How do I prevent Outlook 365 on the Mac from launching the New Version

Dear RandallPacker,

Good day! Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community. We are happy to help you.

Based on your description, I understand that you have a query "How do I prevent Outlook 365 on the Mac from launching the New Version" At this very moment, I am looking into this to see whether this is possible at the time and is there a feature or a workaround to accomplish this. I will get back to you as soon as I get any additional information about your query.

Your patience and cooperation are much appreciated.

Sincerely,

De Paul | Microsoft Community Moderator

Thank you very much for getting back. I see others have had issues with the New Outlook. I look forward to your response.

Dear RandallPacker,

Good day! Thank you for your reply. After thorough research and consulting, it has been determined that there is currently no way to stop Outlook 365 on Mac from launching the New Version, this is by design as the new outlook is being rolled out to all Microsoft users. The only possible workaround is to remove/stop Microsoft Auto Update from MacOS by going /Library/Application Support/Microsoft/ or just wait after restarting and switch back to legacy outlook as shown in The new Outlook for Mac - Microsoft Support.

We apologize if we are not able to meet your requirements; however, thank you for bringing this to our attention, we will surely raise your concerns to our Product Team and hopefully this can be considered in the future updates.

Moreover, I would like to invite community members and MVPs in the forum to share their knowledge and insight on this topic. In the meantime, you may create an entry as a feature suggestion in the Feedback Portal at Outlook · Community (microsoft.com), Other users may vote it and make it more visible to the service team so that it may be considered for future upgrades.

For other concerns, please do not hesitate to add you post in the Microsoft Community Team.

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.

Sincerely,

De Paul | Microsoft Community Moderator

Thanks De Paul for your note. However your answer is unacceptable. 

Here’s the problem: If I so much as restart Outlook by quitting or shutting my computer down, it will transition to the new Outlook. The last time this happened, Outlook was unable to restore the database correctly, leaving thousands of “On My Computer” emails in the inbox. Furthermore, the function to move emails no longer worked. Truly a disastrous situation. As I mentioned, I had to restore the entire computer to get Outlook back to normal. 

Has Microsoft really tested this on systems that have been running client-based Outlook email for years? My database goes back to 2008, and even before that if you count the Eudora emails I imported going back to the 1990s. My database is a historical record of my email, my work, my professional career, and it shouldn’t be turned upside down by a new version. 

Microsoft cannot allow this to happen, I have seen dozens of complaints about the same problem, and eventually Microsoft will run into legal trouble for not properly vetting its software. 

When my Outlook eventually restarts, and I run into the same upheaval, I am going to document each step of the process so it is crystal clear there is a serious problem here. 

Please pass this on to the powers that be. 

Best, Randall

I’m adding onto RandallParker’s post here as well, I may just open a completely new post if I’m unable to get a reply/acknowledgement since Randall has been waiting for a response to their concerns since April 25th to no avail.

I’m not happy with this response and I’m not happy with Microsoft’s handling of this situation. The new version of Outlook on Mac is blatantly anti-user and so incredibly counterproductive to what an email client should be. It is unacceptable to force (continuously, despite repeatedly opting out) users to adopt something that is so broken and anti-user friendly. It has me wondering - were there actual QA testers involved? Was this UI actually vetted by your power users/clients? There’s a fairly large portion of Mac Office users who are very vocally against these changes.

Microsoft has been well known for forcing certain Windows updates, especially security based ones and while that’s never been appreciated by a majority of the community (hence the reason I switched over to primarily using a Mac to begin with) that was at least understandable as a majority of those forced updates provided necessary security patches for vulnerabilities. Forcing this drastic and unintuitive UI change without any specific reasoning, despite opting out every other day? This is unacceptable. For years now I have dealt with Microsoft’s lack of care to handling their software for Macs (and all the bugs that come with it) but this situation takes the cake.

Microsoft and their devs need to allow people to permanently opt out of this buggy mess (at least until this can be redesigned, vetted and reconciled with the community) and allowed to keep their existing legacy versions intact without potentially losing data and having to rebuild databases because they need to restart Outlook. I really can’t believe this even needs to be stated.

Further, my company’s users don’t have the time to completely relearn a program involuntarily, especially when there was no advanced notice of this.