The Time Management Toolkit: MicrosoftВ® Office OutlookВ® 2007 Step by Step and Take Back Your Life (Step By Step (Microsoft))

Outlook displays contact records in the Contacts module. When you create or open a contact record, it opens in a contact window. The contact window has its own set of commands separate from those in the Outlook program window. You can create, insert, and format information in a contact record by using the contact window commands.

The new Outlook item window interface is designed to more closely reflect the way people generally work within the item windows. In a contact window, the interface includes the following elements:

• Commands related to managing contact records (such as creating, saving, and printing) are available from the menu that appears when you click the Microsoft Office Button. This menu, which we refer to throughout this book as the Office menu, takes the place of the File menu that appeared in previous versions of Outlook in the message, appointment, contact, and other form windows. The File menu still appears in the standard Outlook program window.

• Some commands are represented by buttons on the Quick Access Toolbar to the right of the Microsoft Office Button. By default, the contact window Quick Access Toolbar displays the Save, Undo, Redo, Print, Previous Item, and Next Item buttons. The Save and Print commands are available on the Office menu, but the other commands are not available on either the Office menu or the Ribbon; they are available only from the Quick Access Toolbar. You can add commands to the Quick Access Toolbar so that they are available regardless of which tab is currently active in the message window.

  Important

  Adding a command to the Quick Access Toolbar in an Outlook contact window does not add it to the Quick Access Toolbar of any other Outlook item window or any other 2007 Microsoft Office system program window.

• The title bar displays the contact's name. At the right end of the title bar are the three familiar buttons that have the same function in all Windows programs. You can temporarily hide the Word window by clicking the Minimize button, adjust the size of the window by clicking the Restore Down/Maximize button, and close the active document or quit Word by clicking the Close button.

  Importing SharePoint Contacts Lists

  If your organization uses Microsoft SharePoint products and technologies, you might have access to a SharePoint site containing, among other things, contact information for employees, project team members, or other groups of people. You can import the information stored in a SharePoint Contacts List into Outlook. Follow these steps:

  1. Display the SharePoint site in your Web browser and then display the SharePoint Contacts List you want to import into Outlook.

  2. On the Actions menu, click Connect to Outlook.

     If it isn't already running, Outlook starts.

  3. In the Microsoft Office Outlook message box asking whether you want to connect the SharePoint Contacts List to Outlook, click Yes.

     If you don't already have one, Outlook creates a folder named SharePoint Lists within your profile and creates a contacts folder containing the information from the SharePoint Contacts List. Then Outlook displays your Contacts pane. The new contacts folder is available in the Other Contacts list.

• Below the title bar is the Ribbon, a new feature in many of the programs in the Office system. In Outlook 2007, the Ribbon appears in the message, contact, appointment, meeting, event, and task windows. (The Outlook program window displays a menu bar and toolbars.) Commands are presented on the Ribbon rather than on the more-traditional menus or toolbars so that you can work most efficiently within the window. The Ribbon is organized into task-specific tabs, which are further divided into feature- or task-specific groups of commands.

  See Also For information about the Ribbon in the Outlook message window, see "Working in the Message Window" in Chapter 3, "Sending E-Mail Messages." For information about the Ribbon in the appointment, meeting, and event windows, see "Working in the Calendar Item Windows" in Chapter 6, "Managing Appointments, Events, and Meetings." For information about the Ribbon in the task window, see "Working in the Task Window" in Chapter 8, "Tracking Tasks."

• The buttons in each group change size depending on the width of the program window. They might be large, small, or wide, and might be labeled with the button name, icon, or both. Pointing to any button displays the button name in a ScreenTip that sometimes also describes the button's function.

  Some buttons have arrows, but not all arrows function the same way. If you point to a button that has the arrow incorporated into the button body, clicking the button will display a list of options for you to choose from. If the arrow is separate from the button body, clicking the arrow will display a list of options and clicking the button will perform the currently selected action.

• Related but less common commands are not represented in a group as buttons. Instead they are available from a dialog box, which you can display by clicking the Dialog Box Launcher at the right end of the group title bar.

• The Microsoft Office Outlook Help button appears at the right end of the Ribbon.

The goal of the redesigned environment is to make working within an item window more intuitive. Commands for tasks you perform often are no longer hidden on menus and in dialog boxes, and features that you might not have discovered before are now plainly visible.

See Also For information about customizing the commands shown on the Quick Access Toolbar, see "Making Favorite Outlook Commands Easily Accessible" in Chapter 12, "Customizing and Configuring Outlook." For information about repositioning the Quick Access Toolbar and hiding the Ribbon tabs, see "Working in the Message Window" in Chapter 3, "Sending E-Mail Messages."

In this exercise, you will take a tour of the available menu, tabs, and groups in an Outlook 2007 contact window. There are no practice files for this exercise.

BE SURE TO start Outlook before beginning this exercise.

1. In the Navigation Pane, click the Contacts button.

   The Contacts module opens. The content pane, which in the Contacts module is the Contacts pane, displays your main address book, with any contact records it contains displayed as business cards.

   Troubleshooting

   If the contact records in your Contacts module aren't presented like those shown here, click the Business Cards option in the Current View list in the Navigation Pane.

2. On the Standard toolbar, click the New Contact button.

   Tip

   If you want to work in two modules at the same time, you can open a module in a second instance of Outlook by right-clicking the module button in the Navigation Pane, and then clicking Open In New Window.

   A new contact window opens.

   Important

   Depending on your screen resolution and the size of the contact window, you might see more or fewer buttons in each of the groups, the buttons you see might be represented by larger or smaller icons than those shown, or the group might be represented by a button that you click to display the group's commands. Experiment with the size of the contact window to understand the effect on the appearance of the tabs.

3. Click in the Notes area to activate the buttons on the Ribbon. Then in the upper-left corner of the message window, click the Microsoft Office Button to display the menu.

   Notice that although you are working in the contact window, you can create any type of Outlook item from the Office menu. We'll talk more about the commands available from the Office menu in other chapters of this book.

4. Click away from the Office menu to close it.

   In the contact window, the Ribbon includes three tabs:

   • Contact

   • Insert

   • Format Text

   Tip

   Depending on what programs are installed on your computer, tabs and groups other than those described here might also appear on the Ribbon. For example, if Microsoft Outlook with Business Contact Manager is installed on your computer, you will have a Business Tools tab . If you have add-ins installed that interface with Outlook or with the Office system, you might also have an Add-Ins tab.

   The Contact tab is active by default. Buttons representing commands related to creating contact records are organized on this tab in five groups:

   • Actions

   • Show

   • Communicate

   • Options

   • Proofing

   You can create a basic contact record by using only the commands available on this tab.

   Tip

   Only the buttons for the commands that can be performed on the currently selected message element are active.

5. Click the Insert tab.

   Buttons representing commands related to inserting additional content in a contact record are organized on this tab in six groups:

   • Include

   • Tables

   • Illustrations

   • Links

   • Text

   • Symbols

6. Click the Format Text tab.

   Buttons representing commands related to formatting the text within the Notes field are organized on this tab in six groups:

   • Clipboard

   • Font

   • Paragraph

   • Styles

   • Zoom

   • Editing

   Tip

   Some groups have a small button in the lower-right corner called the Dialog Box Launcher; clicking this button opens a task pane or dialog box related to the group of buttons.

7. On the Format Text tab, in the Clipboard group, click the Dialog Box Launcher.

   The Clipboard task pane opens.

   Tip

   In this book, when we give instructions to implement a command we tell you on what tab and in which group the command button appears. When directing you to use multiple command buttons on the same tab, we might omit the tab name to avoid needless repetition.

8. In the Font group, click the Dialog Box Launcher.

   The Font dialog box opens.

   You can access certain settings not available from the Font group, such as Underline Style, Underline Color, and the many font effects, from this dialog box.

CLOSE the Font dialog box, the Clipboard task pane, and the contact window.