Outlook Mail now renders email styles properly in latest Windows 10 Mobile update

One of the longest running complaints about the Windows 10 Mobile version of Outlook Email & Calendar appears to have been fixed by Microsoft. In our preliminary tests, it now seems that HTML emails will now correctly format to fit the phone's display.

Mail & Calendar build 17.6769.40522 is now rolling out to select Windows 10 Mobile phones. That's a bump from the last x.40332 release a few weeks ago.

However, we are currently only seeing the update on our Lumia 950 with the production release. To make matters confusing, our Lumia 650 on production release has build 17.6568.46332 for Email and our Lumia 950 XL (Redstone) has 17.6769.40322. Neither phones are seeing the Email update detailed here, and it likely has to do with which Insider release ring those phones are registered under.

Rendering failure history

Back in December we criticized the Windows 10 Mobile app for its improper formatting. Images were not represented correctly with sizing being wrong or not positioned properly, and the email itself spilled over the edge of the screen resulting in a lot of scrolling.

In February, a new update to Outlook seemingly fixed the graphics area of HTML emails with proper rendering. However, emails were still 'zoomed in' when first opened requiring the user to pinch-to-shrink the email down to fit the display (or you would have to pan over to see more information).

At least for us, today's update appears to fix that new zoom issue. In the above images, you can see a comparison between the two builds of emails opened for the first time on each device. Clearly the ones on the right are much nicer looking and easier to read.

Finally, although we hate to do it, we are also going to throw in performance improvements with this update. Yes, the app seems faster in every area from opening the app to opening an email.

All in all, Outlook Mail & Calendar is feeling rather robust these days and today's update is the icing on the cake.

Let us know if the update and new rendering are working for you in comments.

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Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central. He is also the head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and wearable tech. He has reviewed laptops for over 10 years and is particularly fond of 2-in-1 convertibles, Arm64 processors, new form factors, and thin-and-light PCs. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, performed polysomnographs in NYC, and was a motion-picture operator for 17 years.