Microsoft's new Outlook for Windows is adding support for chatting in a Teams meeting

Microsoft has been slowly but surely adding features to the new Outlook for Windows app since it launched in the fall of 2023. Today, the company revealed it is rolling out a new feature for the email client that should make it easier to enter a Microsoft Teams meeting.

In a blog post, Microsoft stated that if an online meeting is created from either Outlook or Teams, but with Microsoft Teams as the option, Outlook users will be able to join that Teams meeting without having to leave the email app.

The company added that Outlook users can start a meeting chat from a number of different screens in the app, such as "calendar peek, meeting details, context menu, My Day, and reminder."

The meeting chat policies that the organizer of any Teams meeting sets will also apply when a person joins the meeting via Outlook, according to Microsoft. That means if an organizer has disabled chat until a Teams meeting starts, that also would affect the people joining the meeting via the new Outlook for Windows app.

Microsoft says this new feature is rolling out now. All users of the Outlook Windows app should be able to join Teams meetings sometime later in February 2024.

Back in November 2023, Microsoft released a long list of upcoming features for the new Outlook for Windows that it planned to add to the app over the coming months. It also stated it is working to try to improve the overall performance of the new Outlook Windows app.

Microsoft still plans to replace the classic Outlook Windows app with the new version eventually. It will also replace the current Mail and Calendar apps that are included in Windows 10. Those apps are currently scheduled to shut down by the end of 2024.

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