How to optimize and use Outlook mobile app on your Phone

Outlook mobile app for Android and iOS offers the right balance between its utility and feature power. The app, apart from a brand-new design, boasts an intuitive UI that makes it extremely easy to navigate through it while on the go. If required, you can further optimize this experience. While the same procedure may be followed for an Android phone, we are covering the steps for an iPhone.

Optimize the Outlook mobile app for iOS device

Once you have downloaded and set up email in Outlook for iOS, you can customize the mobile app to stay connected the way you want. Scroll through the handy tips below to optimize the app for your mobile.

1. Configure Focused Inbox
2. Set Swipe options
3. Turn Organize By Thread Off/On
4. Change or update Outlook notifications
5. Change the Calendar view
6. Add the Outlook app to the dock/home screen
7. Hide the built-in email and calendar apps
8. Add Outlook calendar widget
9. See conversations and notifications from your favorite contacts
10. Keep your Outlook app up-to-date

Let’s proceed to configure these settings as well as maximize your mobile productivity.

1] Configure Focused Inbox

Focused Inbox separates your inbox into two tabs—Focused and Other. Your most important emails are on the Focused tab while the rest remain accessible on the Other tab. Focused Inbox is on by default.

Tap Settings.

Scroll down to Focused Inbox, then tap the button to toggle the setting.

2] Set Swipe options

Customize swipe options to quickly take action on emails in your inbox.

Tap Settings > Swipe Options.

Tap Swipe Right or Swipe Left and select an action.

3] Turn Organize By Thread Off/On

Threading is a process where an email service sorts messages so that all the replies and forwards are grouped together. This avoids listing them in the order they arrived in your Inbox. Outlook mobile app for iOS lets you organize mail by a thread and arrange them as conversational threads based on the message Subject. By default, this option is turned on. If you would like to turn it off,

Tap Settings.

Scroll down to ‘Organize mail by thread’. There, tap the button to toggle the setting.

4] Change or update Outlook notifications

Go to ‘Settings’, select ‘Notifications’.

Scroll down your list of apps to ‘Outlook’.

Update how you wish to receive notifications.

5] Change the Calendar view

Outlook allows you to change your calendar view as per your liking and working style. So, if you want, you can easily switch between day, week, or month views, or change your work week start day and time. To, switch to the Calendar view.

Tap the ‘Calendar’ icon located at the bottom in the right corner.

Next, hit the ‘View’ icon and select

• Agenda
• Day
• 3-Day view

Take action on a message

You can choose an action for the messages you receive in your inbox.

To take action, tap the message to open it. Tap the ellipses visible as 3 horizontal dots and then,  then tap an action.

6] Add the Outlook app to the dock/home screen

iOS users can easily add Outlook to the ‘dock’ on their home screen. For configuring this change,

Hold your finger on the Outlook app icon.

Drag it to the dock/app bar at the bottom of your screen.

If you find the space of the Dock is already occupied by some other app you can make room. Simply hold your finger on another app in the dock and drag it onto the home screen.

7] Hide the built-in email and calendar apps

You might have more than one email account but not use all of them at the same time. As such, it’s better to hide the unused email and calendar apps, not in use, currently. Here’s how to do it!

Keep your finger pressed on native email apps like Mail or Calendar.

When the apps are shaking, drag one on top of the other to make a new folder.

Note – Apple doesn’t allow you to remove these apps. As such, these apps cannot be uninstalled from your device.

8] Add Outlook calendar widget

For adding the Outlook calendar widget to your iOS device,

Swipe down from the top of your screen to bring down the notification center.

Now, swipe to the right to view your widgets and scroll to the bottom.

Tap ‘Edit’ option visible there.

If you find the Outlook app listed there, press + adjacent to it to add the app as a widget. Hit ‘Done’.

Now, if required, you can access your widgets easily by swiping down or swiping to the left-most screen on the home screen.

9] See conversations and notifications from your favorite contacts

Adding contacts to favorites allows you to quickly find and send emails to them. To mark a contact as a favorite,

Open the contact’s profile card, then select the star in the upper right corner of the card. You can add multiple favorite contacts in the same way. Once done, you can view all recent conversations with them displayed before your other messages.

10] Keep your Outlook app up-to-date

It is always advisable to keep your app up-to-date. You can update the Outlook mobile app from your device’s app store. If you find ‘Open’ instead of ‘Update’ option there, then there’s no need to update as you’re already on the latest version of Outlook for iOS.

Download the Outlook app for your Android or iOS device from the respective stores to get started!