Today, Microsoft unveiled lots of new features that will be included in an upgrade to Outlook.com, its free web-based email service and a part of its cloud-based suite of productivity software called Office 365. Here’s what to expect:

New Inbox Features

Clutter

Clutter works on your behalf, sorting messages you’re likely to ignore into a separate folder, so you can focus on what matters. The more you use Outlook.com, the better Clutter gets. You can help train Clutter by dragging messages in or out of the Clutter folder and you can turn it on or off depending on your preferences.

Search Suggestions and Refiners

• Suggestions put the people you communicate with and the content in your mailbox at your fingertips when searching for content

• Refiners let you pivot your search results based on the sender, folder, date received and attachments.

Link preview

Just paste a link into your message and Outlook.com automatically generates a rich preview to give your recipients a peek into the contents of the destination.

Inline images

Copy and paste images directly into the body of your message, right where you want them.

Pins and Flags

You’ll be able to keep essential emails at the top of your inbox with Pins and mark others for follow-up with Flags. Pins are now folder specific.

Add-ins

Add-ins appear while you are reading or composing a message and are designed to help you complete the task at hand. In addition to the Bing Maps, My Templates and Suggested Meetings add-ins that are built-into Outlook.com, There will also be third-party add-ins later from Uber, Boomerang, PayPal and others. The Bing Maps add-in lets you open a map and get directions to a location found in the body of a message.

New ways to collaborate using Outlook.com

New Skype experience

Shift conversations between email and Skype. Chat with a group, or one-on-one. Start a voice or video call by pressing the call button.

Simplified sharing from OneDrive

Just attach the file to your draft message—drag and drop or with the file picker—and with one click you can convert it to a shared OneDrive link.

Side-by-side views

Open an attachment and see it side-by-side with the email. You can view or edit Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents while simultaneously replying to the original message. Any changes you make to the file are automatically saved and attached to your response when you hit send—no need to download, edit, save and re-attach the revised file.

Questions & Answers About the Outlook.com Upgrade

Q. Will users need to change their email address?
A. No. 

Q. Will users need to change or update any settings on their phone or other apps to keep receiving email?
A. The vast majority of customers will not need to make any changes. Any who may, will receive instructions

Q. Will Outlook.com users have to pay for an Office 365 subscription?
A. No. It is an ad-supported service.

Q. After receiving the update, what if a user doesn’t see any ads. Will the updated user interface be ad-free?
A. No, Outlook.com will remain an ad-supported service.

Q. When will users be able to opt-in and get these new features?
A. Opt-in details will be shared in the coming weeks.

Q. If a user has a custom domain configured with Outlook.com, Will they be able to keep it?
A. Yes, if someone has a custom domain configured on Outlook.com today, it will continue to work after this update.

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