A1: To the best of my knowledge, MS have not given a date for replacing Classic Outlook with New Outlook, but at some point I expect it. Currently it seems to be a 'soft' phasing out of the Classic version. For the bigger email providers, who are moving away from password based authentication, I find New Outlook quicker and easier to connect. Of course this is just my opinion based on my experiences - ymmv

A2: Sorry I have no experience of this feature.

A3: Yes, if you want Excel (from Outlook Classic) use CSV (hopefully this will change in 'New' at some point - now that would be a useful feature ).



A CSV file is, as you've said, "Comma Separated Values". You can open a CSV file in Notepad, and you'll see it is just this, sort of a structured list separated by commas (other separators can be used, and are sometimes useful).
When you open a CSV file in Excel, Excel tries to guess what the values are (Text, Number, Date, etc) - these can be controlled if open the file from within Excel can control the import steps.

Once Excel has opened a CSV file, you can treat it as a spreadsheet - if you want to, or you can make adjustments - if you want to. When it comes to saving it, the file-type you save it as depends what you want to do with the file next...

• If you want to Import the file back into Outlook (eg you have created a custom address book), then save it as a CSV.
  (NB Excel has a habit if you save as a CSV, when you close the file it will ask again if you want to save it - this is because a CSV file does not have intelligence the same way an Excel file has.)
• If you have analysed the data (eg it was a diary export for Timesheet purposes), and when you next want to open it, you want to use it as a spreadsheet, then save it as an Excel Workbook.

For a printed contact list, you may want to edit and format the list to your liking - CSV will not save formatting, so use Excel Workbook. If you really want to control your printed list, then import the workbook to Word...