How to control/block/prevent usage of New Outlook for Windows

Now that New Outlook for Windows has gone into General Availability many organisations will be looking at how they will evaluate and control the deployment/migration of users from Classic Outlook to New Outlook. Some new resources have been made available to help here:

Plan your migration to new Outlook for Windows

Microsoft has provided several mechanisms to assist organisations with controlling the availability and deployment of New Outlook for Windows including:

• Prevent users from switching to new Outlook
• Block new Outlook preinstall on Windows
• Block new Outlook installation as part of Mail and Calendar deprecation
• Prevent users from acquiring new Outlook from Microsoft Store
• Block Mailbox Access on new Outlook

Walk-through of hiding the “Try New Outlook” toggle

Open the M365 App Admin Center https://config.office.com/ (note this is different to the M365 Admin Center!)

Select Customization | Policy Management | Create Policy and give your policy a meaningful name

Choose a scope of users that the policy applies to

Select the Hide the “Try the new Outlook” toggle in Outlook policy. Hint: That search box in the top right corner is your friend and will let you find this policy quickly!

Choose Enabled

Review and publish and that’s it.

This walk-through is just one of the options available to you for controlling the deployment of New Outlook. Refer to this Microsoft article for other options https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-apps/outlook/get-started/control-install?WT.mc_id=M365-MVP-5002900