“New” Outlook is Bad. Stick with the “Classic” Version
Greetings and Happy 2025! We hope your New Year’s celebrations were joyous!
To kick off the new year, we want to take you back to 1985. That was the year Back to the Future arrived in movie theaters, the Live Aid concert raised over $100 million for famine relief in Africa, and, infamously, the year Coca-Cola changed their recipe, introducing "New Coke."
“New Coke” flopped.
It turned out that the public strongly disliked the new taste and felt betrayed by the change to their beloved Coca-Cola. Within a few months, Coca-Cola quickly brought back the original formula as "Coca-Cola Classic".
Fast forward to 2025 and we’re wondering if Microsoft is making the same mistake with Outlook?
As many of you may know, Microsoft has made it a little confusing by offering “Old” Outlook (versions 2019 and prior), “Classic Outlook” (spoiler alert: the version you SHOULD be using) and finally "New" Outlook.
"New" Outlook is actually the spiritual replacement of the old Windows Mail app that was originally included with Windows 10 and 11. Even with the name Outlook, it's not really designed for State and Local Governments, Federal Government contractors, business or any other organization. It's really intended as a personal email application.
“New” Outlook is NOT yet functional in the GCC High. It simply will not connect to your mailbox.
Although it works with Exchange Online and Microsoft 365, it's missing a LOT of features such as access to PST files, access to public folders, access to online archives and a TON of other things that classic Outlook still has.
Classic Outlook isn't "old" Outlook or legacy Outlook or anything like that. It's still supported, updated and appears as if it will be around for a long time to come.
Classic Outlook is the version that we recommend here at LiftOff for accessing Microsoft 365.
All of that said, we strongly recommend informing your users, so they avoid manually switching to "new" Outlook. You can also consider rolling out online policies, on-prem group policies and/or registry keys to remove the "switch" toggle and prevent the upgrade wizard.
Here at LiftOff, we've created a document with these steps which you can access here:
As Coca-Cola taught us back in 1985, “New” doesn’t necessarily mean “Better”. Many times, sticking with the classic version is the best way forward!