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Outlook Mail Adding Support for Google Drive and Facebook Photos

By Andre Da Costa

Updated April 4, 2024

Yesterday, Microsoft announced new functionality is coming over the coming weeks. Two additions are to support Google Drive, and Facebook Photos.

We recently took a deep dive into the new Outlook.com webmail service Microsoft launched earlier this year. Now called Outlook Mail, the service is a close derivative of the company’s enterprise webmail service for Office 365. Yesterday, Microsoft announced new functionality will be coming to the service over the coming weeks. Two anticipated additions are for the cloud storage service, Google Drive, and Facebook Photos. If you use Google Mail, you are likely to use Google Drive too; we previously looked at how to use the service with Microsoft products such as Office 365.

Last year Microsoft ended support for Facebook Connect, but the social network sees a return with support for Facebook Photos. Users will now be able to easily find and attach photos they have uploaded to the social network, right from with Outlook.com

Outlook.com Supporting Facebook Photos and Google Drive

Outlook Mail currently includes support for Dropbox and BOX online cloud services, added earlier this year.

Today, we added three enhancements to make sharing simple. First, we extended the cloud storage capabilities for Outlook.com by adding support for Google Drive. Second, we added the ability to share your Facebook photos from Outlook. And finally, we made it easier to find files and photos buried in long email conversations. Source

Support for Google Drive doesn’t stop at just adding attachments, users can also open documents and make edits; right from within Outlook Mail. If you use the mobile versions of Outlook for iOS and Android, you can already attach files from Google Drive.

Microsoft is also making it easier to find attachments in a long conversation. A handy attachment icon at the top of the message, when clicked, will reveal all attachments added throughout the conversation thread.

Many of these improvements are welcome. I personally have been enjoying the richer desktop-like experience in Outlook Mail. I stopped using the Outlook desktop client years ago because Outlook.com gave me all I needed; and it’s available everywhere without the hassle of managing PST files.

Outlook Mail is still going through a roll-out phase and the software firm is not expected to complete it until early 2017. So, many users will not see these features for quite a while. This level of competition is will definitely be appreciated by those of you who prefer using a mix of services.