Microsoft began rolling out a slew of updates to selected users on Outlook.com on Thursday, including plug-ins or “add-on” apps soon to come from Uber and PayPal.
Some of the new changes have appeared in the preview of Office 2016, such as simplified sharing from OneDrive—where users send a link to a file that lives in the cloud, rather than downloading and emailing the file to a friend or colleague.
In general, however, the new Outlook app represents Microsoft’s shift to Office 365, both in infrastructure as well as the look and feel of the site.
Outlook.com’s revamped Calendar app.
Why this matters: As usual, some of the latest features of Microsoft’s Office apps are rolling out first to the online site, where they can be most easily deployed. Right now, they’re off-limits to most users. Microsoft said you’ll have the choice to opt in to those features over the next few weeks—there’s no reason that we can see why you wouldn’t want to. And if you don’t like what you see, Microsoft has launched an
Outlook UserVoice site, so that you can give feedback.
