Microsoft Outlook

Outlook: Reactions, Notifications, and At Mentions Explained

Chris Menard

28 Jan 2025 — 2 min read

Microsoft Outlook has added several social features to email — reactions, @mentions, and a notification bell. These features help you communicate faster without writing a full reply. In this tutorial, Chris Menard walks through how each one works.

Watch the full tutorial: Outlook: Reactions & Notifications & At Mentions

Email Reactions

Outlook now supports emoji reactions on emails — similar to reactions in Teams or Slack. To react to an email:

Hover over the email in your inbox (or open it)
Click the reaction icon that appears
Choose an emoji: thumbs up, heart, celebration, laugh, surprise, or sad

Reactions appear next to the email in the message list, and the sender gets a notification. This is perfect for quick acknowledgments like "got it" or "nice work" without cluttering the thread with one-word replies.

Outlook inbox showing an email with emoji reactions visible in the message list — Outlook now shows emoji reactions directly in the inbox — a quick way to acknowledge emails.

At Mentions (@Mentions)

When composing or replying to an email, type @ followed by a person's name to mention them directly. Outlook shows a dropdown of matching contacts — select the person, and their name becomes a clickable link in the email.

Outlook email compose window with @ mention dropdown showing suggested contacts — Type @ followed by a name to mention someone directly in an email — they'll be notified.

Why use @mentions?

The mentioned person is automatically added to the To line if they aren't already a recipient
Their name appears in bold in the email body, drawing attention to their specific action item
They receive a notification via the bell icon that they were mentioned
In busy group emails, @mentions make it clear who needs to do what

The Notification Bell

The bell icon in the top-right corner of Outlook collects all your notification activity in one place. It shows counts for:

Reactions to your emails
@mentions of your name
Other relevant activity

Click the bell to see a feed of recent notifications. This is especially useful if you want to quickly see who reacted to something you sent or where you were mentioned, without searching through your inbox. You can also customize or turn off Outlook notifications if you find them distracting.