Mail and Calendar gets new themes

The Mail and Calendar apps for Windows 10 gets fresh new themes.   

12 new themes in the Mail and Calendar apps have been added. This also includes 4 seasonal illustrations. These themes also come with a matching accent color and will bring a lively new look to the apps.

To try out the new themes, select Settings  > Personalization. (same for both Mail as well as Calendar)

Note: This feature is currently available only to Windows Insiders, but will coming soon for everybody.

[Tip]: Dark mode in Outlook on the web and Outlook

Tried various themes and getting bored seeing the same default white background in your Outlook on the web mail? You want to see some change? You can now have the dark mode.
Dark mode changes the default bright background color in Outlook.com and Outlook on the web to a darker color, which is easier on the eyes in low-light environments or if you prefer less bright interfaces.
For this ,
Go to Settings > Toggle the Dark mode option.
That's all. It looks good. Less strain on the eye.
Suppose you want to switch on the lights for a particular message, just click on the Sun to turn on the lights.

It has to be noted that some themes are not available in Dark mode.
Give it a try and turn on the Dark mode.

Dark mode in Outlook: 

Similarly in Outlook for Office 365, the black color theme includes dark mode, which provides a black background for the message window instead of the default white.

Dark mode is enabled by default when you use the black theme. To switch to the black theme in Outlook:

1. Go to toolbar and select File, then select Office Account.
2. Under Office Theme, select Black.
    
   When reading a message, you can turn dark mode on or off by using the icon at the top of the message window.

Select the sun icon to change the message window background to white.

 Select the moon icon to change the message window background to black.

When composing a message, you can turn dark mode on or off from the Message toolbar by selecting the dark mode icon to change the message window to white or black.

  Disable dark mode

If you prefer, you can disable dark mode so that the message window is always white when using the black theme. The icons to switch dark mode on or off are disabled when you disable dark mode.

• In Outlook, go to File > Options.
  
• On the General page, look for Personalize your copy of Microsoft Office.
  
• Set the Office Theme to Black and select the check box next to Never change the message background color.
• Select OK.
  
  (source:support.Office.com)
  

Add a Hindu Saka Calendar in Mail and Calendar app

With the latest update to Windows 10 Mail and Calendar app, apart from other new features, the app also added support for additional calendar types.

Alternate Calendars:

Open the Calendar app, From Settings > Calendar Settings > scroll down to Alternate Calendars.   It includes support for English, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Arabic, Persian, Thai, Korean, Hebrew and Hindi. And selecting any of these languages will provide options supporting these alternate calendars: Gregorian, Hijri, Umm al-Qura, Hebrew Lunar, Saka Era.

So to enable Hindu Saka Calendar in Hindi, first check the Alternate Calendars box. Then select Hindi and this will enable Saka Era. The month and the dates will be displayed along with the English month name and the dates. The month name will be displayed in Hindi.

Similarly one can choose other Alternate Calendar types too.

This Mail and Calendar app ver is17.6303.42251.0 running on Windows 10 Build 10547. So if you are running the Windows 10 RTM , please check if its available or not.

Beware of hackers sending Windows 10 upgrade mail!

With Windows 10 free upgrade everywhere in the news and Windows users eager to upgrade their systems for free to Windows 10, hackers too are exploiting Microsoft’s offer and are sending bogus spam mails with malicious attachments as if its the Free upgrade offer.

Cisco’s security team has discovered some such emails and warned the users. The spam mail make it appears to have come from Microsoft and asks users to download a file to upgrade to Windows 10 for free. But the file is actually a ransomware.

“This threat actor is impersonating Microsoft in an attempt to exploit their user base for monetary gain. The fact that users have to virtually wait in line to receive this update, makes them even more likely to fall victim to this campaign.”

The email message above is a sample of the type of messages that users are being presented with. (pic courtesy : Cisco blog)

The From address, the adversaries are spoofing the email to look like it is coming directly from Microsoft (update <at> microsoft.com). But a quick look at the email header reveals that the message actually originated from IP address from Thailand.

They are also using the same color scheme.

Please note that Microsoft is providing the users with screen notification and they have to upgrade via Windows update like any other updates and not via any emails.So users are warned not to click such mails and be extra cautious if such mails pass security scan in emails.

For full details please check Cisco blog.

Improved Mail app experience in Windows 8.1

As  you know Windows 8.1 is recently released and with it comes more than 20 new and improved Microsoft apps and services. The email experience begins with the much improved Mail app. The new Mail app is also optimized for mobile devices, built for great touch experience.The New Mail app is designed for modern email with features like Sweep which is coming to Mail app for people using Outlook.com mail account. And Outlook.com users will also see features like newsletters and Social updates getting automatically organised into special views and many other cool features.

Group Program Manager for the Windows Communication Apps, Kipling Knox has devoted a blog post to the new Mail App in the Windows 8.1 and says it is the best email experience on any tablet.

After receiving lots of customer feedback it was recognized that today people use email in many different ways then they had used in the past. So it was ensured that the new Mail app takes advantage of the Outlook.com service. The new Mail app is also optimized for a modern efficient email experience on mobile devices, built for touch and designed for the types of mail that matters most to you.

With trends emerging such as –

• 68% access their Outlook.com account on mobile devices
• More people access Outlook.com on a mobile device than on web
• Outlook.com mobile usage tripled in the last year

So it was critical for Mail to work beautifully on tablets along with other devices and thus came a wide range of improvements across the Mail app in Windows 8.1 -

• Checkboxes in the message list to easily select one or more messages
• Drag & drop messages into folders
• App bar now has visible preview making it easier for both mouse or touch
• App bar organized more logically
• Searching mail on server, syncing mail across all folders are more quick & reliable
• Improved performance not at the expense of battery life and network bandwidth
• Ensuring great experience be it touch or keyboard and mouse, UI adapted for both.
• Hover commands on message list
• Can open mail in a new window, so you can view / edit mails side by side

• Optimized for using both work and personal mail accounts without having to switch apps or going to web
• advanced multi-account feature like ability to change return address
• support for advanced IT policies like authenticated proxies, special certificates
• full implementation of EAS protocol thus meeting requirements of company’s network
• Automatically organize inbox sorting out message by type like newsletters , social updates
• to create customized views , added a new toolbar to mail on left side affectionately called Power pane 

People view - When you set up a new account, the Mail app analyzes your Inbox and identifies people with whom you communicate frequently and so marked these as favorites in the people view.

“The People view adapts over time, based on your email habits (though once you mark someone as a favorite, that label sticks until you change it). So you might not see a lot of people in this view at first, but over time, it will fill out to capture your most important communications.”

Click on a person, and you see all the email you’ve exchanged with them, across your folders. If you click the People icon, you’ll see all the email from all your favorites. This is a helpful way to track email just from people who you’ve marked as important—and filter out email from everyone else.The People view adapts over time, based on your email habits (though once you mark someone as a favorite, that label sticks until you change it). So you might not see a lot of people in this view at first, but over time, it will fill out to capture your most important communications.

Mail app enables you to mark folders as favorites, too. Just open the folder menu and click the stars for the folders you want to place on the power pane.

And if you are a Outlook.com user, the mail experience gets even better -

• Newsletters and social updates are automatically recognized and organized into a special view below your inbox. If you don’t want certain mail categorized, just drag it to inbox.
• The Mail app provides the Sweep feature built right into it.

• Can set up automatic replies in case of you are going on vacation and not able to respond to messages
• As Outlook.com uses Exchange ActiveSync, your Outlook.com contacts and calendar are also automatically synced with your Windows 8.1 device.

So these are some of the cool features in the new Mail app in Windows 8.1 . I’m sure more feature addition will happen as its users provides feedback.

Windows 8.1 allows to setup Mail App without using Microsoft Account

Earlier when you were signed into Windows 8 with Local account, you’re required to sign-in to Mail App using Microsoft Account (that is Live ID). When you first launch Mail App while not using Microsoft Account, it’ll prompt you to Switch to Microsoft Account on this PC.

But with Windows 8.1, you are no longer required to do so. Enterprise customers who use domain accounts and do not use Microsoft Accounts,will be able to use Mail App with Windows 8.1. And this applies not only to Mail App but to other Windows Store Apps that support the feature and requires a Microsoft Account.

Let us see how to do it, for this you’ll need to Enable the following Group Policy. (You should have admin rights to run Group Policy Editor). From Start Screen, just start typing Group… & you’ll be provided with Search results.. Click on ‘Edit Group Policy’

And from Group Policy Editor go to

Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > App runtime > Allow Microsoft accounts to be optional

And Enable Allow Microsoft Account to be optional.

Once you do that and if you run the Mail App now, you’ll be prompted to use an Enterprise Account instead -

Click on ‘Show more details’ if you want to enter Server Address, Domain and Username .