New Outlook for Mac Version Released

[geoffreykobrien]

http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-has-released-a-new-outlook-for-mac-public-office-for-mac-beta-coming-in-2015

[GaToRAiD]

@geoffreykobrien Yes I saw this a few days ago! I can't wait.

[donmontalvo]

If they didn't fix the plain text improper wrapping, I'm going to write this one off as YAATBPBOUAT.

(Yet Another Attempt To Boost Profit By Offloading UAT)

[mm2270]

Thanks for pointing this out!
At this point, anything that will improve the horrible performance of Outlook on the Mac will be welcome. Can't tell you how many support tickets are basically "My Mac outlook sucks!"
According to the article, it sounds like they made some big performance improvements. We'll have to see.

Though I must say I'm a bit peeved its being released (only?) to O365 users right now. I guess Microsoft knows their days of standalone non subscription software being their cash cow are done and are trying to force everyone into a subscription model. Bastages!

[RobertHammen]

Seems like it may be lipstick on a pig - can't really see a ton of changes.

Also, seems to have some activation/ADFS issues, based on the comments at:

http://blogs.office.com/2014/10/31/new-outlook-mac-available-office-365-customers/

[corbinmharris]

We subscribe to Exchange365 for all our employees. Trying to find out if we can get the new version of Outlook.

[emily]

Yep, having that problem in our environment, @RobertHammen][/url. Our Office 365 is not talking to the app yet. I wonder if they have to roll that activation out to accounts before it'll start working? It's a bit… bubbly and cutesy for me so far, but I can't actually send/receive email yet.

[emily]

I wonder… since this requires authentication through Office365 if this package can actually be distributed? Since the user has to enter their credentials to authenticate anyway. Though it needs to work first before I think about letting folks try to use it…

[iJake]

I'm not even able to activate it in our environment yet. Hits our corporate STS login page and just does nothing.

[dilok]

We use O365 and are having issues too. Those of you in the same boat, might want to keep an eye on this http://community.office365.com/en-us/f/153.aspx

[jhbush]

dumb question but has anyone figured out where the local database is stored or is it all in "the cloud?"

[bentoms]

@jhbush1973, no local DB would be AWESOME!

[emily]

So I've only tested this on Yosemite, because that's what I'm running on my computer. Are folks with Mavericks and older OSs having the same issue?

[jhbush]

@emilykausalik I'm running it on Mavericks without any big issues. I'm just unable to find the local DB, if there is one. Reminders on a shared calendar fail to dismiss. The activation worked fine, but my company has been using Office 365 already.

[emily]

@jhbush1973 so you were able to authenticate with AD FS? Do you have Office 365 in the cloud, or locally-hosted?

[jhbush]

@emilykausalik we have a on premises exchange at the moment and our AD is not synced just yet. I'm scheduling a call to get some questions answered as soon as possible.

[emily]

I definitely think the issue is the authentication hand-off with AD FS authentication and Office 365 hosted in the cloud. though someone just posted on the sticky thread over here http://community.office365.com/en-us/f/153/p/274375/839129.aspx#839129 that he could get it to work on a mobile hotspot, and that it was potentially a firewall issue.

[emily]

Just tried it again and it's working. Hooray? It takes 1 of the 5 activations you get through the O365 Portal. That is very not cool.

[dilok]

Working for me now too :)

[iJake]

Me three.

[jhbush]

It appears the Profiles are stored in this directory /Users/yourUser/Library/Group Containers/UBF0YTH0.Office/Outlook/Outlook 15 Profiles. It also appears to be some sort of SQL Lite database.

[tkimpton]

Setup script will be interesting. No schedules. Time for launch agent and bash (apple script inside bash :)

Do that currently for Outlook 2011

[davidhiggs]

I suspect they've released this early to satisfy the Mac users that aren't getting all the client features that they're paying for with 365. eg. Online archives!

- Massive CPU hit on first account setup, settled down now.
- Installs a office365servicev2 service
- Had trouble activating Outlook on a users machine. Same machine clean booted from an external drive could activate fine though. I haven't tried to diagnose the issue (don't want to actually!).

[Josh_Smith]

FYI, a few things I found with the new version:

• Requires Exchange 2010 SP2 or later.
• Profile Manager can't be launched by option clicking, you need to open it from here: ``` /Applications/Microsoft Outlook.app/Contents/SharedSupport/Outlook Profile Manager ```
• First impressions are that it looks like a new skin on the same application. The advertised improvements may be true, but don't expect a new application.

[tuinte]

One improvement I've seen, perhaps a result of the "new threading model", is much better performance moving a large number (i.e., thousands) of emails. For one, the app doesn't crawl to a halt while copying and uploading the changes to the server. Could move around the app just fine.

[chriscollins]

This blog post has everything you'd probably want to know about the new app covered in one place: http://www.officeformachelp.com/2014/11/microsoft-revamps-features-for-outlook-for-mac-15/

I can't believe they took out exporting to an .olm. All you can do now is just drag a folder to the desktop as an mbox file but you can't import that back in. Yikes.

[ericbenfer]

I wish they would not call it Outlook. It incorrectly sets users' expectation. Especially Windows switchers.

[mm2270]

Thanks @chriscollins for the link and thanks @talkingmoose for the blog entry.

Honestly, after reading that, this new version actually sounds like a serious step backward as far as functionality. There's far more missing in this release than anything they added in. I can't even really find anything of value to look to with this release. Maybe that it now uses mail headers for sorting/grouping instead of the subject line? That's nice I guess, but honestly it doesn't even come close to justifying all the stuff they left out. The UI was updated, but like mentioned above, that's only lipstick on a pig, not to mention its just a repurposed look from the Windows and web clients anyway.
I guess MS is bent on ruining Outlook on the Mac in their wasted effort to make Windows seem like the better platform. Same ol' Microsoft. I had hopes that with with the recent helm change, things would also change with development, but I guess not. We ask for more and they give us less.

[CasperSally]

I wish they'd offer some preference that you could force it to only work 'online' and forget the stupid huge local database.

[chriscollins]

My only hope is that since this is early release clearly targeted towards 365 users since you can't get it any other way that the left out missing features are potentially going to make their way back in before a release to on-premises customers.

[dgreening]

WELL, it looks like the process name for the new Outlook installer (downloaded from portal.microsoft.com with a 365 account) is simply "Installer". That is going to make it hard for us to block it...

[donmontalvo]

@dgreening What's the process for the app? Isn't that what you want to block?

[dgreening]

Both Outlook 2011 and Outlook 2015 share the same process name of "Microsoft Outlook", so that is a no-go.

I would prefer to block the install process instead of letting them install it and then saying "No you can't run this".

[mm2270]

I don't have it, but I'm assuming the process name for the app would just be "Microsoft Outlook". If so, adding that as a restricted item would end up blocking legit installs, so I can understand why he would want to block just the installer.

Is the installer an app bundle? If so, maybe in this one case you can try putting in the app bundle name and not the executable? If its just a package installer, then you may be out of luck with blocking it. I have never found any good way to block those.

[dgreening]

It looks like a regular installer package to me...

[mm2270]

Then forget it. Unless you're oK with blocking any and all installations done by the client, you can't block those. At least not without some built in config profile method like with the OS X Yosemite beta that Apple released.
You may want to see if you can block access to any web address for the installation package so users can't download it at all. Not sure if that's even viable.

[koepke]

Anyone know where the log files are saved when you turn on "logging for troubleshooting"? Outlook 2011 saved them to the desktop, but it appears that 15 saves them somewhere else.

[mpebley]

Just an FYI. The local data is located here:
~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office
Logging should be there as well under OfficeLogging...

I'm in the Outlook TAP program so probably can't say much more...
Can confirm this, the released version on O365 requires an O365 account to activate.
I haven't been a fan of Outlook - but for what it is, it is MUCH better than 2011. All the appropriate enhancement request s are getting requested.

[donmontalvo]

Yea I'm not sure it's a good idea to delete an entire container for any one issue...but...seems like that's what the Microsoft "community" is saying is a fix for an unrelated issue:

Large Log files in ~/Library/Group Containers
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_onenote-onenote_mac/large-log-files-in-librar...