Outlook’s “Coming Soon” Features Are Here

Microsoft has an Office Insiders group for Microsoft Office 365 users that any user can join. Those that join receive previews of upcoming features in Outlook, and they can toggle them on and off using the Coming Soon button in the upper right corner of Outlook. Eventually, after a comment period, those features either make it into the product, or they don’t.

Well, in the last weeks it looks like a whole batch of such features that were previously only for Insiders have been moved into the main product. These include:

The Simplified Ribbon optionSlightly more space between messages in the Inbox
And slightly more vertical space between tasks in the To-Do Bar task list
Adding a yellow highlight to an entire email message listing in the Inbox if it is flagged

As a result, a lot more users are experiencing them for the first time, and might have questions on them.

So to that end, here are links to where I have documented these features.

The Simplified Ribbon and the next two features I have described here, and I cover the simplified ribbon in videos in my Outlook Inbox Ninja Course.

The last one in the list above, yellow highlights on flagged mail, has generated a slew of comments by people who want to turn it off (see that link). FYI—I don’t know how to turn it off.

Not sure what the next batch of coming soon features will be, but I will keep my eye on them.

Michael