Microsoft is updating Outlook.com this week with some improvements aimed at simplifying its web mail service. Starting today, Advanced Rules will be available on Outlook.com. The new feature is essentially a way to create multi-condition and multi-action rules on your mailbox to help organize mails. Microsoft is claiming its new rules are “the most sophisticated rules in webmail,” and they’re fairly granular settings that allow you to set conditions like time constraints or whether the sender is a contact you know. One example could be marking all email as important if it’s older than a week and from one of your contacts.
Outlook.com gets its own undo button
Outlook.com is also getting in-line replies, meaning you can respond within an email thread without having to launch a new view. It’s something that will cut down on the amount of time it takes to manage and respond to mail, and it has been a much needed feature since Outlook.com launched in June 2012. Alongside the rules and UI changes, Microsoft is also adding an undo button that works just like its Word or Excel apps. If you delete a mail by accident you can hit the undo button or use ctrl+z to bring it back. A final change will also see some improvements to the messaging part of Outlook.com. Like Windows Phone, you’ll now be able to switch which service you’re using to speak to a contact, and browse and find conversations more easily with a new list in the lower right-hand corner of Outlook.com.
All the changes are rolling out from today onwards, and they’ll take a few weeks to reach every Outlook.com account.