Monarch client security became an issue last year when a German website reported some issues. It turns out that the reported problems are mostly hyperbole, but that hasn’t stopped them persisting, especially when email client competitors like Proton weigh in. It’s regrettable that much of the commentary is based on an incomplete understanding of how Monarch works, but Microsoft doesn’t help themselves by not explaining the facts.
On March 7, Microsoft published a timeline for the New Outlook for Windows client that says that support for the classic client will be until at least 2029. Three phases must be navigated and a lot of functionality added before the new Outlook for Windows can replace Outlook Classic, including fundamental functionality like offline mode.
Now available for OWA and the Monarch client, Outlook voice dictation allows users to compose the body text of messages with speech-to-text transcription. A limited set of languages are available for now, but more to come. Learning how to compose email with speech is an acquired art and might required some AI help to produce acceptable results.
A Nov 9 article published by a German website expressed concern about the way that the new Outlook synchronizes user email data to Azure. There’s nothing to worry about. Outlook synchronizes email data to be able to process the data to support features that the user’s email server might not. It’s what the Outlook mobile client has done for years.
A new Exchange Online organization setting postpones the implementation of roaming signatures for Outlook clients in a tenant. The setting only allows a postponement because Microsoft really wants all Outlook clients to use the signature data stored in user mailboxes. The extra time allows tenants that use PowerShell to manage OWA signatures to work as they did before roaming signatures came along and screwed things up.
