Microsoft makes Outlook for Mac free

AppleInsider

Microsoft has recently decided to make its Outlook email app free for Mac users in the App Store and will add new features.

Outlook on Mac is now free

The Outlook app no longer requires a Microsoft 365 subscription or an Office license, Microsoft announced on Monday.

Outlook for Mac is now Apple Silicon native, and includes support for Outlook.com accounts, Gmail, iCloud, Yahoo, and other email providers that support IMAP. The app is also optimized for Macs with Apple Silicon and supports Handoff so that iOS users can resume work they started on their Mac.

Other features of Outlook for Mac include a widget for calendar entries, native notification support, and a menu bar "peek" option to view calendar entries within the app quickly. Microsoft also plans to support Focus Mode in the future, which lets Apple users create profiles and fine-tune notifications and other aspects of their devices.

An upcoming menu bar peek feature

The Outlook Profiles will help prevent unwanted notifications at the wrong time so users can stay focused on important emails. Moreover, Outlook offers extra choices for prominently displaying critical emails.

With a Focused inbox, the app automatically sorts important emails from unimportant ones so users can find them with a toggle above the message list. Users can pin messages to keep them at the top or snooze non-urgent ones for later, with further options for categories, flagging, and adding frequently-used folders to the Favorites section.

Outlook for Mac is available from the Mac App Store as a 974MB download. It requires macOS 11 Big Sur or a newer operating system.

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edr

Could it be because users don’t want a crappy cross platform web app. Next: paying users to use it.

jamescude

Um yeah free is still too much. If you measure lost time and frustration from bloatware, you realize quickly how expensive MSOFT products are at any price. 1 gig for a mail app ought to give you an idea of just how bloated and full of spyware and other cruft it is...

edited March 2023

itguyinsd

edr said:

Could it be because users don’t want a crappy cross platform web app. Next: paying users to use it.

JamesCude said:

Um yeah free is still too much. If you measure lost time and frustration from bloatware, you realize quickly how expensive MSOFT products are at any price. 1 gig for a mail app ought to give you an idea of just how bloated and full of spyware and other cruft it is...

Um, yeah...Gmail is worth exactly what you pay for it (NOTHING) as are other crappy mail apps that work poorly (or not at all) with Work email like Exchange / 365.

Y'all can just stick with your free Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL accounts, OK?  Be happy. 

Since I support clients that use both, there are still many differences between Mac and Windows version, but MS is slowing closing that gap.

The article incorrectly infers Outlook for Mac only works with IMAP accounts, which isn't true since it works with Exchange/365 accounts.

edited March 2023

danox

Apple mail and fantastical.

ravnorodom

Wow. That's like 100 years later and it's finally free. Outlook is the standard mail app for corporate users. To be honest I find it more robust than Apple Mail but I prefer separate it as work mail app and use Apple Mail as personal mail app. If I run a business, Outlook is the one.

jimh2

We should be paid to use Outlook. All of MS products are bloated to the point 90% of the features are worthless to most users. 

daalseth

jimh2 said:

We should be paid to use Outlook. All of MS products are bloated to the point 90% of the features are worthless to most users. 

That’s a major reason I don’t use Office Apps. sure I could use Word to do Legal Footnotes. I don’t ever need to do those. Sure I could use Excel to do Statistical functions. I don’t need to do that. The functions I need are buried under those that I don’t. Add to that the Ribbon, the single worst user interface ever created by man, that Microsoft took and set up in the absolutely worst way possible, and you see why I hate Office Apps. 

omasou

Apple Mail works just fine.

bala1234

I don't use any standalone mail clients for personal email. For work I gave up Apple Mail in favor of Outlook a few years ago due to frustrating bugs. My employer has also migrated to exchange since. Complaints about bloat has merit as my older intel macs struggled with it. But I haven't had a issue since I upgraded to apple silicon.  However I need something which works reliably and Apple mail isn't it.

nikon8

The entire office should be free.  

jdw

Not sure where these crazy forum comments are coming from.  I've been using the paid version since Entourage.  It's been BETTER, oh yes, MUCH BETTER, than Apple Mail for longer than Apple Mail even existed!  Back in the day, I also used Claris Emailer and loved that too.  That's not to say MS Outlook is perfect, and I detest the fact it tells me to update to the NEW OUTLOOK on the monthly basis despite the fact there is a bug that prevents me from accessing mail in the New Outlook, keeping me in the old UI, but the old UI is what I know and love, so it matters little.

Curious what drove them to do this.  I guess from reading the nutty previous comments that most people are simply ignorant of the fact Outlook is better than Mail and just boast about Mail being better anyway, maybe because they don't need to pay for Mail.

And as to the crazy notion that the entire office suite should be "FREE"...  Oh yeah... LOL.  As if we need Ads to mar the UI!  Not on your life, buddy!

Why people these days think there needs to be a FREE LUNCH everywhere is disturbing.  It also makes me worry what's going to happen now that MS is making Outlook free.  I can understand the need to drive adoption among ignorance young people, but how are they offsetting the cost of that?  What motivates them to make it better now that it is free?   These are the important questions I wish the article would have answered.

zeus423

They can’t give it away! 

jdw

Even more hilarious about the people complain about paying for something is the fact that AppleInsider has been offering us amazing MS Office deals for a very long time now, and I have taken advantage of both to ensure my kids have the full office suite for educational use...

https://appleinsider.com/deals/best-microsoft-365-and-office-for-mac-deals

The deal always sounded a bit fishy because the price is so long, but it is legit.  One time, they sold me a bad unlock code, but I worked with customer support to get a new code issued.  It's the full suite, not a stripped down version, which is nice.  It's not bloatware either.

There was a time MS put out bloatware.  Most of you long-term Mac users know what happened when MS moved from the insanely great Word 5.1 to Word 6.  Yikes!  Word 5.1 is still the best version to run on vintage Macs.

lkrupp

jimh2 said:

We should be paid to use Outlook. All of MS products are bloated to the point 90% of the features are worthless to most users. 

Give the man a cigar. Feature creep is one thing Apple resists and gets raked over the coals for it. It seems every user has some feature they say they can’t live without and demand it be added. And every featured added has the potential to negatively affect the overall operation and performance of the main code.

itguyinsd

lkrupp said:

jimh2 said:

We should be paid to use Outlook. All of MS products are bloated to the point 90% of the features are worthless to most users. 

Give the man a cigar. Feature creep is one thing Apple resists and gets raked over the coals for it. It seems every user has some feature they say they can’t live without and demand it be added. And every featured added has the potential to negatively affect the overall operation and performance of the main code.

Oh, like macOS?  Remember back in good ol' days when macOS was lean and stable, but at the same time, feature-poor and not supporting the newest hardware compared to Windows?  Then, Apple starts adding features and brining macOS into the current century and it's bloated and buggy.  Each new version is worse than the last.

Features and compatibility with the latest-and-greatest hardware comes with larger code bases and bugs.

If I were to agree Apple resists "feature creep" it would be Apple Mail, and their "office apps" that never get new features (and accordingly aren't used in companies because of it).

Microsoft has become an eco-system and is a great value.  People here thinking it should be free -- well, there just as happy using Libre Office to reconcile their checkbook (remember those?)

edited March 2023

daalseth

jdw said:

And as to the crazy notion that the entire office suite should be "FREE"...  Oh yeah... LOL.  As if we need Ads to mar the UI!  Not on your life, buddy!.

Have you used Pages/Numbers? No ads there
How about OpenOffice/LibreOffice? No ads there.
Not sure where you got the idea that a free office suite must have ads. 

I won’t hold my breath for a free MS Office suite. It’s too much of a cash cow for MS. This is especially true since they went to Office365 and make everyone pay every month. But your image of free office suites is way off the mark.

itguyinsd

DAalseth said:

jdw said:

And as to the crazy notion that the entire office suite should be "FREE"...  Oh yeah... LOL.  As if we need Ads to mar the UI!  Not on your life, buddy!.

Have you used Pages/Numbers? No ads there
How about OpenOffice/LibreOffice? No ads there.
Not sure where you got the idea that a free office suite must have ads. 

I won’t hold my breath for a free MS Office suite. It’s too much of a cash cow for MS. This is especially true since they went to Office365 and make everyone pay every month. But your image of free office suites is way off the mark.

Actually, compared to Apple, MS Office suite IS free.  You see, for you home/personal users, you can get 6 licenses of full MS Office for $100.  EACH one includes 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage.  That comes out to roughly $17 per YEAR, per person, for 1TB of cloud storage (and FREE Office Software).  Apple charges $120 per year for ONE USER iCloud (and free Pages/Numbers that practically no one uses).

So, $17 for 1 YEAR of M365+1TB cloud from MS or $120 for 1 YEAR of iCloud plus basic office apps from Apple.

Suddenly Apple looks like a rotten apple and I'll take MS, thank you. 

edited March 2023

riclf

I'm an all Mac user, have been for 2 decades, but if you want a good comprehensive Office Suite, MS Office in the Box is a good price way to go. Use it for 5 years and pay nothing after the first purchase. As far as Outlook? These comments are a display of "I know nothing but my hate for MS" attitude. Outlooks integration of Email, Contacts, and Calendar are very well done. And if you are a cross platform person, it is essential. Lastly, still on gmail, yahoo mail, or the all powerful aol?

No, of you want professional services, check out MS Exchange Online, for 5 bucks a month. It works, its up 100% of the time, it permits enormous attachments (if you can receive them),and is best supported by Outlook. Don't be afraid... you're still a Mac guy, try Outlook. Just don't tell you friends!!!!!!!!!

mattinoz

ravnorodom said:

Wow. That's like 100 years later and it's finally free. Outlook is the standard mail app for corporate users. To be honest I find it more robust than Apple Mail but I prefer separate it as work mail app and use Apple Mail as personal mail app. If I run a business, Outlook is the one.

Search in Apple mail is still significantly better than Outlook. 
Otherwise the differences seem like eye candy 

pscooter63

DAalseth said:

jimh2 said:

We should be paid to use Outlook. All of MS products are bloated to the point 90% of the features are worthless to most users. 

That’s a major reason I don’t use Office Apps. sure I could use Word to do Legal Footnotes. I don’t ever need to do those. Sure I could use Excel to do Statistical functions. I don’t need to do that. The functions I need are buried under those that I don’t. Add to that the Ribbon, the single worst user interface ever created by man, that Microsoft took and set up in the absolutely worst way possible, and you see why I hate Office Apps. 

I use Office at work (always have), and to this day I despise that ribbon, from the day I first encountered it in 2007.  You speak the truth.