Microsoft Outlook -...
 

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Microsoft Outlook - is it subscription only now?

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I like outlook , but the free version is plagued by ads, and I've tried a few of the alternatives like Thunderbird etc and found them pretty patchy or with a weird UI.

Can I buy a copy of Office 2024 Professional Plus and get Outlook in perpetuity (or until they decide to stop supporting it), or have they locked it down to people prepared to pay 9 quid a month? Don't mind paying 20 quid for a licence key, which seems to be the going rate online, rather than 200 quid from Microsoft.

The new subscription model for software is a pain in the arse. Can't even do 'funny' photoshops any more.


 
Posted : 22/05/2025 3:58 pm
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To do what?  Outlook is a brilliant corporate email client but a terrible personal email client.

I haven't used a fat client for personal email since the days of Windows Vista.  I have multiple accounts for different purposes and they're all managed via web clients.


 
Posted : 22/05/2025 4:18 pm
theomen and leffeboy reacted
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Cougar is right. Who is your email provider? 

 


 
Posted : 22/05/2025 4:25 pm
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I use the free version of Outlook and apart from 1 single “email” advert at the top of my Inbox there’s nothing else. I hate ads and would certainly pay if it was plagued with ads but it isn’t. I like it as I have multiple accounts configured in it and it’s one less tab to have open etc. YEMV obv. 


 
Posted : 22/05/2025 4:53 pm
chakaping reacted
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Couple of hotmail accounts and a gmail. TBH, I've been instructed to get back into outlook because of familiarity etc after dabbling with a few alternatives. Mozilla Thunderbird and Mailspring are the most recent two, neither of them seem great or as intuitive.

EDIT: Even one advert sitting at the top of my inbox pretending to be an email pisses me off, but I am famously intolerant.


 
Posted : 22/05/2025 4:54 pm
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I’ve had Hotmail for decades. Not many adds at all on PC.

 

However 99% of the time I use it on my phone which is 100% add free

 

Unfortunately though I get roughly 50 junk mails per day. Every so often I will get another barrage of spam emails that I have to move to junk or block. Block appears not to work very well at all

 

Adds are not the issue for me, junk mail is a pain in the arse !  If my complete life was t on Hotmail I’d be moving off it tomorrow 


 
Posted : 22/05/2025 5:22 pm
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Outlook and Hotmail. Fascinating. Anyone got an AOL CD?

A $20/year ‘basic’ account doesn’t seem too much to ask if you want the latest outlook and ad-free. I’d expect that older versions of outlook from pre-O365 would continue to standalone albeit maintain any vulnerabilities that were swapped for new ones in later versions. Or, just keep the ads?

If I wasn’t happy with Mail on MacOS I’d likely go for Thunderbird which I used on Windows at home way back in the day. You didn’t like it?

I’m almost with Cougar on this. Outlook is barely tolerable at work with its awful search, clunky server/client bits and pieces, and irritating ‘AI’. Losing it and PowerPoint will be one of the lasting joys of retirement when that day comes. 


 
Posted : 23/05/2025 6:28 am
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I’d expect that older versions of outlook from pre-O365 would continue to standalone albeit maintain any vulnerabilities that were swapped for new ones in later versions. 

I don't think that's true any more.  I think that Gmail in particular requires a newer client that works without the password being stored in the client.  I avoid Outlook as it seems to be the crashiest of office programs.   Is there not a built in light email client in windows there days that is a little like outlook or is that the one you are referring to with adverts


 
Posted : 23/05/2025 6:57 am
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I'm on Android and have just moved back to using Outlook as I prefer it to Gmail. It's awful on my work iPhone though.

 


 
Posted : 23/05/2025 7:24 am
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Posted by: martinhutch

Can I buy a copy of Office 2024 Professional Plus and get Outlook in perpetuity

I believe so yes - I'm rocking Office 2019 here, and although it does update periodically with what looks like M365 nonsense, it is mine in perpetuity. The fact that you own it is a large reason why Microsoft hates selling the 'one time licence' stuff! 

Beyond that, despite the smart alec responses about "oooh, how old, grandad?", I don't really know any other desktop-based email clients that are worth the time. I'm not turning my email into Gmail for obvious reasons; webmail is fine when I'm connected to the web but very dependent on your providers' choice of front end and server, and so on. Outlook takes some faffing to set up, but once you do, it's just there and 95% reliable


 
Posted : 23/05/2025 7:57 am
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Outlook and Hotmail. Fascinating. Anyone got an AOL CD?

Yep, and more of their merch from when I worked there 🙂

Shall I send you a pic from my Hotmail account?

It's hilarious how people can be so snobbish about an email provider.


 
Posted : 23/05/2025 8:08 am
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Posted by: Cougar

Outlook is a brilliant corporate email client

Huh?  I call it an annoying heap of turd, personally.

Although tbf, it's not purely Outlook, but the collection of Outlook, Onedrive and Sharepoint and the insistence on everything being cloud first, that is the issue.  I can reproduce data loss.  And 20% of the time reproduce the impossible to "download" email attachment, where when it happens, Outlook will never let you "download" it if it thinks you already have.

It has the potential to be excellent.  Never had such issues with IBM Notes, and that is the biggest pile of turd ever created by a software company.  Quite why anyone would choose to use either for corporate or personal use, I have no idea.

I'm sure it's fine for just sending, receiving and replay to plain text emails, but then so are a million other apps that are free.


 
Posted : 23/05/2025 8:54 am
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Outlook is a brilliant corporate email client but a terrible personal email client.

If your business fits their approach to mail, calendar and contacts. Our systems don't and it's barely tolerable. The categorising is the best bit but only if we're all using the same client. Having to regularly remind the owner that our spiffy ZoHo database demands Outlook else it won't work and get off Mac Mail please. Complaints of not being able to see the flagging and categories assigned because he's using Mail again!!


 
Posted : 23/05/2025 9:51 am
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edited.couldn't help the OP


 
Posted : 23/05/2025 7:53 pm
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I use eM Client and find that pretty good.  The free licence allows up to 2 email accounts.

https://www.emclient.com/


 
Posted : 23/05/2025 8:05 pm
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Nothing is more irritating currently then everything taking longer to load because ( I think) it's passing through copilot. "Would you like copilot to provide a summary? "no I bloody wouldn't, if you looked you'd see it's my original document and I'm looking for something specific in chapter 6..." Grrr. Presumably they are charging for this "service" 


 
Posted : 24/05/2025 12:43 am
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Having been an outlook and thunderbird user for a very long time, I really can't see why you can't learn thunderbird.  It's much cheaper (I donate to them from time to time) and works very well as a simple email client.


 
Posted : 24/05/2025 6:23 am
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Posted by: chakaping

Outlook and Hotmail. Fascinating. Anyone got an AOL CD?

Yep, and more of their merch from when I worked there 🙂

Shall I send you a pic from my Hotmail account?

...were you... a Microsoftie? TVP?

 


 
Posted : 24/05/2025 7:13 am
 rone
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Just avoid clicking on 'new' outlook.

It's a travesty. More confused market place product from MS. Currently old standard Outlook works a treat.

The new one takes a confusing consumer feel dive. Awful.

 


 
Posted : 24/05/2025 7:27 am

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