Outlook.com

The Outlook team has released a rather welcomed addition to its Outlook.com service. Calendar has now been added, utilising the new user interface to provide a stable and clean experience. As with all Microsoft products these days, the new "Modern" look ensures that the focus is on content rather than unrelated chrome and visual effects. Should you use Windows, Xbox or a Windows Phone, you'll feel right at home.

Yesterday, we told you about a handy tip to make searching for a Gmail account email easier on Windows Phone. Today, you get a few more reasons to make the switch over to the new Outlook.

First, some impressive stats about the service. Microsoft is touting numerous accodades and awards for it's email service, like making Time Magazine's "50 Best Websites for 2012" list and others. What's even more impressive for you skeptics out there are the number of users it's managed to gain in nearly four months of service, over 25 million active users.

That's an interesting statistic since it's not the number of accounts created, but the amount of people using it on a regular basis. The team also has some new features to make the jump from Gmail to Outlook a smoother process...

Oh, we certainly do love it, Microsoft.

Microsoft has announced today on its SkyDrive blog that the Office Web Apps Preview is finished, and the company has rolled out the latest updates across all SkyDrive and Outlook.com users. The preview programme, which saw more than 750,000 participants, has been running since July this year.

The updates that have been applied to the web apps include improvements that bring richer editing / format capabilities, co-authoring functionality for PowerPoint, and better support for touch-based devices - hello tablets / smartphones. So what do each of the improvements implemented mean for the consumer?

Sorting through a number of emails can easily become a tricky business, especially if there is a large collection waiting for you to synchronise your email client - we're sure you've experienced the post-holiday email craze, right?

Microsoft has designed Outlook.com to be extraordinarily easy to use, and to get common tasks done quickly. We took a look yesterday at how to automate inbox clean-ups to either delete or move emails and keep the inbox clutter free.

Today we'll be looking at how we can utilise Instant Actions to make email management easier. So just what are 'Instant Actions' on Outlook.com? They're quick tools that enable users to quickly manage individual emails. On hovering over a message in a folder, you'll see three icons appear under the received date (see below).

Sync, damn you, sync!

Syncing multiple calendars is never fun. It’s even less fun across various services, like Gmail to Outlook.com for instance, which is the focus of this tutorial.

We recently had to solve this problem for ourselves because although like you we primarily use our Hotmail/Live Mail/Outlook.com calendar for all events, we sometimes need to have our external Google calendar sync to our phone too.

There are a few ways to go about this but we’re going to show you the more unified approach that we prefer. It’s a bit tricky and nearly caused us to punch our wall a few times to figure it out. But for you, it will be dead simple and should literally take you no more than 5 minutes.

With the launch of Microsoft's new Outlook.com, which is set to replace its current Live (formerly Hotmail) email service, a number of Windows Phone owners quickly acted to save their desired @outlook.com email address. All good and dandy, but using the new Outlook address in place of your Live ID is a separate matter.

Should you decide to completely replace your Live ID with your new Outlook address, then you'll be required to reset your Windows Phone to be able to make use of integrated services and the Marketplace. This is a pain for those who have a lot of apps installed and have the device set up to the way that suits the owner. The good news is that all your purchases are saved and moved across to the new Outlook address, but what if you weren't aware of the fact you'd need to reset your device and don't wish to do so?

There's a risk to changing your LiveID on Windows Phone

With today’s announcement of Outlook.com many of you have noticed that if you were logged into Hotmail with your old account and navigated to Outlook.com you were automatically logged in to the new “preview” of Microsoft’s new email service.

What’s more, you actually have the option—even on an old Hotmail address—to change it to @outlook.com. But there is a catch for Windows Phone users…