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

2022-05-21T17:09:37+00:00

Throwing my hat in the ring. I turned off this Coming Soon feature too. It's terrible... so much wasted space for just a few launch icons? It's driving me crazy. Whoever on the GUI design team thought this was a good idea needs to re-evaluate their thinking. The trade-off to quick launch other MS Apps that I own is completely not worth the permanent loss of so much screen real-estate. At the least, this should be re-locatable to the bottom where it was. Or better, have a single drop-down icon on the toolbar to launch whatever app you want - so it takes 2 clicks instead of one... much better than losing so much space.
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Anonymous

2022-04-06T18:38:25+00:00

I gave it time, I thought I would get used to it, I agree with the waste of screen space and adding a blank strip, just give us the option to put it wherever we want. (At the bottom where it belongs) when I go to write an email, I hit the wrong envelope every once in a while because they are next to one another, VERY POOR DESIGN
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Anonymous

2022-04-06T16:11:47+00:00

The main update is that the Outlook Team enabled Coming Soon to 100% of Current Channel last week. With this change anyone that had the left rail can now turn Coming Soon off to get the navigation options back on the bottom. This is temporary though. Eventually Coming Soon will go away and the left rail will permanently be in its new location.

To better explain the purpose of moving to the left rail the Outlook Team posted this Insider article, New location for key functions and direct access to other Microsoft 365 apps in Outlook (office.com). The article also explains how to give feedback directly to the Team.

I have shared this forum thread and summary of the issues discussed with the Outlook Team. They are listening but I don't think it will change the move to the left rail because this is a strategic change that you will see in other apps too e.g. Teams, OWA. I will keep sharing the feedback regardless. Please enable Coming Soon and try the left rail. If there are things to make it better in the new location we can more likely get changes to make it work better there.
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