There are some changes in SpamSieve 3.2 and a section of the manual that covers this topic.
Microsoft has extended support for Legacy Outlook for another year:
As technology evolves, so must our tools to maintain efficiency, security, and user satisfaction. Starting October 2026, the legacy Outlook for Mac client will stop working against Exchange Online mailboxes.
We recognize that some customers may be blocked from accessing certain features. If you are blocked, please contact support for assistance. In the meantime, to help mitigate this, Outlook for Mac will continue to respect admin preferences defined here.
I have updated the SpamSieve manual accordingly. The summary of the current status is:
Before November 1, 2026, to keep filtering your mail with SpamSieve, you will need to either switch from Legacy Outlook to New Outlook or switch to another mail client (such as Apple Mail). As of this writing, November 2025, New Outlook does not have support for AppleScript, and thus it cannot work directly with SpamSieve.
- Microsoft plans to restore AppleScript support in December 2025. You can wait until after that to switch to New Outlook and then keep using Outlook with SpamSieve as you have been doing.
- Or you can switch now and continue to use SpamSieve by also setting up your mail accounts and SpamSieve in Apple Mail. This will also keep the spam out of your inbox in Outlook, and if you enable the Train messages in TrainSpam and TrainGood setting, you can still train SpamSieve from within Outlook.
You can choose Give Feedback from the Help menu in Outlook to ask Microsoft to prioritize support for AppleScript so that New Outlook will work directly with SpamSieve as soon as possible.
I’m wondering if there is any news on the AppleScript for New Outlook as yet? I have a Microsoft 365 subscription for Mac. Just set up on my MacBook in Legacy Outlook, but now notice on 1st October 2026 Microsoft are advising Legacy users will need to switch to New Outlook. I don’t want to have to use SpamSieve through Apple Mail app as it I have so many saved emails in lots of folders in my inbox and will probably be too much for it. I like the emails there as I want them at hand in there for various reasons. I am using the setting for large folders/inbox at the moment with Legacy. Has Apple sorted an AppleScript and if so will this be ready in SpamSieve to enable transition before 1st October 2026? Would love to continue using it, so far it’s doing an amazing job.
Yes, after about 5 years of Microsoft saying they would implement AppleScript support, they just reneged:
How many messages? Apple Mail does not have a way to only subscribe to only certain mailboxes, but it is able to handle large numbers of messages in mailboxes that you aren’t actively using in that app.
Apple Mail’s AppleScript support is much more efficient than Outlook’s ever was, so you probably wouldn’t need to do anything special to handle large inboxes.
I’m not quite sure what you’re asking here. I don’t think there’s anything Apple needs to do. You can try out SpamSieve with Apple Mail today.
Thanks for your prompt reply! Can you link the instructions here for me to change the way I have it set up (currently directly in the Legacy Outlook) to instead have SpamSieve through Apple Mail? So that then lets me use Outlook like normal once Apple Mail has filtered them? And do the instructions include the steps of updating from Legacy Outlook to New Outlook? I also have an iMac with New Outlook already that I would like to set it up on, as that computer is usually always on.
If you add your mail accounts to Apple Mail and set up SpamSieve for Apple Mail, SpamSieve and Mail will filter your inbox, and the spam messages will automatically be removed from your Outlook inbox, too. (This works for IMAP and Exchange accounts, but not for POP accounts.) You can hide Mail or run it without any windows open so that the filtering happens invisibly in the background (though you’ll need to remember to launch Mail when you restart your Mac). You do not have retrain SpamSieve from scratch; it will keep using the same training data from when you were using it with Outlook. Going forward, if you need to correct any filtering mistakes you can train SpamSieve directly from Outlook by moving messages into the special TrainSpam or TrainGood mailbox. To do this, first make sure that Train messages in TrainSpam and TrainGood is selected in the Settings ‣ Apple Mail ‣ Training window. There’s more information about how this works in the Drone Setup and Remote Training section of the manual.
Yes.
There’s a menu command in the Outlook menu to switch to New Outlook. I don’t think Microsoft transfers messages stored in local folders; it just redownloads everything from the server.
Thanks, all set up via AppleMail on my iMac. Transferred training from the MacBook to iMac, fingers crossed!
Microsoft has posted some new information:
and I have confirmed the situation with them. In brief:
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As I wrote above, they are no longer adding AppleScript support to New Outlook.
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They are also no longer blocking access to Legacy Outlook on November 1. The new plan is that it will no longer be “supported,” so you can’t ask them for help, but if your Office license is still valid you can still use it.
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They said that Legacy Outlook support ending also means that they will stop making bug fix and security updates. However, it is supported for people with business/enterprise subscriptions. The downloaded file (e.g. from the Mac App Store) is the same for all plans, and they’re not gating access based on the type of Microsoft account. So given that it’s supported for some account types until October 9, 2029, it should be available for download until then. And one could infer that everyone will get the security updates because some account types remain supported and they’re not going to run different code based on your account type.
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Although Legacy Outlook itself will still work for POP and IMAP accounts, they’re dropping support for Exchange in October 2026 unless you have the long-term support version or an Exchange SE On-Premises account. This part is enforced online; your existing copy of the app will stop working. I wrote more about the Exchange/EWS issue here.
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