Microsoft is adding four major new features to Outlook 2016 for Mac, each of which was a major customer request.

“Outlook for Mac is adding several highly requested features for Office 365 customers, including the ability to send an email at the time of your choice and request delivery notifications and read receipts,” the Outlook team explains. “These additions deliver on four of our top 10 requested features, and are designed to help you get more done quickly and stay in control of the day ahead.”

There’s a confusing matrix of availability to ponder, but here’s a list of what you can expect:

Send Later. Send Later lets you write an email now and schedule it to be sent automatically at the preferred date and time. Send Later is available to Office Insider Fast users today on version 15.36 (170606) and will be available to all Office 365 subscribers in July, Microsoft says.

Request Delivery and Read receipts. Outlook for Mac now supports both read and delivery receipts. “A delivery receipt confirms delivery of your email message to the recipient’s mailbox, but not that the recipient has seen it or read it,” Microsoft notes. “A read receipt confirms that your message was opened.” This feature is available today to all Office 365 subscribers on version 15.35 (170610).

Email templates. Now you can compose a new message and save it as a template that you can reuse when needed. This feature is available today to all Office 365 subscribers on version 15.35 (170610).

Create calendar events and tasks from email. Now you can drag and drop emails or tasks directly to your calendar to create a calendar event. This feature is available today to all Office 365 subscribers on version 15.35 (170610).

Improved account setup experience. Microsoft has simplified the Add Account experience so that you only need to enter your email address and then Outlook will detects your account settings automatically. This change is available to all Outlook Mac users on version 15.34 (170515).

Tagged with Mac, Office 2016 for Mac