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

Overview

Bill Gates's dream of "a computer on every desktop" is becoming more and more of a reality-many people today work (and play) on computers both in the office and at home. For people who spend much of the day at a computer and are dependent on electronic messages as a means of communicating with colleagues, clients, friends, and family members, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 offers an ideal solution. Outlook 2007 integrates e-mail, address books, calendars, task lists, note pads, and more into one place, and more importantly, makes this information immediately available to you when you need it. From one window, you can work with e-mail messages, find contact information, view upcoming appointments, and track tasks. From one place, you can quickly search your messages (and message attachments) and organize your work more easily and in a more intuitive way. You can use Outlook to:

• Send, receive, organize, and archive e-mail messages.

• Send documents, spreadsheets, graphics, and other files as message attachments, and preview attachments you receive from other people.

• Schedule events, appointments, and meetings, invite attendees, and reserve conference rooms, projectors, and other managed resources.

• View upcoming appointments and tasks, and receive reminders for them.

• Store contact information in a transferable format that easily interacts with your e-mail system.

• Track tasks for yourself or for someone else, and schedule time to complete your tasks.

• Store random bits of information as notes.

• Share schedule information with other people, inside and outside your organization.

• Track the interactions you have with other people.

• Organize and easily locate information in messages, attachments, calendars, contacts, and tasks.

• Filter out annoying junk mail.

• Have information from favorite Web sites delivered directly to you.

What's New in Outlook 2007

The basic concepts of Outlook remain the same in the 2007 release as in earlier versions, with a few additions. The biggest improvement in this version is the way that the various functions and tools have been linked and organized, making it much easier to use all the tools from one place. The biggest change in this version is in the way tools and commands are available in the Outlook item windows. Instead of the traditional menus and toolbars which are still present in the program window), commands in the message, contact, appointment, and other item windows are organized in groups by function. The groups are organized on tabs by process, and all the tabs are organized on the "Ribbon" that is part of the user interface of several programs in the 2007 Microsoft Office system.

The new command structure might take some getting used to, but if you use other Office programs, you'll find that you can come up to speed pretty quickly.

If you're upgrading to Outlook 2007 from a previous version, you're probably more interested in the differences between the old and new versions and how they will affect you than you are in the basic functionality of Outlook. We don't identify new features with a special margin icon (as we did in previous versions of this book). We do, however, list them here. The following sections list new features introduced in Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2003. Throughout this book, we include special discussions about features that are new in Outlook 2007, including the benefits of the feature, how to use it, and any potential problems you might encounter.

If You Are Upgrading from Outlook 2003

If you have been using Outlook 2003, you might not expect to see many improvements in Outlook 2007, but you will soon realize that this is not just an incremental upgrade to what seemed like a pretty comprehensive set of features and tools. Outlook 2007 includes a long list of new and improved features, including the following:

• Redesigned user interface. Compose, format, and act upon information in a more accessible, intuitive way.

• To-Do Bar. View your appointments and tasks for the day.

• Instant Search. Search for keywords, dates, or other criteria in your e-mail messages, calendar, contact records, or task list.

• Calendar functionalities. Create and publish Internet calendars, and e-mail calendar snapshots.

• Share information in one interface. Interact with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services to share and manage information.

• Color Categories. Easily personalize and add categories to e-mail, calendar items, contacts, or tasks.

• View your Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. Catch up on the latest news or blogs right from within Outlook.

• Attachment Preview. Preview your attachments directly in the Reading Pane.

If You Are Upgrading from Outlook 2002

In addition to the features listed in the previous section, if you're upgrading from Outlook 2002 (part of the Microsoft Office XP system), you'll want to take note of the following new features that were introduced in Outlook 2003:

• Navigation Pane. Quickly access your mail, calendar, contacts, tasks, and other Outlook items.

• Reading Pane. Open attachments without opening the item.

• Desktop Alerts. Read and respond to an e-mail message without closing other applications.

• Shared Attachments. Post attachments for group input.

• Arrangements. View your messages in any of 13 predefined views.

• Quick Flags. Quickly mark messages for follow-up.

• Unique signature per account. Assign a different signature to each Outlook account.

• Arrange by Conversation. View your messages in a new way.

• Search Folders. Collect and automatically update related information in virtual folders.

• Rules. Create and organize rules in an easier way.

• Calendar View. View your Calendar and the Date Navigator in a new, streamlined format.

• Side-by-side calendars. View multiple calendars at the same time.

• Contact Picture. Add a picture to an Address Book entry.

• View SharePoint Team Services contacts. See a list of contacts with whom you can share information.

• RPC over HTTP. Connect directly to your Microsoft Exchange Server from Outlook over the Internet.

• Cached Exchange Mode. Store a local copy of your mailbox on your computer.

• Go menu. Quickly switch between panes in the Navigation Pane.

• New Data File Type (.pst). Create a Personal Folders file.

• Expand Distribution Lists in an e-mail message. Display the individual names of Distribution List members to edit the recipients of a message.

• Information Rights Management. Create messages with restricted permission to prevent messages from being forwarded, printed, copied, or edited by unauthorized people.

• Enhanced privacy features. Block or allow external Web content such as pictures or sounds to display in e-mail messages, and prevent Web beacons from validating your e-mail address to junk mail senders.

Let's Get Started!

With this version, Outlook has truly come into its own as a full-fledged information management system, making it easier than ever to efficiently handle communications, schedules, and tasks all in one convenient location. We look forward to showing you around Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and sharing with you our enthusiasm for this truly useful product.