Microsoft has recently posted a video on its Microsoft 365 YouTube channel, revealing a lot of information about what's next for the new Outlook app on Windows. Towards the end of the video, Microsoft also confirmed that it would take at least a couple of years to replace the classic or Win32-based Outlook app with the new Outlook.

Before killing off the classic Outlook, Microsoft hopes to offer 10x productivity to Outlook users by adding AI features to the new Outlook app, though the company remains tight-lipped about when that will happen. The new Outlook is not the only Microsoft 365 app that will get AI capabilities, however. Microsoft will hold a dedicated event on October 3 to unveil new AI features for OneDrive.

Besides AI capabilities, Microsoft will address one of the major problems with the current Outlook experience in the Windows platform. Acknowledging that having multiple Outlook clients, like the UWP-based Mail and Calendar app, the classic Outlook desktop app, is one of the pain points for users, Microsoft has announced that the new Outlook will bring the best of what’s already available for the existing Outlook clients and what Microsoft calls “disruptive changes”, which will be big enough to grab users’ attention. And Microsoft will club all of them into one single app, the new Outlook.

Touching upon some of the features that it added recently to the new Outlook, Microsoft has shown us in the video some of the most-requested features that the company is planning to introduce next. Support for third-party accounts, Search Folders, the ability to open files in native apps, support for PST, OFT, MSG, and ICS files, and many more are in the works, and they could soon be introduced to the new Outlook. Besides, the company has plans to release inking support for the new Outlook this month.

It’s worth pointing out that in addition to Outlook/Hotmail accounts, it’s already possible to add Gmail accounts to the new Outlook app. The ability to add accounts from other services, such as Yahoo, to the new Outlook is currently in the works.

Microsoft has no exact answer to when it will replace the classic Outlook with the new Outlook. Based on the roadmap the company shared in the video, it looks like the removal of desktop Outlook won't happen before 2025. It could take even longer based on how things progress in making the new Outlook fully capable of replacing the classic one.

However, as Microsoft pointed out in the video, the timeline for the phasing out of the inbox Outlook app for Windows and the classic Outlook app will be different. While phasing out of the classic Outlook will take at least a couple of years, the software giant has plans to replace the inbox Mail and Calendar app for Windows with the new Outlook app in December 2024.

The new Outlook app looks and feels a lot like its web client. But Microsoft's vision for the new Outlook is much more than making the app look like a copycat of the web client. The new Outlook is the company's attempt to unify Windows, Web, and Mac codebases for Outlook, ensuring that new features reach users at a faster pace across platforms and bringing more consistency in how features behave.

If you want to try the new Outlook app, you can open the Outlook desktop or the Mail and Calendar app on your PC and enable the Try the new Outlook toggle in the upper right corner. The new Outlook app for Windows is currently available in preview, and it works on both Intel and Windows on Arm laptops.