How do I move email, calendar, people icons back to bottom of folder pane in Outlook?

Anonymous

I have Office 365 and an update installed today. It updated Outlook and moved my email, calendar, and people icons from the bottom of the folder pane to a separate bar to the left of the folder pane. They also added icons for Office apps. I don't need icons to Office apps in Outlook--if I need to open one of those apps, I'll use the icons in my Windows taskbar. But that's a minor issue. My main issue is that I hate the icons in that bar on the left and want to move them back to the bottom of the folder pane, but I can't figure out how to do that. The rest of my team is also annoyed at the new position, but none of us can figure out how to move that bar. Online help doesn't cover this. I'm talking about the bar outlined in red in the first image below. Does anyone know how to move this back to the bottom of the folder pane? See the other image, which shows where the bar used to be.

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Diane Poremsky MVP 17,526 MVP Volunteer Moderator

If you have all updates installed, you should have 2211 (or higher) -

Go to File > Options > Advanced, and remove the check from the option to Show apps in Outlook. It's at the top - uncheck it to revert the bar to the bottom. Then restart Outlook!

This is only a temporary solution though - so vote for and comment on tone or both of these suggestions - hopefully they will add a permanent solution for people who want to remove it.

These two have the most votes and comments

Hate navigation bar on left · Community (microsoft.com)

Navigation Bar · Community (microsoft.com)

Do not change the overrides key if you have the check box in Options (above)

If you don't have the option, you can add a string value named Microsoft.Office.Outlook.Hub.HubBar to the key below and set it to False, then restart Outlook. (It's only a short-term fix, although right now, we don't know how short term.)

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\ExperimentConfigs\ExternalFeatureOverrides\outlook

If you don't want to edit the registry, I have a ready to use reg file at the end of this article -

https://www.slipstick.com/outlook/outlooks-left-navigation-bar/

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Anonymous

Hi all,

The Outlook Team seeing your feedback will be adding a temporary option (snooze option) to put the navigation bar back at the bottom starting in Version 2211 which should release ETA ~November 28, 2022. You can find more in the blog article how this will work in the Nov 9 update, Outlook for Windows: New location for the Mail, Calendar, People, and other modules (microsoft.com).

Another common feedback is that the navigation bar on the left takes up too much precious reading pane space. In the same article Oct 7 update, the Outlook Team made it possible to minimize the folder list/folder pane to regain some of that lost space starting in Version 2210 that just released, Outlook for Windows: New location for the Mail, Calendar, People, and other modules (microsoft.com).

With all the feedback and concern I wanted to make sure you saw these changes.

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1,048 additional answers

Anonymous

2022-12-10T07:02:57+00:00

Add me to the list of those p*ssed off at Microsoft. I use a PC not the web for outlook, I also like maximising my real estate within the program, this new side navigation bar means I now have lost about a centimetre of usable space on left, which is also mainly empty making it look ugly.

Give us the option to move it back ffs.
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Anonymous

2022-12-10T02:54:27+00:00

The workaround to hide the new nav pane apparently is no longer in newer builds. The new Sidebar is being enforced and is no longer optional.
The new sidebar looks bad, takes up too much screen real estate and removes icons that people have been using for years.

PLEASE make this optional and toggleable.
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Anonymous

2022-12-10T00:01:15+00:00

Just wanted to add my voice to this as the sidebar on the left is truly awful. It takes up valuable screen space and is not intuitive to navigate. You also lose the shortcut option unless you pin it and it's not immediately obvious how to pin it, which is extremely frustrating when you have set up the shortcut option as the main way to navigate Outlook. Minimising the folder list/folder pane is not a practical solution for having the navigation bar on the left hand side as most users are clicking on options in the folder pane/folder list all the time when in Outlook and so they either have to choose to keep opening and closing the folder pane/folder list to get their screen space back, which is impractical and annoying or leave it open and lose the screen space. I'm also not sure how this keeps the Office experience the same across the board. This left sidebar isn't on any of the other office Apps when you're in a document or a spreadsheet for example, and I seriously hope that Microsoft isn't considering putting this sidebar in those apps because again, you're going to lose valuable screen space, especially in a document or a spreadsheet. Is accessing the other office Apps from within Outlook really such an issue that we need to lose valuable screen space and usability so that someone can open Word directly from within Outlook? I don't believe that to be true at all, but if it is, can you not just add a new menu option on the Ribbon bar? That way, the vast majority of us that don't want to lose valuable screen space can ignore it and those people who really need to be able to open other Office apps directly from Outlook have that option available to them.

The response to this change has been overwhelmingly negative, and from the looks of all the forums I've seen, including this thread here, has been for well over a year now, so I'm not sure why Microsoft are still trying to force this on everyone and I wish Microsoft would actually listen to their users for a change and allow users to turn this option off permanently, not just turn on a snooze option, which means that at some point in the future Microsoft still intends to force their users to use this left sidebar despite all the reasons given as to why it's a terrible idea.

And I would have left this message in the Feedback option of Outlook, but it doesn't work if you untick Show Apps in Outlook so that the navigation bar stays at the bottom of the folder pane/folder list.
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