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Chapter 2: Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 and Messaging
- A New Look for Outlook
- Streamlining E-Mail
- A New Emphasis on Collaboration
- More Effective E-Mail Management
- Using Search Folders
- Quick Handling of Invitations
- Quick Flag Capability
- Easy Editing of Distribution Lists
- Working with E-Mail Rules and Alerts
- Security and Privacy
- Additional Input Options
- Changes in the E-Mail Message Window
- Summary
2 Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 and Messaging
Much of what we communicate is information about information. We write messages, memos, and reports and create spreadsheets, presentations, and Web pages to show others—down the hall or around the world—what we want them to know about our businesses, products, plans, and people. But evolving technology in the increasingly connected world has brought about changes that continue to streamline and expedite the way we view and use information—and the way we communicate—in our jobs and lives.Today communication is information; the notes we jot down, the words we speak, the sketches we draw, and the circles and boxes on a presentation whiteboard all contribute important data bits to the larger whole. The ability to capture and save that information in a usable form, and share it instantly with coworkers or team members, ensures that our best ideas can be preserved and applied as quickly as possible, which can make a difference in the way we do business over the long term. Innovation, the sharing of ideas, and the smart use of technology—all are good things.
This chapter explores the additions and enhancements in Microsoft Outlook 2003—and there's a lot of ground to cover. Because communication and collaboration is one of the focal points of the far-reaching changes in Microsoft Office 2003, Outlook is the application sporting the most noticeable modifications. Let's begin where it's most apparent: in the user interface.
A New Look for Outlook
New colors and a fresh design pick up on the look and feel of Microsoft Windows XP and its theme-related motif in Office 2003. You'll find a number of improvements in the interface that make better use of available screen space and more efficient use of your time. One thing you'll notice is that the Favorites menu (did anyone really use that in Outlook anyway?) has been traded for the Go menu, which offers options and shortcut keys for moving among the various Outlook views (plus Journal).Icons are helpful, but not at the expense of on-screen workspace. That's one of the clear messages of Outlook's new look. The icon bar that stretched down the left side of Outlook XP has been replaced with a more functional Navigation Pane, which includes the Folder List in the default view. (See Figure 21.)
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Figure 2-1 The new look of Microsoft Outlook gives you more viewing room on-screen and makes better use of available space.
By default, the four primary Outlook view bars (Mail, Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks) occupy a space in the lower third of the Navigation Pane. The views that don't appear by default (Notes, Folder List, and Shortcuts) are available as icons at the bottom of the pane. You can expand the view bars to show all the selections by dragging the separator bar upward; or you can collapse the list to show the various views only as icons along the bottom of the Navigation Pane. This gives you more room for displaying and selecting the mail folders you need to use.
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The new three-column layout in Outlook condenses quite a bit of information into one viewing space, but it also provides more room for the new-and-improved Preview Pane, making it easy for you to scan a message quickly without scrolling, which saves both time and trouble. The claim is that the revised Preview Pane now gives you 40 percent more area for email viewing, but whatever the percentage (which changes depending on how wide you make the Inbox column), it makes mail easier to move through quickly—which is something most of us need.
Working with Views
The increased viewing area in the Outlook window is helpful no matter which view you use. The new layout makes better use of available space but also offers you many options for viewing your information the way you want to see it. Each of the Outlook views has several key improvements or enhancements to help you organize and display your data in the way that makes most sense to you.Mail Improvements
Mail view is displayed by default when you first start Outlook, with the Inbox in the center column, the selected message displayed in the improved Preview Pane, and the folders in the Navigation Pane on the far left side of the window. The design makes it easy for you to see what a message is about quickly and then decide whether to discard it, leave it in the Inbox, or drag it to the Follow Up folder for later action. This helps you handle the volume of email—both wanted and unwanted—that flows across your desktop all day long.
The major change in Mail view is increased area for the Preview Pane (in most cases, allowing you to read most of an average-length email message without scrolling) and the new Navigation Pane, which houses the folders you'll use to organize and act on important messages.
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You can arrange messages in a variety of different ways (this is an enhancement of the Current View feature available previously). To change the way messages are displayed, choose Arrange By from the View menu and select one of the many fields by which you want to sort and display messages. Figure 22 shows the menu choices available to you. (Note that you can still use the Current View selections if you choose.)
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Figure 2-2 You can arrange your email to best suit the type of work you do.
Suppose, for example, that you are compiling a report that includes sections written by each of your company's five major departments. The deadline is fast approaching, and you've sent each of the department managers notes asking them to submit their reports by the end of the day. You can use Arrange By to set your Mail view to Attachments so that Outlook separates the messages with attachments from those without. The messages with attachments are displayed at the top of the Inbox, where you'll see them first; other messages are organized in the No Attachments section below. This lets you check at a glance and make sure all the reports are in by day's end as you prepare for a long night of compiling and editing the final document.
Calendar Changes
In Calendar view, the Work Week view is shown by default in the Reading Pane, and a monthly calendar and links to your personal and shared calendars are displayed in the Navigation Pane. (See Figure 23.) You can create new appointments, set up meetings, look at shared calendars, change the look of the calendar, and create and view team schedules by clicking the familiar tools on the toolbar.
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Figure 2-3 Calendar view provides more room for the selected calendar display, along with a monthly view and links to other calendars on the left.
Enhancements in Contacts View
In Contacts view, the Preview Pane displays contacts in alphabetical order, but you can easily modify the display of contacts by clicking one of the view options in the Navigation Pane:
- Address Cards (the default) displays the contact name and email address.
- Detailed Address Cards shows all available information on the General tab of the person's contact file.
- Phone List displays contact names and phone numbers only.
- By Category shows the contacts organized by assigned categories.
- By Company lists contacts alphabetically by company name.
- Location uses the Country/By Region field (displayed in the Check Addresses window) to sort and display contacts according to country and region.
- By Follow-Up Flag shows all flagged contacts first in the displayed list.
Being able to change how contacts are displayed makes it easier for you to create a subset of contacts for a specific project. Suppose you've identified six key people to participate in an upcoming diversity program offered by the HR department. You can go through your contacts and flag potential representatives from each major department; then in Contacts view, use By Follow-Up Flag to list those contacts together at the top of the contacts list. You can then right-click to display the context menu and choose Forward Items. This attaches the contact info for the employees to an email message that you can then send to the head of HR. All this will take just a few minutes (or less, depending on the number of contacts you had to consider), and you can mark another item off your Tasks list.
Improvements in Tasks View and TaskPad
Speaking of Tasks, the Tasks view now has additional display controls as well. You can display tasks using one of these views: Simple List, Detailed List, Active Tasks, Next Seven Days, Overdue Tasks, By Category, Assignment, By Person Responsible, Completed Tasks, or Task Timeline. Additionally, you can open Shared Tasks and customize the current task view by choosing the options at the bottom of the Navigation Pane. If you want to change the way tasks appear in the TaskPad (shown in the left column in Calendar view), you can choose TaskPad View from the View menu and select from the available options:
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In addition to the new look in the various Outlook views, a change has also been made to an often-used dialog box. In response to customer requests, the Select Names dialog box in the Windows Address Book has been revamped. Now when users click To: to select the recipient for an email message, they can drag the borders of the dialog box to resize it and display more information about their contacts.
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The recipient buttons (To, Cc, and Bcc) are now placed below the display area, making the process more intuitive for users who want to select multiple contacts, and then add the selected contacts to the appropriate recipient line.
One note, however: If you're wondering where to find the New Contact button, click Advanced to display a menu of the familiar contact management commands.
Streamlining E-Mail
If you're like most of us, the sheer volume of the email you receive in a day has increased dramatically. Not only do we sift through spam in various forms, but more and more people are using email as the communication channel of choice. There's logic behind that—email is fast, simple, and you can read and respond when it's convenient for you, which is a great consideration if you attend meeting after meeting throughout the day and rarely find the time during business hours to return phone calls, for example.Email is fast, convenient, and flexible, but it can get out of control quickly. When you receive interdepartmental email and email from service vendors and suppliers, prospective customers and long-term clients, your boss and your boss's boss, various industry publications, and friends and family, the volume can become unmanageable fast.
Realizing that people who work with information need a way to sort it quickly (which messages do you need to read right away, and which ones can you read later?) and a simple way to organize and store what's important, the developers of Outlook added several features that enable you to see the messages coming in and act on them accordingly.
One time-saving feature is the prompt that appears as a message is downloading. When a new message arrives, a message alert pops up in the lower right corner of the Outlook window showing the sender's name, the subject, and the first few words of the incoming message. You can skim the information in the message and opt whether to stop what you're doing and read the entire message or simply let it go to the Inbox where you can read it later.
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Another small-but-helpful time-saving feature: a message info tag appears when you position the cursor over a selected message, giving you information about the sender, the date and time the message was sent, and the subject and size of the message. This can be helpful when you're looking for a particular message but don't want to expand the Inbox column or read through too many subject lines.
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If you often find yourself scrolling through dozens of old messages, looking for the specific one you want, you'll love the Arrange by Conversation option that allows you to display messages as threaded conversations. This option groups all messages with a related subject together so that you can easily find the one you're looking for. The new messages are displayed at the top of the thread, and unread messages are nested beneath. Click on the expand button to see past messages related to that subject, and click the collapse button to hide the display of the messages when you no longer need them. (See Figure 24.)
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Figure 2-4 The new Arrange by Conversation thread lets you organize your messages by the topic of discussion, so you can easily see all messages related to a certain online conversation.
A New Emphasis on Collaboration
Communication and collaboration are two keystones in the entire Office 2003 release. Collaborating on projects—whether you're producing an annual report, hosting a conference, putting together a presentation, designing a corporate Web site, or developing a new product prototype—means that everyone involved needs access to critical information, a way to get together to plan strategy and discuss problems, and a method of making specific task assignments so that each member of the team knows what to do.This version of Outlook gives collaboration an entirely new focus. Although past releases had support for group scheduling and online meetings, Outlook 2003 includes the tools, functionality, and templates team leaders can use so that their teams can communicate instantly, share ideas easily, and organize and manage projects using simple, list-oriented Web-based tools.
Instant Messaging and Notifications
Instant messaging with Windows Messenger is spread far and wide throughout Office 2003. Whenever you use a Contact name—in a Microsoft Office Word document, an Excel spreadsheet, a PowerPoint slide, or in an Outlook message header—a smart tag gives you the ability to contact that person directly from the document you're working in. For example, suppose that you're in the middle of setting up a product review meeting for this afternoon. It's short notice, and you're not sure whether you should schedule it for today or tomorrow. You open Calendar and take a look at the group schedule; when you position the pointer over the team leader's name, an instant messaging icon appears, telling you that the team leader is online. You can click the icon to display the context menu and then send an instant message, asking whether to meet today or tomorrow.
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Instant messaging works seamlessly in Outlook. When you're using other applications, it works like this: If you have smart tags enabled on your system (in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint go to the Tools menu and choose AutoCorrect Options; then choose the Smart Tags tab, and select Label text with smart tags), the name of any person in your Contacts list appears with a dotted purple underline. When you position the pointer on the underline, a small Smart Tag Actions button appears. Click it to see whether the person is currently online, and you'll also see a list of communications choices for sending a message to the person named.
Similarly, when you are working in Outlook and you receive a message, the header of the message shows whether the sender is one of your online contacts. If the sender is currently online (and has either a Hotmail account or a .NET Passport), the instant message icon appears in color and the smart tag displays an action menu that enables you to reply with an instant message or an email message, open the person's Contact information, schedule a meeting, and more. (See Figure 25.)
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Figure 2-5 When you receive email from an online contact, an instant message icon in the header lets you know whether the sender is currently online.
Having immediate access to online team members carries over into the other applications as well. When you're working in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, whenever the name of one of your online contacts appears in a document (or in the document workspace or Shared Workspace task pane), the same "pawn" indicator will let you know whether the person is currently online. Click to display the context menu and send a message or modify the person's contact options.
This seamless integration of messaging and applications lets you send off a quick question—"What is the official title of that report?"—or ask for clarification—"Did you want me to use the Verdana or Arial font for the article content?" as you're working on your projects. This saves time and effort and reduces the likelihood that an important question will be forgotten and a critical detail overlooked.
Comparing Schedules
One of the challenges to successful collaboration is getting everyone on the same page—and in the same space—at the same time. Setting up meetings everyone can attend is tricky when you need to coordinate half a dozen busy professionals. The new side-by-side calendaring feature in Outlook gives you the ability to share your calendar with others and view others' calendars by placing them beside your own. That way, you can easily see which time slots are open for everyone and which are definitely a no go.
You begin side-by-side calendaring by sharing your own calendar. In the Navigation Pane of the Calendar window, click the Share My Calendar link. Then enter the information of the person (or people) with permission to view your Calendar, and click OK. This enables others to view your information.
To view others' calendars next to yours, click Open A Shared Calendar and type the person's name, or choose it from your Contacts list. The other person must have previously selected Share My Calendar in his or her version of Outlook and given you permission to view the calendar before you will be allowed access. The other person's calendar is added to your Other Calendars list. To display calendars in side-by-side format, simply click the checkboxes of the calendars you want to see.
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2-6 Side-by-side calendar view displayed each person's daily calendar in a separate column, enabling you to see at a glance when others are available. (See Figure 26.)
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Figure 2-6 The side-by-side calendar view displays multiple calendars in a columnar format.
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Meeting Workspaces
Getting people together in the same time and space is important, so Outlook also provides the means for workgroups to gather in a meeting workspace on the Web. If your company uses SharePoint Team Services V2 (STS) or SharePoint Portal Services (SPS), you can create shared workspaces with documents, photos, presentations, discussions, and more, all related to an upcoming meeting or critical event.You create a meeting workspace by clicking the Meeting Workspace button in the Appointment window. The Meeting Workspace task pane opens so that you can create a new workspace or select an existing one. (See Figure 27.)
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Figure 2-7 In the Meeting Workspace task pane, you can create or edit workspaces.
If your company uses SharePoint Team Services, you can create a shared meeting space on the Web where team members can meet and share information.The actual Meeting Workspace is a subweb—a Web site within a SharePoint Team Services site—that allows you to gather important information and prepare for an upcoming meeting. For example, suppose that you have put together a team to prepare for your company's next annual meeting. You have two months to plan, documents and presentations to prepare, an auditorium to reserve, multimedia equipment to secure, and awards to procure.
Meeting Workspaces offer a number of different templates that will enable you to set up the workspace you need for a particular meeting. Figure 28, on the next page, shows an example of a Meeting Workspace. For more about creating and working with Meeting Workspaces, see Chapter 3, "Collaborating Using SharePoint Team Services and SharePoint Portal Server."
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Figure 2-8 An example of a Meeting Workspace created using SharePoint Team Services V2.
More Effective E-Mail Management
A number of the features in Outlook are meant simply to make you more productive while working with the program. Think of the time you lose in searching for, selecting, and organizing specific messages related to a particular product, person, or event. Outlook 2003 includes several features to help you manage your email more effectively and efficiently. This section introduces you to search folders, fast RSVPs to meeting invitations, the quick flag capability, as well as the improved rules interface and the brand-new alerts feature, which ties you in to updates on your SharePoint Team Services sites.
Using Search Folders
At first glance, you might think that search folders actually store the results of a search for messages about specific projects, people, or things. In reality, search folders are like filtered views, showing you only the information you want to see without actually removing the messages from their place in the Inbox.Outlook 2003 comes with several search folders already created: For Follow Up will display any email messages you flag; Large Messages will display messages arranged from largest to smallest; Unread Messages will show you all the unread messages you've accumulated. You can create your own search folders by right-clicking an existing search folder and choosing New Search Folder from the context menu. In the New Search Folder dialog box, you can choose one of the existing templates or create a custom folder based on criteria you specify. (See Figure 29.)
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Figure 2-9 You can use one of the predefined templates to create a search folder or start from scratch.
You might use Search Folders in your organization to store messages from your favorite clients, track the results from a recent online promotion, collect information about personal vacation days, gather all correspondence related to a specific product, or store copies of all departmental enewsletters.
Quick Handling of Invitations
In Outlook 2003, you can quickly accept or decline (or mark as tentative) a meeting invitation you receive without even opening the email message. When a meeting invitation arrives in your Inbox, you'll see immediately the response line stretched across the top of the message (you don't even need to open the message to see it).
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You can simply click your choice in the top of the message while it is displayed in the Preview Pane and a response is automatically sent to the sender. If you prefer, you can respond by right-clicking the message to display the context-sensitive menu and choose the option that fits your choice (Accept, Tentative, Decline, Propose New Time, or Check Calendar).
Quick Flag Capability
Remember the Flag for Follow-Up capability in Office XP? It has grown exponentially in Office 2003. Now the Quick Flag feature enables you to mark a variety of items in your Inbox for follow-up and organize them by up to six different colors.
After you've finished flagging items, you can view them as a group by clicking the For Follow Up folder in the Navigation Pane. Outlook displays all the flagged items, arranged according to their color type. (See Figure 210.)
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Figure 2-10 Displaying flagged items in the For Follow Up search folder shows that they are divided by color.
When you complete the follow-up on one of the flagged items, simply click the flag to remove it.
Easy Editing of Distribution Lists
If you regularly publish email newsletters, department updates, or product listings that you distribute to a number of people, you probably are already using distribution lists to help you expedite the process. (A distribution list is group of email contacts that you group and name. You can send a message to everyone on the list by entering only the distribution list name in the To: line of an email message.)Now, in Outlook 2003, you can easily add to or remove names from the distribution list before sending a message. This would enable you to send out the new spring product listing to everyone on the distribution list except the two people who received their copies in a face-to-face meeting. To modify the distribution list for this one use, you simply enter the list name in the To: line as usual; then click the expand button to the left of the list name to expand the list.
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You can then edit the names as needed by removing or adding additional contacts. When you're ready, click Send and the message is distributed as usual.
Working with E-Mail Rules and Alerts
You can streamline the time you spend reading through message after message by automating the process with rules. Rules are actions Outlook performs based on specific criteria you set for handling specific types of messages. For example, you might want to forward to your customer service manager all the messages received from the marketing department; or you might send all messages from a certain vendor to the person in charge of managing that relationship.Rules existed as the Rules Wizard in earlier versions of Office; in Office 2003, the Rules interface has been enhanced, new templates have been added, and an entirely new feature—alerts—has been included. Figure 211 shows the new look for the Rules Wizard.
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Figure 2-11 The Rules Wizard is easier to follow and includes additional templates.
You don't have to use the Rules Wizard to create rules for organizing and storing your email messages, however. The process can be as simple as this: When you receive an email message you want to create a rule for, right-click the header of the message. In the context menu, choose Create Rule. You can then easily specify the settings for the rule, and click OK to create it. You might, for example, opt to have all messages from a particular company placed in a certain folder; or you might want to play a sound for messages with high importance.
If you're running SharePoint Team Services V2, you can receive email alerts whenever a document is updated, reviewed, modified, or commented on or an announcement is added to your SharePoint Team Services site. This enables you to keep up to date with the latest happenings online with your project or workgroup. You can select a similar set of actions for alerts you create on the site. (See Figure 212.)
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Figure 2-12 You can assign similar actions to the alert notification coming in from your SharePoint Team Services site.
Security and Privacy
To make sending and receiving information more secure for Office 2003 users, Outlook continues enhanced support for certificates and now shares the authentication list stored by Internet Explorer that tracks approved sites. You can also customize signatures for each email on your account, which allows you to have one professional signature for your work email and another signature for family and friends.To better protect your privacy and take a first major offensive step against spam, this version of Outlook 2003 enables you to block HTML content and keep junk mail senders from gathering information from your computer. When you receive a piece of junk mail with HTML that refers to external content (such as a rotating image or logo), you'll notice that there is a short wait while the image appears. During this time, the email message notifies the sender that it "found" your address and sends back to get the information to fill in the graphic. This data transfer capability is known as a web beacon, and it simply lets the junk mail provider know that your email address is live. As a result, you can be sure you'll continue to receive plenty of spam from this vendor and hundreds more like it.
When Outlook blocks external HTML content, the program keeps the data transfer from happening because the message doesn't go back to the external source to display the logo file. This keeps the site from knowing whether your address is "live," which eventually lessens the amount of junk mail you receive. Figure 213 shows an example of an email message sent with blocked information in the header.
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Figure 2-13 Outlook blocks external HTML in an attempt to limit the spam you receive.
Additional Input Options
How many ways can you create an email message? Now in Office 2003, you can dictate a message or write one by hand. With Tablet PC support throughout Office 2003, which is even further enhanced by the addition of the exciting, new OneNote utility, you can handwrite notes or use the stylus or keyboard to input message text to your Tablet PC and then send as normal. You can use a microphone and the Speech option (available in the Tools menu) to begin the process.
Changes in the E-Mail Message Window
While we're talking about functionality, there are a few new tools in the Outlook toolbar worth mentioning. The Options button has been moved to a more prominent position on the toolbar, saving you the trouble of digging through menus to set options for individual messages.You also now have the ability to choose on the fly the format for the email message you want to send. Selection choices are HTML, Rich Text, or Plain Text. This will be helpful when you send to clients whose email services are different from your own.
In addition, while you're creating a message, you can click Flag in the Outlook toolbar to display the Flag for Follow-Up dialog box and set an action and the date and time you want the follow-up to be completed. You also can digitally sign or encrypt individual messages by clicking the Digitally Sign button on the Message toolbar. (See Figure 214.)
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Figure 2-14 Office 2003 includes a number of new tools in the message toolbar that enable you to customize the actions, format, and signature of individual messages.
One more key feature you'll recognize: The new Table menu in the menu bar borrows all its key options from an existing Office application. If you're familiar with tables in Word, you'll be comfortable using these features in your email messages as well.
Summary
This chapter has highlighted the key changes in Outlook 2003. Specifically, you've learned about the changes in the layout of the Outlook window and how you can tailor many of the views to display data so that it best fits your process. You've also found out more about the expanded collaboration features in Outlook and learned about side-by-side calendars and shared Meeting Workspaces. Finally, this chapter detailed a number of Outlook features that help increase your productivity, shorten your email-processing time, and protect your privacy. The next chapter takes a closer look at SharePoint Team Services and the expanded collaboration features built into Office 2003.
Last Updated: March 5, 2003
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