The New Outlook for Windows has a Hidden Secret - It’s Not Good

The Ubiquitous Outlook

Outlook. The ubiquitous email provider known by everyone, and used by businesses, governments and enterprises around the world. Outlook in its current form has changed little since it came out as a perpetual license product in 2019, and even then, changed little from its 2016 version.

Microsoft is changing that now with the new Outlook for Windows version that will come FREE and will be a replacement for the Mail & Calendars app Microsoft attempted multiple years ago.

I’ve been using Outlook for Windows now for about 3 or so months and it has been a mostly enjoyable experience. Better interaction than the current Outlook, with my favorite feature being able to pin emails to the top of the stack.

The best part? No Subscription Needed. Its free. Its main selling point is being able to unify you accounts. Yes! Finally a decent version of Outlook! Or so we thought.

The Kicker

Here’s the kicker: to use Outlook for Windows with business accounts you DO actually need the correct subscription to use Outlook for Windows.

I have various Outlook accounts, and was working in the new Outlook for Windows with an Exchange Online P2 plan, regular E3 and Business Premium Plan. I then came across this error when trying to send an email from the Exchange Online P2 plan.

Odd. I thought it would be the same as previous Outlook versions where I just needed one paid account that included Office 365 to access all email addresses. Apparently not anymore.

I am guessing that all “Online Only” versions of Microsoft’s plans do not let users add their email addresses to the new Outlook for Windows. This limitation includes Business Basic, and many of their enterprise plans including Exchange P1 & P2, E1, F1 and other lower priced plans. I only tried the Exchange P2 Plan but a community response show Business Basic is part of this restriction too.

What’s so odd about this is it doesn’t cost Microsoft more to allow all users regardless of plan to access Outlook for Windows, heck, they let users do that in the current Outlook 365 plan. If Microsoft truly wanted a unified experience they would allow all paid plans regardless of plan type to access this new Outlook for Windows. It would likely be cheaper for Microsoft in the long run to unify this experience too since they don’t have to load a new webpage each time a user opens their email on the OWA plan.

In its fragmented and confuddling release, the opposite is true for literally any other email plan regardless of it being paid or not. If you want to unify your Gmail, Yahoo, Google for Business, or any other email provider, you can do so easily, and you don’t even need to pay Microsoft to add these either. You can even pay for one business or home plan and get rid of the ads too (yes there are ads in the new Outlook for Windows), leaving you with a decent email client.

No, Microsoft, I’m Not Buying Up

In all reality, they are likely going to alienate their users once again, forcing them to go back to the Outlook included in their O365 plan from another subscription. Or even worse, use the web version of all their email providers since its kinda pointless if they can only add a Gmail account or two, and are left unable to add their work email addresses, because the business doesn’t pay for the premium version of O365 for all their email addresses.

For all it’s worth, it’ll be a “small percentage” of users who will be affected by this change. But a small percent at Microsoft’s scale is still a huge number of users. Those users may be decision makers and push their companies to other services or recommend they stick with the Outlook provided by their current plan, forcing Microsoft to extend the runway on the old Outlook 365 like they did with OneNote.

I for one won’t use or recommend it at all now because the small business who pays for a Business Premium plan and pays for additional email addresses for other arms of the business doesn’t want to “buy up” on all their plans just because Microsoft is greedy.