Plenty of new features, a fresh design, and mobile goodies

May 21, 2015 19:45 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft has just announced a huge set of improvements for its email service Outlook.com, as it's working to upgrade it to an Office 365-based system and improve communications and collaboration right in the browser or mobile apps.

This new batch of improvements is only available for a limited number of users, as Microsoft is just seeking feedback on the UserVoice channel before releasing it to everyone, so unless you're picked to give it a try, there's no other way to get your hands on the new Outlook sooner.

First and foremost, Outlook.com will come with Clutter, a new feature that was already available in Office 365 and that is supposed to bring in your inbox only the messages that you actually want to read.

“Clutter works on your behalf, sorting messages you’re likely to ignore into a separate folder, so you can focus on what matters. The more you use Outlook.com, the better Clutter gets. You can help train Clutter by dragging messages in or out of the Clutter folder and you can turn it on or off depending on your preferences,” Microsoft explains.

Then, Microsoft is improving search suggestions and refiners, and beginning with this update, you should start seeing suggestions for the people you communicate with as you type. Refiners include sender, folders, date received, and attachments.

Themes and inline images

If you weren't impressed with the UI of Outlook.com, here's the good news. Microsoft is adding support for themes, and 13 of them will be available with this upgrade.

Inline images will also be offered to copy and paste images directly into the text body, and so will be pop-outs to read and write emails in separate windows.

Another great feature that will be part of the new Outlook.com is support for add-ins, which will greatly enhance functionality of the email service. At first, Microsoft is offering just a handful of add-ins, such as Uber, Boomerang, and PayPal, but more should be rolled out soon, the company guarantees.

Collaboration has always been one of the key features of Outlook.com, so thanks to with this new overhaul, you should be able to shift between email and Skype with just a click and start a voice or video call with the contact you were emailing too, open attachments and view them side by side with the email you were writing, and share files by simply dragging them into the message body and letting the service generate a OneDrive link.

As mentioned, all these improvements will be available only for a limited number of users, but luckily, they should be released to all Outlook.com users in the coming weeks if everything goes according to plan.