The icons are cleaner and the lettering smaller, reflecting Office’s interface across all platforms. The toolbar and ribbon for Outlook 2011 (top) featured textured and shadowed icons that attempted to be “Mac-like” but became dated with frequent OS updates. Outlook 11.5’s ribbon (bottom) relies on Microsoft’s own design language. Unread messages are clearly denoted by a blue bar to the left of the message abstract - much easier to see than the bolding that marked unread messages in the previous version. The Ribbon interface is cleaned up in Outlook 15.3 and mirrors the Windows version. Outlook for Mac looks and works like the same Outlook you'll see anywhere. The interface is cleaned up and icons are simplified. Rather than worrying about making things 'Mac-like,' Microsoft's designers have become confident enough to build out their own design language across platforms. The big news is that, at long last, Outlook for Mac has more or less reached parity with Outlook for Windows. Surprisingly, Microsoft released a no-extra-charge Mac version shortly thereafter through its Office 365 SaaS service. Last month, screenshots started to leak out of Outlook for Mac 15.3, part of an anticipated new version of Office slated for next year. In fact, it was dissimilar enough that moving from one platform to another was frustrating. But even then, the user experience was different from - and less capable than - the Windows version. It wasn't until late 2010, with the release of Office Mac 2011 (the most recent version to date) that Entourage was buried and a full version of Outlook for Mac was released. It didn't help that Entourage never quite reached parity with Outlook as an Exchange client. Various versions of Outlook Express and something called Entourage performed some or most of Outlook's functions through the early 2000's.īut those substitutes had no actual code from the baseline Microsoft Office suite, of which Outlook is a part, and the user interface was different enough from Outlook to create problems for support and IT departments.

For many years, there were, at best, rudimentary and semi-functional Mac versions of Outlook, which created a self-fulfilling cycle that the Mac was not ready for or worthy of use in the enterprise. Outlook and the Mac have a long and ugly history. This is great news if you live exclusively in an Exchange environment, but you may want to mute your celebration if you also deal with other calendars and contact lists created elsewhere. The latest surprise release of Outlook for Mac 15.3 is largely what you'd hope to get in an Outlook refresh: At long last, a version that looks and works almost identically to the Windows version.

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