Inline-Replies, and Why Outlook 2013 Has Gone Blue

For many years, Office has followed a consistent colour scheme for its applications – Blue for Word, Green for Excel, Red/Pink for Access etc. And Outlook was always a yellow/orange colour.

2010 & 2007

2003

2000

’95

Well, you get the idea. And the application itself would also follow this same yellow hue.

So how come, in Office 2013, has is shifted firmly to blue – along with Word, whilst all other remained more or less as-is?

Actually, the answer is pretty simple, and relates to one of the changes in Outlook 2013 – Inline Replies.

When you reply to a message now, rather than getting a pop-out message, the message window becomes your reply window.

Clicking ‘Pop Out’ button take your reply to a new window as before, but I like this clean, clutter free way of working.

So what does this have to do with the colour? Simple. How do you keep track of which messages you’re part way through replying to when you starting reading new emails? Outlook adds a [Draft] tag to your email…. In yellow/orange. So, to ensure they stand out, the overall colour was changed to blue.