This is the 4th article describing my experiences with Office XP. Outlook is the Personal Information Manager of OfficeXP. I will try to cover both the overall functionality of Outlook in general, and a little about the new features of the 2002 version. I have been a long-time user of Outlook, not necessarily a long time fan. (Mick Apr-03)

Introduction - Outlook is, for the most part, a somewhat souped-up version of the Outlook Express program. It has a lot of good features, and a few bad ones. It has a user interface that resembles the other major components of Office, generally smooth and effective, but at times it seems like many small programs clumsily crammed into a single box. It is usually thought of as a big-brother to and replacement for Outlook Express, but it does not have a USENET News-reader capability, so most technical users need to have both programs installed. It is the most popular business Personal Info Manager (PIM), capable of E-mail, Calendar, Contact management, To-Do list management, Activities tracking, etc., but it has (probably) the worst security record of all E-mail programs. The program has so much to recommend it, and so much that is amateurish, that it is difficult to imagine it was written by a programming team in the largest software company in the world. (Whew-I feel better getting that off my chest)

All-The-Rest flavor - The OfficeXP package includes a word processor, a spreadsheet, a database, and a presentation graphic package-then most anything else that a typical business might need in the way of software-they crammed into Outlook. Make no mistake, Outlook is meant for businesses-its E-mail configuration is most happy with a local area network, where your mail is stored on a central computer (although it works OK in a single user Internet e-mail mode.) Also, it has a lot of features for keeping records for long periods, and managing team-effort projects-flexible archive management, and tracking the interaction between meetings, contacts, and E-mail.

Installation - I have been using Outlook for about 5 years. When the company I was working for went with Outlook, they purchased a license to allow employees to take home a copy. Outlook allows a substantial amount of customization, (showing BCC field, preview pane, sending preferences for fonts and formats, stationary…) anyway, in those 5 years I have done a lot of tweaking. When I installed the new package, as part of the OfficeXP package, I was very impressed with the extent that things looked familiar with the new system. Virtually every customization for the last 5 years has been preserved.

User Interface - The interface has two main options-For users who use a subset of the programs features the Outlook Shortcut bar, or to access the complete range of features. For those more comfortable with the Windows Explorer style, different Outlook Functions (calendar, inbox, contacts…) are displayed in a directory tree style presentation. A slightly disconcerting feature is that when a different function is selected, the available menus shift form. Many of the sub-functions of Outlook have many varieties of display-flexible to the extent that one Outlook user may not recognize the program when sitting at another's computer. Strangely, the Smart Tag feature, which should have many uses tying things together in Outlook, is very limited compared to how it works in Word, and the Task Pane is missing.

Calendar - Outlook is at its best in the company environment, where it can be connected to an Exchange server, where users can do things like, check each others schedule to make sure everyone is free for the big meeting. Many features work pretty well in a home or family environment, but it is rare that there is any real need for the advanced features. The sole exception to this rule for me, is the calendar. For those who spend a lot of time at the computer, (as would an office worker, or perhaps an obsessive-compulsive geek) the calendar is great. It is very flexible in scheduling meetings-single occurrences, repeating meetings on monthly or weekly basis-I enter a year's worth of Icon meetings, second and third Saturday, anniversaries, birthdays etc. Audible reminders can be selected from any sound file, and the amount of lead time before meetings can be set with your choice of default settings of manual on a case-by-case basis. If you have an appointment for example 6 months in the future, you can set it with a week of heads-up alert, and then easily set the alarm to "snooze" for another reminder time. It automatically adds holidays to your calendar so you always know when Mothers Day is (May 11) and Memorial Day (May 26).
Interaction with Other Devices and Applications-Because of the popularity of Outlook, most makers of PC peripherals take care that appropriate tools are integrated with Outlook. For example, Casio data watches, and Palm Pilots include features to allow direct data exchanges with Outlook. Yahoo's e-mail address book can trade contacts data with Outlook. Of course, Outlook exchanges data with Other Office applications.

Security - Also because of the popularity of Outlook, it is one of the favorite targets of virus authors. Since this package includes a version of Outlook that is over a year old, and Outlook has a very poor security reputation, it is a good idea to download the Office XP service packs SP1 and SP2 (a 32MB download!) from Microsoft. It is truly frustrating that is no simple way to open an HTML coded e-mail as text. (This is a little neurotic capability to help with Spam and Spyware. Outlook Express has a little check box to allow you to turn off the code, but with Outlook you have to edit the Registry. Be advised that editing the Registry is an advanced topic, and you can really hose your machine if you make the least mistake. Contact me for instructions if you really want to try this.

E-mail - this is what everyone thinks of when thinking of Outlook, but clearly this is not all there is, or even the main part of this application. But Outlook does a good job of e-mail for the most part. Outlook can be trained to use Word as its composing standard. I am a little old-fashioned about this-I think e-mail is a casual medium, mostly for sending textual information, don't really like a lot of colored text, fonts and graphics, as a rule-I just block them out anyway. But if this sort of thing turns you on, knock yourself out, check the box, and you compose e-mail box has all the toolbars that you use with Word-fonts, colors, kerning, drawing…

E-mail also has features to help receiving like a complex Rules feature, allowing you to automatically move all incoming e-mail containing "Mick" in the From line and "Computer" in the Body of the message to the Deleted Items folder. If you get a lot of mail (spam?) and you want to handle it in your computer, you can right click on the message, and create a rule for that message using it as a model and using a wizard to help you implement the rule for handling that type of message. There is an auto Archiving feature, which lets you set a time criteria for cleaning out (and save) your old mail, and save the old meeting schedules to separate files that are easily backed up. You know how some e-mail arrives like full-line, half-line, full-line, half-line, etc… This is because either your sender, or your senders e-mail program, or your e-mail program, or a combination thereof, places some extra hard returns in the e-mail. In Outlook 2002 (XP) E-mail messages arrive with a button which can remove those extra line feeds. Usually it deletes them by default, but allows you to toggle back and forth to see which you like better.

Odds and ends-
You can link your Contacts list to other documents created in other Office applications, or even just other files on your hard drive. (I am not organized enough to need this feature)

Outlook's Contact manager is pretty good-names, addresses, phone, e-mail… This "feature" of Outlook can be accessed quickly by putting a "Contacts" shortcut on your desktop, or on the quick-launch bar. Just make a new shortcut on the desktop with the command "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\OUTLOOK.EXE" /select outlook:\\contacts

A very substantial change in Outlook 2002 is that it now includes Visual Basic Macros. My last version (98) did not have any real macros at all, just a simple rule process. Not that I have any idea what use this is to the average-If only I had access to Visual Basic back when I was getting 1200 e-mail messages per day…

In Closing - A great many people hate Outlook, possibly, these are folks that hate anything out of Microsoft. I am not among that group. I have been using it long enough to get comfortable with its strange personality. If you are just the average home computer user, you probably don't need the features of Outlook. But if there is any chance that you will be going to be a computer user in the workplace, get Outlook. It is the standard for business, and with good reason.