Microsoft today announced a set of new features for its consumer-oriented Outlook.com web email service. Starting today, Outlook.com gains three new features—Advanced rules, Undo, and in-line reply—plus some improvements to the built-in messaging functionality that works with Facebook, Messenger and Skype.
"The average person has 184 emails in their inbox, and receives 28 emails each day," Microsoft's Mike Schackwitz notes in a new post to the Office Blogs. "This can be a lot to handle, so helping you get to the email you care about is one of our top priorities. The new features, which are rolling out today, build on our commitment to give your inbox new and better ways to do the heavy lifting and help you save time."
These new features (and improvements) include:
Advanced rules. Using a new wizard, you can now create multi-action and multi-condition rules that will help keep your inbox organized. Optional conditions include constraints, email tallying, checking read/unread state of emails, and checking if the sender is a contact you know.
Undo. Now, you can undo mistakes for range of actions—including delete, categorize, flag, mark as junk, or move—for one or more email messages. To undo an action, just click the Undo toolbar button or type CTRL + Z.
In-line reply. Now, you can respond directly to an email thread without launching a new view. In-line reply can help you save time, and track your conversations more easily, Microsoft says.
Improved messaging. If there's a feature in Outlook.com that I actually hate, it has to be the built-in messaging functionality, to which Microsoft added Skype integration last year but no way to turn it off. With this update, Outlook.com's messaging feature has gotten a few improvements, none of which seem to address my concern. Which is, I just want to turn the damn thing off.
Don't see these updates yet? Microsoft says that while they're rolling out starting today, some people may not see them for a few weeks.
