Thanks for trying the Outlook.com beta! We’re glad to inform that you can turn the Reading Pane off yourself by taking these steps:

1. Go to Settings (you should see the Quick Settings in the side pane)
2. Reading pane > Hide (it’s a radio button)

If this is the mode you prefer, go right ahead and personalize your Outlook.com that way!

December 2017: Thanks for your patience and continued use of the Outlook.com beta! We roll out new improvements every week, and are elated to announce that a recent update opened up this feature to you! You now can turn off Conversation View and show each item in your message list as its own entry. To do so, use the Settings (gear-shaped button) menu.

We will continue to make other improvements to the Outlook.com beta experience; thanks for your support!

Update January 2018:

We have confirmed that all users whose email addresses have an Office 365 subscription attached to it are getting the ad-free Outlook.com experience. We encourage anyone who would like the ad-free Outlook.com experience to sign up for an Office 365 subscription, which comes with a plethora of additional perks and benefits.

In addition to this, users who would like to have a larger reading surface may find the Reading Pane Off/Hidden mode more preferable. This setting may be found in the Quick Settings panel, under Reading Pane > Hide.

Update 9/19/2017: You can now turn this off in the settings. Thanks for using the Outlook.com beta! We hope you like it.

I again thank each and everyone of you for using Outlook.com and for providing all of your feedback. I wanted to let you know that as of today we have enabled Density settings. There are three modes which control how tight and how much information is shown on the screen.

To change the density settings click on the gear in the top right (settings). In the pane that opened you should see three setting Full, Medium and Compact.

Hope this helps address some of the concerns around white space :)

Thanks again,

David Los

Hi, we’ve fixed some things related to performance. Please create new suggestions or add more information if you are experiencing slow performance!

We’ve created a forum which will allow you to better investigate.

Form link:

forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id..

Thanks

Colin

December 2017: Thanks for your patience and continued use of the Outlook.com beta! We roll out new improvements every week, and are elated to announce that a recent update opened up this feature to you! You now can sort your message list by Receive Time (default), Sender Name, and Message Size.

We will continue to make other improvements to the Outlook.com beta experience; thanks for your support!

Thanks for the feedback! The colorful circles are what we call Sender Images. If you have a photo for that contact, it will be displayed when you have an email from them. When you don’t have a photo the circles are filled in with color and the initials of the sender.

Now I totally understand that you don’t like them! I know not everyone enjoys every feature we introduce, however we do offer flexibility by disabling them if you don’t like them.

To turn these off do the following:
1) Click on the Gear in the upper right hand corner
2) In the Quick Settings Pane that opened look for Sender Photos
3) You can enable or disable the Sender photos right there.

Thanks for the feedback, and please keep it coming!

David Los

Update 11/1:

Now, when you see a single sender in the message list, you can hover over the sender name to see the full email address. Also, when in the reading pane, senders that are not in your safe sender’s list or contacts list will have their full email addresses shown as well.

Thanks for using the Outlook.com beta!

Update November 2017:

We recently updated the Move to dropdown (in the command bar) and the Move to context menu item to prioritize your most-recently used folders. We believe this is an improvement that you will prefer over the fixed alphabetized list.

To create a new folder, simply use the New folder item in the folder pane.

Please enjoy the rest of Outlook.com!

Thanks for your feedback! We recommend that you use Search to find older emails.

If you click in the search bar, on the right (next to the search icon) you will see a dropdown menu that says “All folders”.

Click on this menu, and then select the date range that you want to search in. Once you’ve applied this date range, you can search within just those dates to see your emails.

Colin

Update 11/1:

You can find a setting now to change the position of the Reading Pane. Your options are on the right, on the bottom, and off.

We hope you enjoy Outlook.com!

Thanks for trying the Outlook.com beta! We’re glad to inform that we’ve released an update for inbox rules that allow for all sorts of combinations in settings.

To create an advanced rule, either:
1) Right-click on an email
2) Click “Create rule”
3) Click “More options”
4) Create away!

OR

1) Click the settings gear icon in the top right
2) Click “View full settings”
3) Click “Rules”
4) Click “Add new rule”
5) Create away!

Update January 2018:

Skype is back! :)

More improvements to the Skype integration will come in the future, but for now, please enjoy the upgraded Skype chat experience!

P.S.: If you wish to mute notifications, you can do so in the Settings panel under General > Skype > Notifications.

Thanks for the feedback!
To turn these off do the following:
1) Click on the Gear in the upper right hand corner
2) In the Quick Settings Pane that opened look for Sender Photos
3) You can enable or disable the Sender photos right there.
Thanks for the feedback, and please keep it coming!

We’ve now made it possible to block users in non-junk folders.

Select one or more emails and click the “Junk” dropdown in the top menu bar → “Block”, or right-click on the email and select “Block”.

Note: To block users in the Junk email folder, select the “Not junk” dropdown in the top menu bar → “Block”, or right-click on the email and select “Block”.

Update 9/19/2017: You can now select and deselect multiple items, then mark as phishing or block. Thanks for using the Outlook.com beta!