Microsoft Editor for Outlook 365 is a handy tool that can help you create, view, and edit email drafts and messages.
It’s available in the Microsoft Store, and I like it because it’s simple to use—a new email draft or message is created within the app itself, rather than on a web browser, which provides basic suggestions to help the user improve grammar and correct spelling.
The editor supports rich text formatting, and it’s easy to add images, tables, videos, and more.
What is Microsoft Editor?
Microsoft Editor is available in Microsoft Word, Outlook, and all Microsoft applications, it is also available in extension form both for chrome and edge.
Microsoft Editor is the Microsoft version of Grammarly, Microsoft Editor was introduced in 2020. Microsoft users get a basic version of Editor for free, if you are Microsoft Office 365 premium user, you can enjoy the editor with complete features:
Microsoft Editor Features
Let’s dive in and understand all summarised features that are only available to Microsoft 365 subscribers.
- Spelling: Checks for misspellings in a text.
- Grammar: Capitalization, subject-verb agreement, hyphen usage, indirect questions, and other common grammar issues.
- Clarity: There are indicators that suggest incorrect word usage, passive voice, double negatives, uncommon phrases, and other issues which could obstruct understanding.
- Conciseness: Impossible to read sentences, overuse of conjunctions, and other language problems that make writing hard to follow.
- Formality: Indicators of informal phrases and other casual language problems.
- Inclusiveness: Will indicate and cover the range of subjects.
- Punctuation conventions: There are indicators for certain types of punctuation errors, like using too many commas, forgetting to close quotes, or having uneven sentence spacing.
- Sensitive Geopolitical References: Indicate promotes using official or neutral names and phrases and tries to help when names of places have changed over time.
- Vocabulary: Indicators for overused words, weak verbs, vague adjectives, and other language choices that could be improved.
The indicators described above appear as colored, squiggly underlines of the words or phrases.
How does Microsoft Editor for Outlook work?
Microsoft Editor for Outlook is a premium, professional-level add-on for Microsoft’s popular email client, Outlook.
The Editor allows users to add advanced formatting and other elements to their emails before sending them out.
As a result, they can avoid some of the pitfalls—or “email potholes”—that happen to even seasoned email users.
Some of the Editor’s best features include the ability to add images, tables, and bulleted lists, as well as add signatures, disclaimers, and disclaimers.
Microsoft Editor for Outlook works with Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, and Outlook 2010.
Let’s check it out:
If you are a premium user log into Outlook web or Outlook desktop application. Open a new email, enter the email address of the recipient, and subject, Now start typing your message.
You will get a few errors of words with underlining, which indicates there must be some improvement required.
By clicking the underlined text, a brief description of the error and a suggestion will appear. Clicking the suggested word will replace the error in your text.
How To Configure Microsoft Editor in Outlook Settings?
Some of the features are already enabled, you can manually configure, and adjust the advanced editing options in Outlook.
- Open Microsoft Outlook Application >> Select File >> Options >> Mail.
- Under Compose Messages, click Spelling and Autocorrect.
- From the Proofing dialog box, under “When correcting spelling in Outlook“, click setting options, now it’s time to enable additional features.
- Grammarly setting dialog box appears, there are tons of options under below headers:
- Spelling
- Grammar
- Clarity
- Conciseness
- Formality
- Inclusiveness
- Punctuation conventions
- Sensitive Geopolitical References
- Vocabulary
- Click Ok to finish and close the box.
How does it work and send the Foolproof Email?
Once you made all the adjustments, open a new email, enter the email address of the recipient, and subject Now starts typing your message.
You’ll also notice that there’s a new “Editor” group in the ribbon of the “Home” tab.
When you click on it, the Editor feature analyses the entire content written on the screen, reveals summarized data having all the headers, and show the overall score of your content based on the Editor’s algorithm.
Below, you can see all the parameters responsible for the score. You can check them one by one by clicking on them. The system automatically arranges the possibilities of correction. Well, any item under “Refinements” can be considered as suggestions, items under “Corrections” are must-fix issues.
Let’s grab the first one “Spelling”, there are a few suggestions available to correct the spelling of the words, you can click next in case you have multiple words to correct.
Secondly, Grammer, the tool will bring you to the first instance of that issue in the text. From there, you can click the suggestion word, which automatically replaces the words with the suggested one, you can ignore Editor’s suggestion, or don’t check for the issue.
Under Refinements there are multiple sections, the roll has not refined the word or sentence, even on the cost of replacing the word.
Let’s take the example of Clarity. It starts with the number one issue and in return gives a few suggestions to replace the word.
The final choice of selection is still under your own control, you can move forwards to another word, once completed with all the clarity section. you can move on to the next criteria.
Once everything is set, and all corrections and replacements are made, you can investigate the final report which shows, zero error [refer: Image].
While having a good score in Editor may feel nice, remember that the most important goal in writing is to write for the target audience–not writing to satisfy Editor. So instead of just clicking and clicking read the suggestion and replacement first.
Microsoft Editor Browser Extension
Microsoft Editor is a web browser extension created by Microsoft Corp. that was first released in 2016.
This extension makes it easy to share Microsoft Office documents with others in the format of their choice, as well as to view and edit Office documents online via a web browser. This includes Word, Outlook, Excel, and PowerPoint files.
Microsoft Editor runs with the extension in both chrome and edge, you can download the extension by clicking on the link.
Let’s understand and take an example of Chrome/Edge, how to download it and how it works?
- Open Chrome/Edge Browser >> Click on the link above to install Microsoft Editor
- Click Get/Add to Chrome to install.
- Once you click on it, the system asks you to select the email address and, in a few seconds, Microsoft Editor added in Chrome Extension.
- Still, if you can’t see the extension logo, Click on the extension button on the top right corner of the screen.
- Click on the Pin in front of Microsoft Editor, which allows the editor to visible on the extension. The ellipses change the setting.
- You can turn the On-Off toggle of options available in the extension. Additionally, you can also select one of the proofing languages supported by the Editor.
Click on the gear sign for diving dipper in the setting section. you can turn On-Off additional features under “Refinements“.
The editor extension works the same way as discussed in the previous section.
Grammarly vs. Microsoft Editor
Editors aren’t about grammar. They’re also about content and style, which can get messy when the text gets incorrectly formatted or contains errors and typos. Thanks to Grammarly, there’s a better way.
Grammarly is a paid tool, but it comes with a free option. The paid version gives you an extra check. Grammarly allows you to edit your text on any device, including smartphones and tablets.
Grammarly checks for content, spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Grammarly is free with paid plans that start at $12.99 per month.
Microsoft Editor isn’t free, but it’s only $1.99 per month. Microsoft Editor is a more basic editor, whereas Grammarly offers more features. Microsoft Editor checks only basic spelling and grammar.
While Grammarly has users worldwide, Microsoft Editor is mostly used by people in the U.S.
Final Words
In summary, Microsoft Editor for Outlook 365 is not difficult to use. You don’t have to move your cursor around to change a word, so it’s faster and easier than using generic editors. It works easily with Outlook 365 and is smart about sorting mail attachments by date.
Microsoft Editor for Outlook 365 supports both Microsoft Office and G Suite. It also has support for attachments, signatures, and formatting.
It is the most accessible office tool on the market, and it’s completely free. Microsoft editor is a good starting point for those who look for an alternative to Google Docs or Gmail.
Also, Read