Microsoft Outlook 4+

As a product with a long heritage thanks to its PC forebears, Outlook on iOS entered the mobile app world with a lot of baggage. Almost everybody who has ever used outlook on a PC over the years has memories of screaming into the void when something seemingly nonsensical causes issues. These issues in turn opened the door for the market to flood with a plethora of competitive email clients, some good, others equally as challenging.

Outlook on iOS has not just jettisoned that baggage, it's changed the equation. It provides an easy, integrated way to use one or more email accounts sourced from multiple platforms. It's updates are frictionless. It's so good now it replaced all of the alternative email clients I've used. There's far less screaming into the void these days when it comes to sending or receiving an email. Well done team!

This has to be the worst app if you want easy to use features.. Microsoft seem intent of making the commonly used menu items used everyday harder to find or access? Leave it at the App Store , as an example , and this is a classic! open an email and enter a new email address that is not in your contacts, a pop appears “search this account” , it’s a new unused email address, it isn’t going to be found however, there no way to stop this appearing and actually send to a new contact .. have reported this to feed back team but as expected no reply .. So something so basic isn’t even doable in this app!! the app isn’t worth the hassle Microsoft can’t fix their own stuff ups!! I have been using the outlook email app for about 3 weeks, during the 3 weeks I have had two emails which after hitting the send button appear to have sent but the recipient never receives the email nor does the email appear in the sent items folder? Really annoying if you've just spent 10 minutes typing up and formatting a large email only to find the entire email lost to where? Back to IOS mail app, will try again after a few updates have gone through to which I have done however 2024, think this app has got worse not improved. Maybe they trying to keep cost down and got school children redesigning the app for a school project …but think most school children would probably actually make an improvement instead of defecting it!!

Yes, there is the convenience of managing one’s email and calendar on the run, away from my laptop computer. On the other hand, there are some frustrating limitations. Every now and again when I want to share something using Outlook, my iOS system tells me that I need to start the app in order to share something, yet the app is already running in the background. Once I create an event in my calendar, if it is in the wrong calendar, I can’t change it to the right one. I have to delete the event and recreate it. I can’t move a Mail message from one account to another like I can on my laptop. Once you know these limitations, you just work around them somehow. Nevertheless, I appreciate how challenging it must be for software engineers to keep up with all the operating system changes and try and tackle some of these annoying limitations as well. Congratulations: it is still my preferred email application.

Adding another comment 9th Sept 2023: the search functionality is extremely poor. I hardly ever find the most recent emails and have to go to my laptop instead. Seems like an obvious requirement, to find the most recent emails in date order. But no. Not on Outlook 365 for iPhone.