The following articles were included in our Exchange Messaging Outlook (EMO) newsletter published on April 11, 2024.
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Today's Highlights »
- Sending meeting Updates in Outlook on the web
- Ads in New Outlook
- Using Cloud Attachments in new Outlook
- Outlook.com Meltdown
- Loose spacing in Outlook
Sending Meeting Updates in Outlook on the web
When you send a meeting invitation from Outlook on the web and later edit it, updates are sent automatically; you don’t have a choice to send updates or not.
Why? When you edit the time, date and location fields, Outlook needs to send updates so the attendees know about the changes. Adding or removing attendees will also needs to send an update, but it should only go to the people you added or removed.
In classic Outlook, you can add notes to the meeting body the use Ctrl+S or the Save button to save changes without sending updates while Outlook on the web will send updates when you update notes or the subject field. But – if the recipient is using either outlook.com or Microsoft 365 Work or School account, the meeting is updated in the background. They will not receive a meeting update notice.
Attendees will always receive an update in their inbox when the time or date changes so they can accept or decline the new times. If you want to edit the start time to add prep time for yourself, you need to make a separate appointment.
Ads in New Outlook
If you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, you should not see ads in your message list in new Outlook or the message list and banner ads on the right in Outlook on the web.
The rules for new Outlook are basically the same as for Outlook on the web: the account needs a subscription to go ad-free. The only difference with new Outlook is the account with the subscription needs to be the primary account and all accounts will be ad-free in new Outlook. Business accounts without Microsoft 365 software licenses can be added to new Outlook as long as the primary account has a subscription.
To set an account with a Microsoft 365 software license as the primary account in new Outlook at View tab > View settings > Accounts.
If the Microsoft account address for your subscription is a third-party address aka EASI (Email As Sign In), at this time new Outlook will show ads. Microsoft is working on a solution so users with EASI addresses can sign into new Outlook to remove ads.
Until then you would need to add an outlook.com alias to the Microsoft account and add the account to new Outlook as the primary account. If you don't want to use an alias, turn on Focused Inbox. The Focused tab will be ad-free while the Other tab will have 2 message list ads at the top.
Using Cloud Attachments in New Outlook
A user wanted to know why the Insert File button only has “Browse this computer” and "Link" enabled and “Cloud locations” is greyed out.
Cloud attachment options are only available for Microsoft account mailboxes, and only if you have the OneDrive app installed and synced to that account.
If you have multiple personal outlook.com accounts, the cloud option is only available to the account that's signed in to the OneDrive app. This is because the new Outlook keeps each account completely separate from the other accounts. (You can't even share contacts between accounts!)
The Cloud location is not available for IMAP accounts, even if the account is used as the Microsoft account address.
Outlook.com Meltdown
Earlier this week outlook.com users had problems sending and receiving mail. A few users complained about problems Monday and Tuesday but by Wednesday morning, hundreds were complaining. The servers were fixed by Wednesday afternoon into the early evening.
The affected users wondered if the missing mail would be delivered. For incoming mail, probably not. The bounce message indicated a permanent failure so the sending server won’t retry sending it. If no bounce message was generated, then it might be delivered.
For outgoing mail, if you did not get a NDR, it should go out, but I recommend resending important mail. You can select the message in the sent folder and hit Reply all. Remove the message header from the top of the message and Send.
If your account was affected and mail is not working correctly, you need to contact outlook.com support.
How to get support for Outlook.com
Loose spacing in Outlook
Several Outlook users complained their interface changed and there is more space between the now larger To, CC and Send buttons.
To reduce the spacing, look on the view tab for Use Tighter Spacing button. It will not make everything as tight as in the older interfaces, but it will help.
Anyone with new versions of Office have had this larger format for several years
New & Updated Outlook Support Articles
How email message formats affect Internet email messages in Outlook - Microsoft Support
Provides an overview of Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format (TNEF) that is used by Outlook to package information.
April 2024 updates for Microsoft Office - Microsoft Support
Other Resources
Use Classic Outlook, not New Outlook
Microsoft has two "new" Outlooks, one for MacOS and one for Windows. How to switch back to classic Outlook and disable the Try new Outlook switch.