to your computer, the new version might sync them with the Microsoft cloud.
See also
In Spanish: Microsoft Outlook para niños
- Address book
- Calendar (Apple)
- Comparison of email clients
- Comparison of office suites
- GNOME Evolution
- Kontact
- List of personal information managers
- Personal Storage Table (.pst file)
- Windows Contacts
