Here’s some great news for users of Outlook for Android and iOS: Microsoft is delivering a major update that adds the ability to edit contacts.

I know. It’s a crazy omission. But this app has never supported contact editing, a feature that has emerged, predictably, as a top feature request. And it is coming soon, Microsoft says.

“With our latest release, we’re addressing one of our most highly requested features with improvements to our People experience,” a post credited to the Outlook team explains. “You will now have the ability to add and edit contacts right from Outlook on iOS, coming soon on Android. We’ve also completely redesigned the contact card to show more details—including latest conversations and shared files—and enabled easier calling and messaging with your contacts.”

The ability to edit (and add) contacts on the go is obviously huge. And based on the screenshots Microsoft has provided, it looks like it will work as expected. Any changes made in Outlook for iOS will be synced and available across all versions of Outlook, the firm says.

As important, you can now save new and edited contacts to the default contacts app on your phone. Meaning that this information will show up in phone and text alerts.

“Due to the underlying capabilities of iOS and Android, Outlook provides a one-way push of contact information from Outlook to your phone,” the company explains. “Newly added contacts and changes made in Outlook will sync to your built-in Contacts app. However, edits made in the contacts app will not sync back to Outlook or your email service.” So there’s still room for improvement.

Finally, Microsoft has also redesigned the contact cards in Outlook so that their key information is up front. And this new contact card now also displays your recent conversations, shared attachments and any upcoming meetings you have with that person.

There’s no word on when this new version of the app will be available. Just “coming soon.”

Tagged with Outlook for Android, Outlook for iOS