How To Stop The New Outlook From Automatically Installing

"Live Email Contacts" and Nick, you are both quite correct in what you say. Uninstalling the New Outlook does not stop it from coming back again. Thanks for clarifying. Also I agree it would be nice if Microsoft had a simple solution for users to choose what programe they prefer to use.

However the situation of "Mike99Too" is a bit different. He uses Thunderbird and not the old Windows Mail. So uninstalling the New Outlook and removing it from the Taskbar will just have a cosmetic effect of not seeing the Icon. (at least temporarily!) If it does reinstall, he can leave it and just remove the icon from the Taskbar. Thunderbird should just keep on working regardless.

To continue using the old Mail app and stop Outlook from reinstalling one needs to try one or more of the several solutions found in this thread. Yes, some "Tweaking under the hood" is needed. These solutions do work. If anyone feels overwhelmed and needs step by step instructions then I am sure that others will step in and help.

Kind regards

Chris

PS Here is a summary of possible solutions in no particular order:

A big thank you to all those who have shared solutions.

1- Deleting the new Outlook's executable ("olk.exe") from "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.OutlookForWindows".

(See The Man James's post on page 2- marked "Answer")

2- Deleting the Json files: C:\Users[Your computer's username]\AppData\Local\Packages\microsoft.windowscommunicationsapps_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\Migration\settings.json

and then later changing the permissions of the Migration Folder.

(See Jimmy W's post on page 1 and also Mark Freedman's post on page 3)

3- Use Python script to automatically uninstall the New Outlook.

(See Dominic Brooks post page 2)

4- Use a BAT script to install a dummy version of the new outlook. This will stop the new Outlook from taking over the old Mail app. You can download it here: https://github.com/matej137/OutlookRemover

(See Federico Roviralta's post on page 3)

5- Change the data in the callback folder

Users/(you)/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Outlook/NewOutlookMigration/

open 'callback' with notepad; change the last two toggles from 'true' to 'false'. close and save.

Then lock down the 'NewOutlookMigration' folder using the same 'deny' write access as before.

(See Nick Haddock's post on page 2)

I hope I didn't miss any of the solutions!

If we are using Windows MAIL, not any other email, the NEW OUTLOOK takes over. No amount of removing it works. It just comes back. And then takes over Windows MAIL again and again. No One Wants The NEW OUTLOOK. Need a simple way to STOP the repeated INSTALLS without being a computer programmer.

I took this one step further. Let the new outlook install. Then delete everything out of that directory, but NOT the directory itself. Then make it read only. Windows will be unable to install it.

I just tested this, clicking the "try the new outlook" just makes it blink once. This is the way we used to keep **** from installing.

You will need to change the permissions on the WindowsApps directory as "TrustedInstaler" owns it

C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.OutlookForWindows_1.2024.1017.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe

I love you man, really, thank you so much.

It's ass that they won't let you make a proper choice, and instead force it upon you to change to this **** app that is "New Outlook".

"New", that's for sure, it's so freaking new that nothing's there yet.

Anyway thanks again.