This article is more than 1 year old

Microsoft Outlook.com redecoration delay rumors: THE TRUTH

Email updates stalled to 2017? Oh no no, everything's fine ... ish, says Redmond

Microsoft says its renovation work on the Outlook.com cloud email service is virtually complete although a few folks are still waiting to see the changes. Its rollout will not be delayed until 2017 as had been feared, however.

This comes after word and reports spread of an error message claiming the updated service was not going to arrive until the first half of next year.

Microsoft announced the overhaul of Outlook.com in February. People with new accounts were going to be upgraded within the first quarter of 2016, and those already with accounts would follow soon after in the spring and summer.

However, account holders found that, even today and several months on from the February announcement, certain features triggered a warning that not all the code was finished, and that it wouldn't be fully enabled before the end of 2016. That's way off the original schedule.

El Reg asked Microsoft to explain itself, and we were told that the message was wrong:

The error message incorrectly stated the date as the first half of 2017; we're updating this message to reflect the latest migration schedule. We are in the final stages of the Outlook.com migration, with nearly 90 per cent of our active users already migrated.

A small percentage of our active users will take additional time to migrate, based on certain features they are using like shared calendars.

So, most users are now using the new Outlook.com more or less on schedule. If you're in the unlucky 10 per cent or so, the rollout is late and you'll have to wait a little longer. Exactly how much longer is something we're still waiting for Microsoft to clarify. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like