Despite “PRE” removal, New Outlook remains in preview for Work and School

The new Outlook for Windows is debuting in preview mode for work and school accounts, offering a glimpse into its features and capabilities. Unlike its availability for personal accounts, it’s still a work in progress for organizational use. It is fully available for personal accounts.

It is currently in a “preview” state, which means it’s not yet fully ready for business and educational use. While the “PRE” tag has been removed, it’s important to note that it’s not considered enterprise-ready yet.

Microsoft has also announced organizations can control its deployment and access:

• They can restrict access to the new Outlook for internal testing.
• Admins have the option to block the addition of their organization’s Microsoft 365 account to the new Outlook.
• The “New Outlook” toggle in the classic Outlook can be disabled for users.
• Admins can allow access to the organization but block personal accounts.

Along with all this, it brings faster feature deployment across platforms, offers multi-account support, and offline functionality for basic email triage is on the horizon. Support for various account types is available or in the pipeline, and features like delegation and shared mailboxes are already accessible or under development. The exploration of S/MIME support is also underway.

In summary, the new Outlook for Windows is on its way for work and school accounts, but it’s not fully baked yet.