Microsoft continues to tweak its flagship Outlook email client but instead of adding better filtering options or robust rule organizations offered with Outlook Exchange apps, users are getting custom themes.
Last week, Microsoft introduced a new feature for its email client called Themes by Copilot which will be accessible for Outlook apps across Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and the web. Outlook users with Microsoft 365 subscriptions or pay the extra $20 a month for Copilot Pro will now be able to leverage pre-generative themes based on a few prompts that include location or weather to create dynamic art for their email window.
Themes by Copilot will support over 100 destinations alongside worldwide time zones to assist the generated themes.
This personalization becomes magical when it evolves over time, considering your unique context or your own personal touch along the way. If you choose, you can make your Themes by Copilot dynamic by selecting how often you want it to update – every few hours, every day, weekly, or monthly.
Astha Benisek – Microsoft
If you’ve enabled location permissions in Outlook, the My Location theme will bring you imagery uniquely inspired by your locale, dynamically updating for you as you head out the door on a trip or vacation. Similarly, a dynamic theme based on the weather would be updated to reflect the current weather conditions where you are.
Every Copilot-generated theme automatically comes with a fun accent color, and you can further tune your theme to be in a realistic, oil painting, or cartoon style.
For Outlook users who aren’t paying the Microsoft 365 or Copilot Pro subscription tax, the company still offers a bit of customization to the inbox via a slow roll of prefab theme templates that offer a wide range of color and image-based themes that don’t rely on AI.
While I think there is a constituency of Outlook users who will really enjoy theming their inboxes, I would like to see the functional core email developers spit out feature sets with the same level of expediency.
Yes, Microsoft can walk and chew gum when it comes to developing features for Outlook, but it feels like the company is prioritizing chewing gum over walking at the moment. There is a list of still-missing features that Outlook and Exchange users are looking forward to Microsoft’s new email client and many can be found in various Reddit threads such as this one from u/TupacFR.
- Can’t edit an attachment / It’s only a preview or you need to download it
- Can’t drag & drop attachment outside outlook
- The status of people within my company aren’t shown on the email
- Not able to change bullet points style
- When opening a new email, the window will align itself on the body of the email cropping the To, From & Subject – we’re oblige to scroll up every time to see the full details.
- Would be great to be able to change default download folder location for the attachment.
- Can’t save emails (use to be able to drag & drop the email in a folder)
- If you have previously saved an email, you won’t be able to open it, you will have an error message saying to switch back to the old outlook
- PDF don’t open in Adobe but in a weird preview
Hopefully in 2025, Microsoft releases as many functional updates as it does these non-critical aesthetic ones.
