The preview of Office 2013 was launched today, but I’ve had a few days to work with the new software. Here are my first impressions of Outlook 2013–the new e-mail, calendar, and contact hub of Microsoft Office.

Uncluttered and Quick

When I fired up Outlook 2013 for the first time, the first thing I noticed is that it’s cleaner. Outlook 2010 has four panes in the e-mail view–a navigation pane on the left, the Inbox pane, a reading or preview pane that displays the current message, and a pane on the right with a calendar and task list. In Outlook 2013 Microsoft has narrowed it down to just two–the Inbox pane and reading pane–and reduced the left pane to a small menu bar with icons.