17 Awesome Technical Improvements in New Outlook vs Classic

[callthatgirl]

Hi nibblers, Today I was wondering what I won't miss with New Outlook and the list was easy to write up. Check out my article on LinkedIn. If you enjoyed it, please like and repost, comment if you have anything to add. Thanks!

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/17-awesome-technical-improvements-new-outlook-vs-lisa-esfje/

 

[Blues]

I found about 4 that I don't like but I don't like them for my personal use case and that is every one of the "Improvements" that remove local only options I like pulling my mail off the servers and down to my local machine where my email is now only accessible by me on my equipment. I am not saying from an IT perspective that the "Improvement" doesn't have its advantages and I would be happy if that is the default behavior but removing my ability to download and make local and only accessible from one machine is what I dislike. This is me and my specific use that those are not improvements for but I keep wanting/needing to change my email client and really my email provider anyhow so not a major thing for me.

 

[callthatgirl]

@Blues I agree, improvements won't make everyone happy. I'm already at a 50% 365 Admin level of work, so I'm seeing Outlook calls on the decline, mostly because so many of my clients are on Exchange now. I'll have some clients who want their data in a PST still and I'm sure New Outlook will have that feature back due to folks like yourself wanting their email local. More changes to come no doubt.

 

[Blues]

I admit my reasons and issues primarily are privacy focused and being a data hoarder so I like things like Proton but being cheap and needing more than the free tier offers has me holding off currently.

 

[Sky-Knight]

New Outlook will let you drag and drop mail into a file folder, as an .eml file, which you can open with various other things, and you're free to delete it online after that.

The .PST was a proprietary compressed and often encrypted blob... not standards based. If your goal is privacy and risk reduction, the use of Classic Outlook is also a broken process.

I'm not aware of any mail clients that will automate this functionality... because you're right, POP3 behavior is "secure" in the sense that you can pull mail into a private repo and get it offline. Which does indeed shrink the attack surface. But it comes at the cost of interoperability with mobile devices, and most mail users want to have a consistent mail experience across platforms.

That pressure is indeed shoving that specific use case out the door.

Thunderbird I think addresses all of this : https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data

It uses local file storage via encrypted profile which you can backup and restore. The data inside is much more accessible than a PST too. Still not perfect... but better than Outlook Classic in this case.

 

[Blues]

I agree PST and OST as a proprietary format is an issue and really was/is the biggest issue with that method but a similar singular archival email file like PST and OST is a nice system to me as an option to have. I cant say I like PST or OST files as they are plenty problematic and with proprietary limitations aggravating to migrate away from.

Yes the flaws of POP3 interoperability is where services like Proton are interesting in that they don't use it but also offer more security and protections. I have found IMAP also with its own share of other problems but often due to limits at least with certain email clients so it is all a balancing act of what you want and/or do not want the most.