Initially announced for September 2024, the disappearance of these 2 applications could be postponed if we are to believe the latest communication from Microsoft.
Last week Microsoft announced that it was going to stop 2 of its applications, Mail and Calendar, starting in September 2024. The stoppage of this software aims to rationalization on the side of Microsoft which intends to consolidate everything in Outlook. In the same spirit, Microsoft announced the end of Conversation, its communication application, which will only be present within Teams.
The message to Microsoft 365 account admins initially provided a switchover in September 2024. But only a few days later Microsoft sent a new message suggesting that this calendar was not really stopped.
Microsoft remains vague on the date of the deployment
Indeed, Tero Alhonen, an attentive observer of the Microsoft universe, relayed on his Twitter account a new communication from Microsoft where it is specified that these changes are not expected to occur before the end of the year. This reveals especially on the side of Microsoft that things are not completely stopped.
The message received clarifies things:
- Users with a subscription Microsoft 365 or Office 365 and having access to Microsoft 365 desktop applications can use the new Outlook for Windows.
- Users who do not have a subscription Microsoft 365 or Office 365 with access to Microsoft 365 desktop apps will need to manage their mail and calendar in Outlook on the web.
- Users will be able to use the new Outlook for Windows with any personal email account (Outlook.com, Gmail, etc.), even without a subscription.
This announcement may seem surprising as Microsoft has released thea latest version of Outlook for Mac and PC as a free clientwithout it being necessary to subscribe to a Microsoft or Office 365 subscription. But obviously other changes can still occur since Microsoft does not seem to have fixed its schedule.
In the meantime, Microsoft continues to enrich this software with artificial intelligence to improve your productivity. So Copilot, a personal assistant using GPT-4 should help you with many tasks in Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook
