HowTo-Outlook

Today, Microsoft released a preview of their new web based mail service and it is called… Outlook.com!

Outlook.com is basically a complete rework of what you currently know as Hotmail but with a clean new user interface. This new user interface is in the Metro style which is also featured in Windows 8, Windows Phone and (to some extend) in Office 2013. To put it bluntly; Its design is a mix of the Windows 8 Mail app, Outlook 2013 and Outlook Web App that ships with Exchange 2013.

Aside from the new interface, there are also a ton of new options, especially when it comes to contact management and interaction. Instead of creating your contacts manually, you can directly integrate your contact lists from Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Twitter. Skype integration will follow soon (and won’t even require you to install the Skype client)!

To get started, simply visit Outlook.com and sign in with your Microsoft Account. If you already have a Hotmail account, you can sign in with that address too and your account will get automatically converted. You’ll of course then keep your original @hotmail address but also have the option to add a new @outlook.com alias.

There is lots more to this so make sure you read the introduction post at the Outlook Blog. It also hold instructions on how to convert your current account fully to Outlook.com.

View: Introducing Outlook.com – Modern Email for the Next Billion Mailboxes

The Outlook Team has released an update for the Customer Preview of Outlook 2013. This update resolves an issue in which email messages are deleted unexpectedly from the Microsoft Exchange server when Microsoft Outlook 2013 Preview is in online mode.

If you are using the Click-To-Run version of the Office 2013 Customer Preview, then you won’t have to do anything to get updated. When you are using a local installation, then you can download the update from the links below.

View: Description of the Office Professional Plus 2013 Preview update: July 27, 2012
Download: 32-bit installer KB2737132
Download: 64-bit installer KB2737132

Note: The download links in the KB article itself are broken. Most likely because the servers haven’t synchronized yet or because of the fact that it is an update from 1 day in the future…

A Rollup Update has been released for Outlook 2007 and can be downloaded and installed manually, but is also being offered via Microsoft Update.

Update KB2596598 for Outlook 2007
This is a non-security update and has been described as “contains the latest stability and performance improvements”.

This rollup updates contains 36 fixes which were released in various hotfixes since the release of Service Pack 3 in October 2011.

• KB2596547 released in October (5 fixes)
• KB2596577 released in October (1 fix)
• KB2596985 released in December (1 fix)
• KB2596993 released in December (12 fixes)
• KB2597964 released in March (8 fixes)
• KB2598135 released in April (5 fixes)
• KB2687262 released in June (4 fixes)

View: Download information for KB2596598

If you have Microsoft Update configured to also update other Microsoft applications, then this update will also also be offered via Microsoft Update or has already been updated automatically for you.

A new version of the Outlook Hotmail Connector has been released.
Checking the about box will reveal the version number 14.0.6123.5001.

No change log has been made available for this release but it is recommended to update at the earliest convenient time. Looking at the version number difference (the previous build version was 6106), it is only a minor update but an update to this version is likely to become mandatory within some weeks from now.

Download: Outlook Hotmail Connector 32-bit
Download: Outlook Hotmail Connector 64-bit

Note: The 64-bit version of the Outlook Hotmail Connector is only needed when you use a 64-bit version of Outlook 2010.