A colleague of mine checked her email while I was in her office and one of her messages displayed a burst of confetti! I also got that email on my account but even though we use the same version of Outlook, I had no confetti. How can I turn this on, it’s so fun!
For people who are used to programs like Yahoo Mail or even Gmail, the number of options and settings available through Microsoft Outlook’s Web-based interface can come as a shock. There are a lot of options and settings available, and the entire Settings area is beautifully designed, quite unlike Gmail in particular. It turns out that what you saw on your colleague’s screen was an Outlook feature called Joyful Animation.
I’m not kidding.
Buried in the many Outlook settings is this fun and rather whimsical feature that overlays a burst of confetti visual effect on email that says “congratulations”, “happy birthday” or similar. Honestly, it’s a must-enable feature and there’s no reason that everyone shouldn’t enjoy this tiny bit of happiness in their inbox. Let’s have a look at how to enable it!
MICROSOFT OUTLOOK: JOYFUL ANIMATION
To start out, however, here’s a screenshot from the animation:
It really is a fun effect, as you can sort of see in the above image. To enable it you’ll need to go into Settings, which is most easily found as the gear icon button on the top toolbar:
Once you click on it, Settings open up. Jump to the Settings > Mail > Compose and reply window:
There’s a lot going on here and a lot of options, as I mentioned earlier. You’re in the right place, but the option you want is pretty far down. Scroll down to:
As explained, the “joyful animation” is a “celebratory burst of colorful shapes”. Check the box, save your change to the Settings, then go and check an email that has the word “congratulations”!
But while we’re here, let me show you another nifty feature in Outlook that’s worth exploring.
MICROSOFT OUTLOOK: MODERN THEMES
You might have already tried out the various Themes you can apply in Outlook. It’s also in Settings under Settings > General > Appearance. It looks like this:
Most people just gravitate to Classic themes, but it turns out that the small list of Modern themes (listed as “Image”) work in a different manner and give you a much more interesting visual effect.
The difference is that the image underlies every portion of the Outlook screen. I’ll click on the middle theme and check this out:
A nice, modern user experience and, of course, any email messages you have are shown over the graphic too. It’s a very attractive interface element that adds a bit of personality to Outlook. Now we just need Microsoft to add about 500 more image options or the ability for us to upload our own images!
Pro Tip: I’ve been using and writing about Microsoft’s Office Suite for many years. Please check out my Outlook help library for plenty of useful tutorials, as well as additional Office 365 help pages! Thanks.