New Outlook from January 2025
Microsoft will be distributing the new Outlook to business customers from January
From January 6, Microsoft will automatically switch business customers from the classic Outlook to the new Outlook. This is likely to cause problems.
Microsoft has announced in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center that from 6 January 2025, customers with Microsoft 365 Business and Premium licenses will automatically switch from classic Outlook to the new Outlook.
In the Microsoft Admin Center (log-in with appropriate access rights required), the company writes that from January 6, users with Microsoft 365 Business Standard and Premium licenses will be switched from classic Outlook to the new Outlook in the following months. Users will be converted once during this rollout, but with the option of triggering the conversion again at a later date. However, those affected should have the option of switching back to classic Outlook.
Appealing marketing to make the move palatable
"Our goal with this change is to give users the opportunity to try out the new Outlook, which millions have already done," says Microsoft about the project. "New Outlook gives users the most modern experience with Copilot features, themes and a host of time-saving features like pinning and snoozing emails".
Users will receive a notification in the app before the changeover and will have the option to switch it off in "Options" - "General". Anyone who has already switched over can also choose to switch back. If the New Outlook switch has been hidden by means of guidelines or an unlimited license exists, the changeover will not take place. In the "Admin-Controlled Migration to New Outlook" policy, admins can influence the migration of users. It is not set by default, which means that users can control themselves whether the switch to the new Outlook takes place. The value "1", on the other hand, ensures that the migration is permitted and users cannot intervene, while the value "0" prevents the automatic migration and users cannot change this either.
By setting the registry key NewOutlookMigrationUserSetting as dword:00000001 or 00000000 under the branch HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\office\16.0\outlook\preferences, it should also be possible to implement this locally. Later, the policy will also be available as a Group Policy Object (GPO), as a cloud policy and via Intune.
Admins need to take action
IT managers with the listed licenses must therefore take action. The changeover is likely to lead to an increase in user inquiries, and "real" problems are also to be expected. Firstly, there is the lack of support for POP3 or, more importantly, Exchange in the on-premises version. Anyone using a local Exchange server will no longer be able to process emails. A comparison of functions from Microsoft shows other missing functions, such as shared mailboxes as accounts.
On the other hand, the fact that the new Outlook transfers access data for IMAP accounts to Microsoft's servers, which then copy the emails from the accounts to the Microsoft Cloud, is also likely to weigh heavily. The advertised functions run on the server side and not locally. .pst files are also not yet supported. This could also be a data protection problem for some organizations.
The new Outlook has been causing discontent for some time. Microsoft is constantly trying to win over users for the software. In the Windows clients in the Home and Pro licenses, for example, it is now replacing the previously popular Windows Mail, Calendar and Contacts apps. However, many people do not realize that the new Outlook is essentially a web app that accesses Microsoft's server-side functions and retrieves users' emails via Microsoft servers for this purpose.
You can also read https://www.heise.de/news/Neues-Outlook-Rueckkehr-zu-klassischem-Outlook-soll-weniger-einfach-werden-9733317.html