Microsoft updates Outlook's calendar as it says goodbye to Sunrise for good

Sunrise, the popular calendar app acquired by Microsoft in 2015, is officially no more.

The app's calendars have stopped updating and users will no longer be able to access their accounts through the app or website as of Sept. 14, the company revealed. In what may be an effort to help soften that blow, Microsoft also delivered a major update to the calendar features in its Outlook app Tuesday.

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For one, Outlook's calendar, which Microsoft had earlier confirmed would replace Sunrise, now has a design that looks much more like the old Sunrise app than previous versions. The in-app calendar uses colored icons that will look familiar to Sunrise users. The update also added a few new ones with event-specific graphics.

Outlook is also much better at handling specific locations for events. It now uses Bing to fill in locations for meetings and appointments and you can open maps and directions directly from calendar entires as well.

Microsoft also updated the app with Skype for Business support and redesigned the view for the date and time picker, which lets you find open times in your calendar form within email messages. 

Though the improvements will likely come as welcome news to many Outlook users, dedicated Sunrise users may not be thrilled  with losing the well-regarded standalone calendar. In a final message on its blog Tuesday, the Sunrise team called Tuesday's update "the end of an era," though they noted many of Sunrise's features now live on in Outlook.

Microsoft is also taking suggestions for new features that users want in Outlook's calendar with a new "Suggest a Feature" menu in the app's main settings.