Outlook good for Microsoft’s email app for iPhone, Android phones

AS crazy as this sounds, Microsoft might just have one of the best email apps for the iPhone and ­Android phones.

Microsoft might just have one of the best email apps for the iPhone and ­Android phones.

AS crazy as this sounds, Microsoft might just have one of the best email apps for the iPhone and ­Android phones.

Late last year, Microsoft ­acquired an email start-up called Acompli, whose app was one of my favourites when I looked at the dozens trying to solve the problem of mobile email.

Today, Microsoft is re-releasing that very app under the name Outlook, one for iOS and a preview version for Android. The move came as Microsoft removed its preview label from the Android version of its Office suite of productivity tools.

The Outlook app has all the handy tools I liked so much about the original Acompli app, most notably tight integration with your calendar. Right from the email compose window, you can view your calendar and suggest a meeting time to a contact by ­tapping on an available timeslot in your schedule. Freedom is not having to toggle back and forth between your phone’s email and calendar apps.

Whatever program you use for email and calendar will work with the app. It has support for Microsoft’s own Exchange, Outlook.com, iCloud, Yahoo and Google, as well as other accounts. On my iPhone, I was up and running with my Exchange and Gmail accounts within minutes.

Some of my other favourite features: there is an inbox attachment view so you don’t have to go sifting through your hundreds of messages to find the last version of an important document. If you sign in with your Google Drive, OneDrive or Dropbox account and you can easily email files from those cloud storage services, too. There’s also a one-touch button that lets you send a map with your location. The free app is available now in the Apple’s App Store and the Google Play store.

The Wall Street Journal