Outlook 2010 All-in-One For Dummies - Jennifer Fulton - E-Book

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Jennifer Fulton

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Beschreibung

Extensive coverage on using Microsoft Outlook to manage and organize your day As the number one e-mail client and personal information manager, Microsoft Outlook offers a set of uncomplicated features that maximize the management of your e-mail, schedule, and general daily activities, with the least amount of hassle possible. Comprised of ten minibooks in one and packed with more than 800 pages, this All-in-One For Dummies reference walks you through the convenience of Microsoft Outlook and introduces you to the newest features of the 2010 version. After a description of how to get started with Outlook 2010, you'll get complete coverage on e-mail basics, advanced e-mail features, working with the calendar, managing contacts, and working with Business Contact Manager. You'll learn how to track tasks, take notes, and record items in the journal, as well as customize and manage Outlook and get mobile with Outlook. * Offers soup-to-nuts coverage of Microsoft Outlook 2010, the newest version of the number one most popular e-mail manager * Walks you through getting started with Outlook and e-mail basics, and gradually progresses to more advanced features and capabilities of e-mail * Explains how to work with the Outlook 2010 calendar and manage your contacts * Addresses tracking tasks, taking notes, recording items in the journal, and working with Business Contact Manager * Shows you how to customize your Outlook, manage all the information within Outlook, and take Outlook on the road Get a whole new outlook on Outlook 2010 with this complete guide!

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Outlook® 2010 All-in-One For Dummies®

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

Conventions Used in This Book

Foolish Assumptions

How This Book Is Organized

Book I: Getting Started

Book II: E-Mail Basics

Book III: Über E-Mail

Book IV: Working with the Calendar

Book V: Managing Contacts

Book VI: Tracking Tasks, Taking Notes, and Organizing Life with OneNote

Book VII: Working with Business Contact Manager

Book VIII: Customizing Outlook

Book IX: Managing All Your Outlook Stuff

Book X: Out and About: Taking Outlook on the Road

Icons Used in This Book

Where to Go from Here

Book I: Getting Started

Book I: Chapter 1: An Insider’s Look at the Outlook Interface

What Can Outlook Do for Me?

New Features

Outlook Modules

Heeeerrre’s Outlook!

A Ribbon in the Sky

Backstage pass

The Ribbon

Getting Around with the Navigation Pane

Finding your way around the Navigation pane buttons

Building better buttons in the Navigation pane

Playing hide and seek with the Navigation pane

Getting turned off by the Navigation pane

Having Fun with the Folder List

Viewing Mail with the Reading Pane

Previewing with AutoPreview

Staying connected with the People pane

Sneaking a peek at attachments

Your Week in a Nutshell: The To-Do Bar

Getting a Snapshot of Your Day with Outlook Today

Minimizing Outlook to a Taskbar Icon

Taking a Shortcut to Your Pet Folders

Book I: Chapter 2: Outlook, Quick and Dirty

Creating Outlook Items: The Common Factors

Wow! There’s a New button!

Using forms to create items

Editing an item

Deleting an item

Adding a Quick Contact

Sending a Fast E-mail

Reading and Replying to Incoming Messages

Creating a Simple Appointment

Adding a Quick Task

Taking a Note

Learning the Quick Step

Changing your Quick Step

Creating baby Quick Steps

Dragging and Dropping, and How It Saved My Life

Understanding how drag-and-drop works

Creating Outlook items with drag-and-drop

Reorganizing Outlook items with drag-and-drop

Book I: Chapter 3: Setting Up Your E-Mail Accounts

Understanding the E-Mail Process

Obtaining an e-mail account

Knowing the e-mail flavors

Configuring Your E-Mail Accounts

Having Outlook do the heavy lifting

Configuring your e-mail account manually

Maintaining Your E-Mail Accounts

Fixing a lost password

Setting the default account

Changing your account information

Changing your connection type

Book I: Chapter 4: Importing Data into Outlook

Importing E-Mail Data from Outlook’s Cousins

Importing Outlook Express/Windows Mail messages

Grabbing Outlook Express/Windows Mail account info

Synching Windows Live Mail with Outlook

Importing E-Mail Data from Eudora

Importing Contacts

Importing Other Data

Book II: E-Mail Basics

Book II: Chapter 1: Creating New Messages: Beyond the Basics

Creating a Message, Step by Step

Step 1: Display the message form

Step 2: Address the e-mail

Step 3: Send extra copies of the message

Step 4: Enter a subject and a message

Step 5: Send it off

Retrieving Your Mail

Going through the mail

Fast ways to review mail

Working with Address Books

Attaching a new address book to Outlook

Choosing which address book is the boss

Resolving to Find the Right E-Mail Address

Understanding how Outlook verifies addresses

Searching for an address in your address books

Sending Carbon Copies (Cc’s) and Blind Carbon Copies (Bcc’s)

Formatting Text to Make Your Messages Stand Out

Understanding message formats: HTML, RTF, and plain text

Applying formatting to a message

Attaching a File to a Message

Best practices for working with attachments

Attaching files

Saving a Message So You Can Send It Later

Saving a draft

Changing the Drafts folder

Book II: Chapter 2: Reading and Replying to E-Mail

Finding the Messages You Want to Read: Changing the View

Dealing with Long Conversations

Dealing with E-Mails That Use Pictures

Opening E-Mail Attachments

Saving E-Mail Attachments

Replying versus Replying to All

Controlling how text is quoted in a reply

Adding your name to a reply

Letting MailTips Save Your Grateful Backside

Forwarding an E-Mail

Resending an E-Mail Message

Book II: Chapter 3: Making Your E-Mail Look Professional and Cool

Checking Your Ignorance at the Door with Spelling and Grammar Checking

Checking spelling

Checking grammar

Using Stationery to Add Flair

Taking a stationery out for a test run

Selecting your everyday stationery

Applying a Word Theme

Applying a Color, Font, or Effects Set

Creating a custom set of colors or fonts

Customizing your look

Simply Colorizing the Background

Color is a solid choice

Why not try a gradient, texture, pattern, or image?

Inserting an Image

Illustrating Your Point

Tabling the notion

Charting the way

Getting your message to take shape

Getting smart with SmartArt

Showing exactly what you mean

Manipulating Objects

Selecting, resizing, and other basic techniques

Formatting objects and playing around

Arranging objects

Removing an image’s background

Linking to the Outside World

Inserting an Outlook Item

Playing with Text

Adding headings and other styles

Dealing with bulleted and numbered lists

Placing text exactly where you want it with a text box

Book II: Chapter 4: Repeating Yourself Easily with Signatures and Templates

Adding Your Signature

Creating a signature

Adding the signature to e-mail messages

Repeating the Same Stuff Over and Over

Saving reusable text and images as a Quick Part

Inserting a Quick Part into an Outlook item

Using a Template to Create a Reusable Message

Book III: Uber E-Mail

Book III: Chapter 1: Controlling the Sending and Receiving of Messages

How Can I Tell Whether You Read This?

Making what you send look really important

Flagging messages for yourself

Tracking when messages are delivered and read

Getting Out the Vote

Controlling Message Delivery

Delaying when messages are sent

Setting messages to expire after a certain date

Recalling and replacing messages

Changing how Outlook tells you e-mail has arrived

Stopping a Long E-Mail Download

Book III: Chapter 2: When You Have to Know Now: Instant Messaging

Understanding the Magic

Using Instant Messaging

Compatible IM Services

Adding IM contacts

Initiating an IM through Outlook

Viewing someone’s online status

Controlling your online status

Using SMS Text Messages

Choosing an Outlook Mobile Service provider

Controlling your online status

Adding mobile phone numbers

Sending a text message through an Outlook Mobile Service provider

Other cool things to do with an Outlook Mobile Service provider

Book III: Chapter 3: Getting the Latest News Delivered Right to Your Inbox

Adding News Feeds

Adding a news feed through Outlook’s Account Settings

Adding a news feed through your Web browser

Changing or Removing a Feed

Reading News Feeds

Sharing News Feeds

Sharing a feed by e-mail

Importing/exporting a news feed list

Book III: Chapter 4: Sending Mass Mailings

Creating a Distribution List

Using a contact group to send e-mails

Making changes to a contact group

Creating a Mass Mailing in Word Using Your Contacts

Book III: Chapter 5: Managing Multiple E-Mail Accounts

Controlling Sending and Receiving

Creating Send/Receive groups

Now, go get that mail!

Selecting Your Default E-Mail Account

Changing the Order in Which Accounts Are Checked

Sending from a Specific E-Mail Account

Directing Incoming Mail to a Specific Folder

Directing Sent Messages to a Different Folder

Having Replies Sent to another Address

Dealing with Multiple People, Multiple Accounts, and One Little Ol’ Computer

Book IV: Working with the Calendar

Book IV: Chapter 1: Getting Familiar with the Calendar

Appointments, Meetings, and Events — What’s the Difference?

Understanding Calendar Views

Day view

Week, Work Week, and Next 7 Days views

Month view

Schedule view

Navigating around the Calendar

Creating a Complete Appointment

Dealing with a Reminder When It Rears Its Ugly Head

Planning an All-Day Event

Book IV: Chapter 2: Going Further with the Calendar

Scheduling a Recurring Appointment, Meeting, or Event

Making Changes to a Recurring Item

Changing Appointments or Events

Changing an appointment/event without opening it

Changing an appointment/event by opening it

Removing an Appointment or Event

Adding Holidays to the Calendar

Creating Your Own Holiday List

Book IV: Chapter 3: Calendar Collaboration

Sharing Your Calendar via Exchange

Sharing a calendar with everyone

Sharing a calendar with specific people

Changing permissions or stopping sharing

Viewing Someone Else’s Calendar

Accessing someone’s main Calendar folder

Accessing someone’s custom calendar

Managing Your Time

Creating a Group Schedule

Working with group schedules

Forwarding Appointments to Others

Sharing a Calendar via E-Mail

Publishing a Calendar to Microsoft Office Online

Sharing a Calendar through Google

Exporting one of your calendars to Google Calendar

Importing a Google calendar

Subscribing to a Google calendar

Book IV: Chapter 4: All About Meetings

Scheduling a Meeting

Scheduling a meeting on an Exchange network

Scheduling a meeting when you don’t use Exchange

Changing a Meeting

Canceling a Meeting

Sending a Message to All Attendees

Dealing with Meeting Requests

Accepting, tentatively accepting, or declining a meeting

Proposing a new meeting time

Checking on Meeting Responses

Accepting or declining a time proposed by others

Automatically handling meeting responses

Preventing replies for a meeting request

Preventing time change proposals for a meeting request

Automatically Managing Resources

Book IV: Chapter 5: Making the Calendar Your Own

Creating Multiple Calendars

Adding Internet Calendars

Displaying Multiple Calendars

Displaying a calendar in its own window

Overlaying calendars

Searching the Calendar to Create Custom Views

Customizing the Calendar

Establishing the work week and work days

Changing the time grid

Setting the default reminder time

Changing the calendar color

Customizing the Date Navigator

Book V: Managing Contacts

Book V: Chapter 1: Getting in Contact

Adding a Complete Contact

Changing Contact Information

Basing a Contact on an Incoming E-Mail

Adding a Suggested Contact

Creating Another Contact from the Same Company

Getting Rid of Duplicate Contacts

Book V: Chapter 2: Working with Your Contacts

Picking a View That Suits Your Needs

Locating a Contact

Viewing a Map to a Contact’s Address

Browsing to a Contact’s Web Page

Calling a Contact

Viewing Activity Associated with a Contact

Updating a contact through the People pane and its social networks

Book V: Chapter 3: Dealing with Electronic Business Cards

Editing a Contact’s Electronic Business Card

Creating a Reusable Electronic Business Card

Creating a new electronic business card template

Using a template to create a new contact

Applying a new template to an old contact

Sharing Electronic Business Cards and Contacts

Creating a Contact from an Electronic Business Card Sent to You

Using an electronic business card to add a contact

Using an Outlook file to add a contact

Displaying More Electronic Business Cards

Book V: Chapter 4: Contacts Collaboration

Sharing Your Contacts

Sharing contacts with everyone

Sharing contacts with specific people

Changing permissions or stopping sharing

Viewing Contacts Shared by Others

Accessing someone’s main Contacts folder

Accessing someone’s custom Contacts folder

Book VI: Tracking Tasks, Taking Notes, and Organizing Life with OneNote

Book VI: Chapter 1: Creating Simple To-Do Items

Using the To-Do Bar to Track To-Do Items

Turning an incoming e-mail into a To-Do bar item

Turning a contact into a To-Do bar item

Setting the Quick Click Flag

Changing the Flag You’ve Assigned a To-Do Item

Changing a To-Do Item’s Name

Dealing with a To-Do Item You’ve Finished or No Longer Want to Flag

Marking a To-Do item as finito

Removing a flag rather than marking it complete

Deleting a To-Do item

Finding Flagged Messages

Customize the To-Do Bar

Creating a Task by Using the Daily TaskList in the Calendar

Book VI: Chapter 2: Dealing with More Complex Tasks

Creating a Detailed Task

Turning an e-mail into a task

Linking an appointment or meeting to a task

Scheduling a Recurring Task

Viewing Tasks

Working with Tasks

Changing the color of overdue tasks

Sorting and rearranging tasks

Updating what you’ve done on a task

Marking a task as complete

Setting an Automatic Reminder for Tasks

Book VI: Chapter 3: Spreading the Joy: Task Assignments

Assigning a Task to Someone Else

Reclaiming a Task You Tried to Reassign

Checking the Progress of an Assigned Task

Dealing with Task Assignments Sent to You

Accepting or declining a task

Sending a status report on an assigned task

Reassigning a reassigned task

Forwarding a Task Rather than Reassigning It

Sharing Your Tasks List

Sharing tasks with everyone

Sharing tasks with specific people

Changing permissions or stopping sharing

Viewing Tasks Shared by Others

Accessing someone’s main Tasks folder

Accessing someone’s custom task folder

Book VI: Chapter 4: Taking Notes

Creating a Complete Note

Organizing Notes with Categories

Selecting a Notes View

Making Notes Look the Way You Like

Sticking Notes to Your Desktop

Passing Notes

Book VI: Chapter 5: Taking Notes in Overdrive: OneNote

Organizing in OneNote

Navigating in OneNote

Creating a Notebook

Adding a New Page

Renaming, rearranging, or removing pages

Adding subpages

Adding a New Page by Using a Template

Adding a template to an existing page

Designating a favorite template

Adding a Section

Renaming, rearranging, or removing sections

Adding a Section Group

Taking a Note

Creating a Linked Note

Adding Links to Other Pages, Files, or the Internet

Linking to other notebook pages

Linking to files, documents, or Web pages

Inserting a Document or File

Inserting a Picture of a Document

Inserting an Image from a Scanner or Digital Camera

Creating a Quick Side Note from Any Program

Formatting Text

Creating a table

Adding space to a page

Updating the date or time

Writing and Drawing Notes by Hand

Set drawing options

It’s touching

Adding rules to a page

Converting handwriting to editable text or an equation

Drawing Lines, Arrows, and Shapes

Inserting Images

Inserting a Screen Shot

Adding Audio or Video

Book VI: Chapter 6: Maximizing the Power of OneNote

Inserting Details of an Appointment or Meeting on a Page

Creating an Outlook Task on a Page

Marking an Outlook Task as Done

Inserting an Outlook Contact or E-Mail on a Page

Sending a Page to Someone

E-mailing a OneNote or PDF Version

Sending Your Notes to Word

Sharing Some of Your Notes

Sharing Notebooks

Synchronizing changes

Reviewing changes

Dealing with different versions of a page

Using the Recycle Bin to restore a deleted page

Blogging Your Notes

Securing Your Notes

Unlocking a protected section

Removing the password protection

Changing the password

Reorganizing Your Notes

Selecting pages

Moving pages and notes

Moving sections

Tagging Important Information

Searching for Data

Using the Search Results pane

Finding tagged items

Book VII: Working with Business Contact Manager

Book VII: Chapter 1: Minding Your Business Contact Manager

Comparing BCM and Outlook

Knowing Who Should Use BCM

Getting Started in BCM

Creating a database

Opening a database

Finding your current database

Deleting a database

Importing Contacts into BCM

Determining your data type

Importing data

Moving contacts from Outlook

Book VII: Chapter 2: Introducing the Basic Business Contact Manager Elements

Working with Business Contacts

Adding a new Business Contact

Making changes to a Business Contact

Adding a Business Contact from an Account record

Getting the 411 on Accounts

Entering Accounts

Creating an Account from an existing Business Contact

Editing an existing Account

Linking Outlook to BCM Records

Linking existing Outlook activities to a BCM record

Linking a BCM record to a new Outlook item

Turning Your Business into a Major Project

Projecting your Business Projects

Chipping away at a Business Project

Tracking your project progress

Bidding your project adieu

Book VII: Chapter 3: Working with Opportunities

Creating a New Opportunity

Finding More Opportunity in Your Opportunities

Wrapping a ribbon around an opportunity

Editing an opportunity

Closing the deal

Deleting an opportunity

Adding Products and Services to an Opportunity

Editing or Deleting a Product or Service

Book VII: Chapter 4: Reports and Dashboards

Knowing the Basic BCM Reports

Running a BCM Report

Giving Your Reports a Facelift

Modifying an existing report

Filtering out the bad stuff

Drilling for Dollars in Your Reports

Giving your reports a helping hand

Having a refreshing look at your report

Working with Dashboards

Book VIII: Customizing Outlook

Book VIII: Chapter 1: Organizing Items with Categories

Adding a Category to an Open Outlook Item

Adding a Category to an Item without Opening It

Assigning a Quick Click Category to an Item

Removing a Category from an Item

Managing Your Categories

Renaming a category

Assigning shortcut keys to categories

Assigning new colors to categories

Creating new categories

Removing a category

Book VIII: Chapter 2: Changing Your View on Outlook

Viewing Outlook in a Whole New Light

Changing views

Tweaking an existing view

Resetting a standard view

Changing the name of a view

Creating a view from scratch

Deleting a custom view

Tabling the Table View

Adding a column to a table

Removing columns

Moving a column

Resizing a column

Arranging for a Different View in Outlook

Getting in with the in group

Sorting Your Data

Sort of sorting your column

What sort of sort do you want?

Reading Can Be a Pane

Reading is a turn-on

Reading in the Reading pane

Manually marking messages

Displaying All the Messages in a Folder

Book VIII: Chapter 3: Customizing Outlook Forms

Making Quick Changes to the Quick Access Toolbar

Adding a Quick Access toolbar command from the Ribbon

Yet another way to quickly add Quick Access toolbar commands

Adding yet more Quick Access toolbar commands

Playing with Forms

Creating a new form by using existing fields

Form Beautification 101

Adding custom-defined fields

Using Custom Forms

Book IX: Managing All Your Outlook Stuff

Book IX: Chapter 1: Finding a Place for Your Stuff

Developing an Outlook Filing System

Creating a new folder

Moving an item to another folder

Rearranging your folders

Giving folders the heave-ho

Moving an item to a different type of folder

Cleaning Up Your Mess

Cleaning up your folders

Giving Outlook a bit of spring cleaning

Emptying the trash

This is one for the archives

Book IX: Chapter 2: Playing by the Rules

Making Up the Rules as You Go

Creating the basic game plan

Taking rules the whole nine yards

Adding bells and whistles to your rules

Bending the Rules

Running with the rules

Cheating with the Rules

Copying a rule

Importing and exporting a list of rules

Throwing your rules out the window

Book IX: Chapter 3: Making Mincemeat Out of Spam

Maintaining Your Junk

Changing the level of protection in the junk e-mail filter

Giving senders your seal of approval

Ensuring that your recipients make the list

Blocking a name from your Inbox

Putting Junk in Its Place

Relegating a message to the junk pile

Sorting through your junk mail

Taking out the trash — permanently

Protecting Yourself from Phishing Attacks

Changing the phishing options

Enable or disable links in phishing e-mail messages

Giving Your Mail a Postmark

Book IX: Chapter 4: Seek and Ye Shall Find

Getting Instant Gratification with Instant Searching

Enabling Instant Search

Fiddling with the Instant Search options

Searching instantly

Refining your Instant Search

Finding what you’re looking for with Advanced Find

Searching through the Search Folders

Adding a predefined Search folder

Tweaking a Search folder

Deleting a Search folder

Searching 101 — Finding Names in the Address Book

Fiddling with the Folder List

Working with Quick Steps and Quick Step Groups

Tweaking a Quick Step

Creating your own Quick Steps

Arranging your Quick Steps

Book IX: Chapter 5: Securing Outlook E-Mail

Working with Passwords

Trusting the Trust Center

Getting the lowdown on downloads

Guarding your privacy

Grappling with Macros

Handling a macro security warning

Changing the macro settings in the Trust Center

Help! Someone’s Sending E-Mail on My Behalf

Answering the security warning

Preventing future security warnings

Kicking the HTML out of Your E-Mail

Sending via Certified E-Mail

Getting a digital ID from a certifying authority

Putting your digital ID to work

Exchanging e-mail certificates

Book X: Out and About: Taking Outlook on the Road

Book X: Chapter 1: Managing Your Company E-Mail

Letting Automatic Replies Handle Mail While You’re Gone

Turning Automatic Replies on or off

Letting rules control mail while you’re away

Changing the rules

What to do if you only have a POP3 or IMAP e-mail account

Assigning a Delegate to Handle E-Mail and Appointments While You’re Gone

Assigning a delegate

Changing a delegate’s permission levels

Managing Someone Else’s E-Mail and Calendar

Displaying somebody else’s folders

Dealing with meetings and tasks as a delegate

Dealing with e-mail as a delegate

Dealing with appointments as a delegate

Book X: Chapter 2: Turning Your E-Mail Accounts into Roadies

Getting Personal E-Mail on the Road

Problem one

Problem two

Solutions for a Modern World: Using Windows Live

Adding a Windows Live Mail account to Outlook

Outlook contacts and Windows Live Mail

Importing Outlook Contacts into a Web-Based E-Mail Account

Controlling E-Mail

Getting e-mail messages on a second computer without deleting them

Downloading only message headers

Working with message headers

Taking Microsoft Exchange on the Road

Downloading the Offline Address Book

Changing the Cached Exchange mode settings to download only headers

Book X: Chapter 3: Printing Your Stuff and Taking It with You

Printing Items and Any Attached Documents

Printing a List of Items

Printing a Blank Calendar

Outlook® 2010 All-in-One For Dummies®

by Jennifer Fulton and Karen S. Fredricks

Outlook® 2010 All-in-One For Dummies®

Published byWiley Publishing, Inc.111 River St.Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley Publishing logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for the Rest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Dummies Daily, The Fun and Easy Way, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

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Manufactured in the United States of America

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About the Authors

Jennifer Fulton, iVillage’s former Computer Coach, is an experienced computer consultant and trainer with over 20 years in the business. Jennifer is a best-selling author of over 100 computer books for the beginner, intermediate, and advanced user, ranging from the self-motivated adult business user to the college, technical, high-school, or middle-school student. Jennifer is also a computer trainer for corporate personnel, teaching a variety of classes, including Windows, Microsoft Office, Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop Elements, and others.

Jennifer is a self-taught veteran of computing, which means, of course, that if something can happen to a computer user, it has probably happened to her at one time or another. Thus, Jennifer brings what’s left of her sense of humor to her many books, including Outlook 2007 All-in-One Desk Reference, Adobe Photoshop Elements 4 in a Snap, How to Use Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 and Fireworks 8, Adobe Photoshop Elements 3 in a Snap, Digital Photography with Photoshop Album in a Snap, Paint Shop Pro 8 in a Snap, and Learning Microsoft Office 2007.

Karen S. Fredricks began her life rather non-technically growing up in Kenya. She attended high school in Beirut, Lebanon, where she developed her sense of humor while dodging bombs. After traveling all over the world, Karen ended up at the University of Florida and is an ardent Gator fan. In addition to undergraduate studies in English, Theater, and Accounting, Karen has a master’s degree in Psycholinguistics. Beginning her career teaching high school English and theater, Karen switched to working with the PC during its inception in the early ’80s and has worked as a full-time computer consultant and trainer ever since.

Karen is an ACT! Certified Consultant, an ACT! Premier Trainer, a Microsoft Office User Specialist, and a QuickBooks Pro Certified Advisor. She is the author of four For Dummies books on ACT! In addition, she has written Outlook 2007 Business Contact Manager For Dummies and is completing work on Microsoft Office Live For Dummies. A true fan of the For Dummies series, she helped organize The Authors Unconference, the first ever gathering of For Dummies authors.

Karen resides in Boca Raton, Florida. Her company, Tech Benders, specializes in contact management software and provides computer consulting, support, and training services. She is also a regular guest on several syndicated computer radio talk shows. In her spare time, Karen loves to spend time with family and friends, play tennis, work out, road bike, and write schlocky poetry.

Karen loves to hear from her readers. Feel free to send her your comments about the book to [email protected] or visit her Web site www.techbenders.com to learn more about the products listed in this book.

Dedication

Jennifer Fulton: To my husband Scott, who patiently and lovingly supports me in everything I do, and my daughter Katerina, who is my future and my life.

Karen S. Fredricks: To Gary Kahn, who loves and encourages me every step of the way!

Authors' Acknowledgments

Jennifer Fulton: I would like to thank all the wonderful people at Wiley Publishing who worked hard under a very tight deadline to guide this book through to its completion. I would especially like to thank Katie Mohr for giving me this opportunity and Paul Levesque for his keen eye as an editor.

Karen S. Fredricks: This is my sixth book for Wiley Publishing, and as usual, they’ve made writing this book a pleasure! Thanks to Katie Mohr, my acquisitions editor, for believing in me; I look forward to working with you on many more titles! Special thanks to my project editor, Paul Levesque. Laura Miller, the copy editor, had the unenviable task of making me look good; her edits were always right on! Technical editor Lee Musick’s sharp eye helped to spot all the changes between the beta and final versions of Outlook 2010. It was an honor to work with Jennifer Fulton, my co-author; I hope we work on more titles together again in the future!

Rich Tennant is the coolest cartoonist ever. I am astounded by the thought, research and time that he devotes to each one of his cartoons. I’m not sure which is funnier — his cartoons or his stories about creating his cartoons!

The most important acknowledgment of all goes out to all of the readers of the For Dummies series and, more specifically, the readers of this book. I hope you’ll enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our online registration form located at www.dummies.com/register/.

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

Acquisitions, Editorial, and Media Development

Project Editor: Paul Levesque

Executive Editor: Katie Mohr

Copy Editor: Laura K. Miller

Technical Editor: Lee Musick, Daniel A. Begun

Editorial Manager: Leah Cameron

Editorial Assistant: Amanda Graham

Sr. Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case

Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)

Composition Services

Project Coordinator: Sheree Montgomery

Layout and Graphics: Melanee Habig, Kelly Kijovsky

Proofreaders: Melissa Cossell, Rebecca Denoncour, Susan Hobbs

Indexer: Christine Karpeles

Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies

Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher

Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher

Mary Bednarek, Executive Acquisitions Director

Mary C. Corder, Editorial Director

Publishing for Consumer Dummies

Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher

Composition Services

Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services

Introduction

Life in the digital age seems so complicated to me. When I was younger, life was simple: Go to school, do your homework fast, then play, play, play until Mom calls you in for dinner. Then go back out and play until just past dark. We didn’t need a lot of fancy electronics — just something resembling a ball (even if it was a bit deflated), a set of ever-changing rules, and a big backyard.

As an adult, things have gotten much too hurry-up-and-wait, if you know what I mean. Sure, it’s nice to have all the latest gadgets — I don’t know what I’d do without my BlackBerry, or my notebook computer and its wireless Internet connection. But I find it ironic that the tools that were supposed to make life easier have made it more complex. Sure, having a cell phone means I can get through to my daughter when needed and get help in case of an emergency. It also means that my boss can find me even when I go out on the weekends, or that a client can track me down at all hours and give me new things to get done by the end of the day.

If your life runs nonstop like mine, you’re probably overwhelmed with lists, lists, lists. You keep notes to remind you to pick up milk on the way home and to keep track of your client’s cell-phone number, your best friend’s new address, and directions to that restaurant where you’re meeting your boss for an employee review. Rather than filling your purse, wallet, or pockets with a bunch of notes, I recommend turning the whole mess over to Microsoft Outlook. I’m pretty confident that Outlook is a much better organizer.

Outlook includes several parts, or modules; each module keeps track of an important aspect of your busy, busy life:

♦ Mail: Stores incoming and outgoing e-mail messages in folders you create. It also lets you quickly find e-mail based on content and re-sort messages however you want, and it provides a quick and easy way of previewing e-mail attachments without having to open them completely (and possibly infect your system with a virus).

♦ Calendar: Stores all your appointments, meetings, and day-long events and displays them in daily, weekly, or monthly format. It also displays the Daily Tasks List, in case you don’t have enough going on in your day.

♦ Contacts: Helps you remember the important facts about the people you know, such as their names, phone numbers, addresses, e-mail addresses, cell-phone numbers, and Web page addresses. This module also helps you track important trivia, such as the names of a contact’s spouse, children, and family pet.

♦ Tasks: Tracks all the things you need to get done, now or someday. Tasks are divided into two groups: To-Do items, which are basically quick notes about things to do, and tasks, which contain more detailed info (such as task start date, due date, number of hours spent on the task, status, percent complete, priority, and a reminder to do the task).

♦ Notes: Tracks small bits of stray info, such as your locker combination and super-secret decoder password. You can even post these notes on your Windows Desktop if you need them to be more in your face.

♦ Journal: A module wanna-be. Although the Journal was originally designed to track all sorts of activities, such as e-mails sent to and from a specific contact, appointments made with a contact, phone calls made to a contact, and Office documents associated with that contact (such as Excel workbooks and Word documents), most of this is done by automatically without the Journal’s help, and displayed almost everywhere in Outlook, through something called the People pane. To learn what you might still use the Journal for, check out Book I, Chapter 1.

You may be completely satisfied with the group of six hard-working modules described in the preceding list. But if you’re one of those people for whom nothing is ever enough, well, depending on your version of Office, Outlook comes with several companion programs that expand its functionality:

♦ OneNote: Notes on steroids. With this creature, you can create notebooks on any subject and fill their pages with text, graphics, sound recordings, screen captures, Web links, and links to Outlook items (such as appointments and tasks).

♦ Business Contact Manager (BCM to its friends): Can help youmanage numerous hot and cold leads, important contacts and their accounts, and several money-generating projects.

About This Book

Even though Outlook is made up of a lot of parts, such as Mail, Contacts, and Calendar, most people use it at first only to manage e-mail. That’s okay; Outlook’s a big boy and can take the fact that you think it’s only an e-mail program. After you get used to using Outlook, though, you may figure out that it’s pretty handy for all sorts of things — except maybe taking out the garbage and clearing a drain.

Don’t let all those Outlook modules overwhelm you at first; you can get to each of them in your own sweet time. And the way this book is organized can help you. Each chapter is written with a kind of “I don’t know much” attitude, so if you want to jump over to one of the Calendar chapters and start there, you can. If something you need to know is located in a different chapter than the one you’re reading, I’ll tell you about it and point you in the right direction. Don’t worry.

Along the way, I offer a lot of hand-holding. Steps are written clearly, with explanations and a lot of pictures to help you figure out whether you’re getting it right.

Conventions Used in This Book

Discovering the Ribbon that runs along the top of the Outlook window may throw you at first, but Book I, Chapter 1, helps you get over any trepidations you may have. Frankly, I found the Ribbon a bit overwhelming at first because its purpose is to show you every command you might ever want to use. However, after a second or so, I found it the smartest design change Microsoft could have ever made, and I am ohhh so glad to see it incorporated throughout Outlook at last. The Ribbon makes it quite easy to locate the command you need, such as New E-Mail (for creating a message) or Reply (for replying to a message you’ve received).

The Ribbon doesn’t just hang out in the Outlook window. Nope — whenever you try to create something, the Ribbon continues to stick around by using a special window that Outlook calls a form. So, if you create a message or an appointment, you see the Ribbon. If you’re wondering what the Ribbon looks like, you can find a picture of it in Book I, Chapter 1, so the two of you can be properly introduced. Go ahead and take a look; the Introduction will still be here when you get back. On the Ribbon, the tabs along the top allow you to display different sets of buttons, and the group name appears below each group of similar buttons. And that big orange button on the far left edge of the Ribbon is called the File tab. The File tab is your gateway to something Microsoft calls the Backstage, where you can perform ancillary tasks, such as printing, creating e-mail accounts, and setting options.

Every book has its own way of showing you how to do stuff. In this book, if I want you to select a command on the Ribbon, I give you the sequence of things to do, like this:

Click the New Items button on the Home tab and select Contact from the pop-up menu that appears.

Pretty clear, I think: Start by clicking the Home tab on the Ribbon, which causes the Ribbon to display the Home tab buttons. Scan from left to right, and you’re sure to find the New Items button I’m talking about — the buttons are all generally large and easy to read. After you find the New Items button, click it to reveal a pop-up menu of items; select Contact from this menu by clicking it.

Occasionally, a button is so small that I don’t think you’re likely to locate it quickly. In such a case, I add the group name (the name that appears under a group of buttons on the Ribbon) to the instructions in order to help you find the particular button I mean:

Click the Meeting button in the Respond group on the Home tab.

Foolish Assumptions

Well, maybe it’s foolish for me to assume something about you because we’ve never actually met, but I’m betting that you’re a Windows user and therefore at least a little familiar with basic Windows stuff, such as windows, minimizing and maximizing, and using menus. I’m also assuming that you know how to use a mouse and how to click and double-click.

I guess I wouldn’t be far off in assuming that you have an e-mail account somewhere and that you want to send and receive e-mail messages. That’s what Outlook is more or less known for. I don’t assume, however, that you’ve set up Outlook to get messages; instead, I show you how to do that in Book I, Chapter 3.

Finally, when I show you something, I don’t assume that you know anything about Outlook other than its name or that you know how to use Outlook to do anything.

How This Book Is Organized

Although Outlook is actually a pretty complex, full-fledged program, don’t let its power overwhelm you. It’s remarkable how little you actually need to know to get started, and I’ve stuck it all in Book I, “Getting Started.” In fact, you don’t even have to read all four chapters in Book I. I recommend at least glancing through Chapters 1 and 2, though, because they teach you the basics of how to navigate and use Outlook.

So, with two little chapters, you’re off to the races. From there, you can skip around to whichever chapter deals with a topic of interest. Not sure where to find stuff? Don’t worry; I have this book pretty well organized so that you can find what you need quickly. This book is divided into minibooks — ten of them, in fact, each focusing on a particular aspect of Outlook. Each book contains chapters, numbered from 1 to whatever. So, when I say to go look in Book II, Chapter 4, I mean the fourth chapter in the second minibook. You can always tell what book and chapter you’re in by looking for that gray box on the right-hand page.

Book I: Getting Started

This minibook covers the basics of the Outlook window, such as how to use the Navigation pane, the Reading pane, the Ribbon, and Backstage. Chapter 2 shows you how to quickly create just about any item in Outlook, such as a quick message or appointment. Obviously, there’s more to creating items than what’s covered in Chapter 2, so from there, you can jump to the book that covers the item you’re working with in more depth, such as Calendar. This minibook also includes stuff you might not need to do because someone’s already done it for you, such as adding your e-mail account information and importing data from your old e-mail program.

Book II: E-Mail Basics

This minibook shows you how to use the Mail module. You can find out how to create more than just simple e-mail messages, read and reply to e-mail you get, make your messages look snappy, and repeat the same information (such as your name and phone number) in all outgoing e-mails without retyping it all the time.

Book III: Über E-Mail

This minibook covers more than the need-to-know stuff, moving into the cool-to-know area of e-mail. In this minibook, you can find out how to manage multiple e-mail accounts, control when e-mail is sent or received, use Outlook to send text messages (yes, you can!), and blanket the Internet with a single message. Don’t worry, I don’t show you how to generate spam (mass junk e-mail); I show you how to send a single message to multiple people in your Contacts list.

Book IV: Working with the Calendar

As you might expect, this minibook focuses on the part of Outlook that keeps track of appointments, meetings, and such: Calendar. You can find out how to display Calendar in a bunch of different ways; create appointments, meetings, and day-long events; make those items repeat in your calendar without retyping them; make changes to appointments, meetings, and events; share your calendar with other people in your company; add cool stuff, such as Internet calendars; and customize the way Calendar looks and operates.

Book V: Managing Contacts

This minibook focuses on the Contacts module, showing you the basics in adding contacts and displaying them in a variety of ways. You also can find out how to work your contacts, pulling up an associated Web site or a map of their location. I also show you cool stuff such as creating mock business cards and sharing contacts with colleagues and friends.

Book VI: Tracking Tasks, Taking Notes, and Organizing Life with OneNote

This minibook covers a lot of ground — the Tasks module, where you create tasks and To-Do items (think mini-tasks), and the Notes module, where you can create quick Post-It-like short notes. You can also find out how to use OneNote, a cool add-on program that allows you to gather Outlook items such as tasks and meeting details into one place, alongside your notes from the meeting, handouts, graphics, audio notes, and other minutiae.

Book VII: Working with Business Contact Manager

This minibook focuses on an Outlook add-on program called Business Contact Manager. You can find out how to use it to manage business contacts, business accounts, and the revenue they generate. You also can figure out how to keep track of the details surrounding large projects that involve multiple contacts, a myriad of tasks, and who knows how much record keeping.

Book VIII: Customizing Outlook

Jump to this minibook to see how to create categories for grouping Outlook items together; change your view of messages, tasks, contacts, appointments, and such; and customize the basic working window, the form (the window in which you create an item, such as an outgoing e-mail message or a new contact).

Book IX: Managing All Your Outlook Stuff

After you create tons of Outlook items, including contacts, e-mail messages, and tasks, you probably need to organize them. You can approach this problem in several ways, all of which are covered in this minibook. You can find out how to create new folders to put stuff in, move or copy items from folder to folder, and clean up your mailbox. You also can find out how to complete handy tasks, such as using rules to automatically sort incoming mail; deal with spam (junk e-mail); locate the stuff you’ve created; and make Outlook more secure.

Book X: Out and About: Taking Outlook on the Road

This minibook covers ways to manage the problem of getting e-mail when you’re out of the office (or away from home), how to deal with incoming messages automatically when you’re on vacation (or how to get someone to do it for you), and how to print stuff such as e-mail messages or contact info.

Icons Used in This Book

While you browse through this tome, your thoughts will occasionally be interrupted by little pictures (icons) in the margin. These icons point out important (or, in the case of Technical Stuff, simply fun) things you should know.

These paragraphs contain shortcuts and other tips that can help you get something done quickly and get back to enjoying life.

These icons point you toward other important information in the book, or they may just contain important things to make a note of.

Watch out for this information because it may very well prevent you from making a common mistake.

Technical Stuff paragraphs contain interesting but not vital information, such as the reasons behind a particular task or the ways to deal with a particular situation that applies to only a select few. Don’t feel compelled to read these tidbits unless you’re truly interested in the topic at hand.

Where to Go from Here

The best place to start if you’re new to Microsoft Outlook is Book I, Chapter 1. Then, move on to Book I, Chapter 2. Those two chapters give you the basic stuff you need to know to start using Outlook right away. From there, just jump around to the chapters that interest you or that point you to the ways to solve the problem you’re dealing with at the moment, such as how to get an appointment to appear somewhere else on your calendar (check out Book IV, Chapter 2) or change somebody’s e-mail address in the Contacts list (flip to Book V, Chapter 1).

Book I: Getting Started

Chapter 1: An Insider’s Look at the Outlook Interface

In This Chapter

Getting comfortable with the Outlook interface

Moving from place to place within Outlook

Getting a handle on today’s events

Making everything the right size for you

Moving Outlook out of the way while you do other work

Right now, I’m sitting here wondering exactly how much information a single adult needs just to get through any given day. I certainly need to keep track of a lot — phone numbers, cell numbers, e-mail addresses, meetings, appointments, and endless lists of things to do before anybody catches on that I haven’t done them yet.

If ever a program was designed for the Information Age, it’s Outlook. I bet that the people at Microsoft created Outlook just so they could see their desks every once in a while. As you discover in this chapter, Outlook is pretty handy for managing the tons of data that clutter your desk on a daily basis — the hundreds of messages, appointments you better not miss, names you better not forget, and things you better do.

What Can Outlook Do for Me?

There’s no sense in letting Outlook sit around on your Windows desktop if it doesn’t at least help you clean up your real desktop once in a while.

As you probably already know, Outlook handles e-mail messages, both coming and going. What you might not know, however, is that it integrates nicely with other forms of electronic communication, including instant messaging, text messaging, and electronic news feeds (RSS). All this communicating takes place within the confines of Outlook’s Mail module — which happens to be the module that appears when you start Outlook, as shown in Figure 1-1. The Mail module is so handy that it takes two minibooks to tell you all about it: Books II and III. Not to mention what you learn about the Mail module in this minibook (Book I).

New Features

If you send a lot of e-mail (like I do), you will really, really (did I mention really?) appreciate a new feature that Outlook calls Mail Tips. I call it Silently Saving My Grateful Backside. Assuming that you use Outlook at work, Mail Tips questions your questionable choices before you make them. I’m talking embarrassing mistakes such as sending out an e-mail reply to 1,000 of your nearest and dearest colleagues when you meant to reply only to the sender. Or sending out a message to your boss after she already told you three times that she was going to be off today and to send stuff to Bob, instead. Or including an outsider in what should have been an inside-the-company-only discussion. Intrigued? See Book II, Chapter 2.

Another cool feature of Outlook is Quick Steps. Although it can’t save your backside, it may very well save your hair (because you’ll stop pulling it out so often). Quick Steps allows you to perform a series of steps by clicking a single button. Outlook comes with many of these handy things already programmed for you, such as quickly generating an e-mail to your team or your manager, moving an e-mail to a folder that you use often, and generating a meeting request by using the currently selected e-mail as a basis. But you can program more. The time-saving possibilities are endless, so jump over to Book I, Chapter 2 to find out more before you run out of hair.

Social butterflies will love the new People pane, which appears at the bottom of e-mail messages, contact cards, and other Outlook items. The People pane helps you stay connected to friends and colleagues through the information they post on social networks such as Sharepoint, Facebook, Windows Live, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, and so on. In addition, it helps you find meetings, e-mails, and files you may have gotten from a particular person. See the upcoming section, “Viewing Mail with the Reading Pane,” for more info.

There’s one more new feature that you should get to know, and it’s Backstage. To the folks at Microsoft, Backstage is the place where you go to perform behind the scene tasks such as printing, saving, opening files, and setting options. You get to Backstage through the File tab, which is bright orange and located in the upper left-hand corner of the Outlook window. You learn more about Backstage later in this chapter, in the section “Backstage Pass”.

Outlook Modules

In addition to the Mail module, Outlook has five other modules, each one designed to help you manage a different part of your busy life:

♦ Calendar: The life’s work of the Calendar module is to keep track of all your appointments, meetings, and day-long events such as birthdays, holidays, and seminars. And the magic doesn’t stop there. The Calendar can help you easily manage multiple calendars — from the busy schedules of your children to the central calendar for your department. You can find the nitty-gritty details about using the Calendar in Book IV.

Figure 1-1: Outlook handles e-mail and more.

♦ Contacts: The Contacts module organizes the details you need to remember about all the people in your life, from your favorite plumber’s emergency phone number to the name of your boss’s spouse. You can use it to keep track of important business contacts, even grouping people from the same company together. And when you’re running late for a meeting, Contacts can quickly provide a map to the meeting’s location. The Contacts module is the star of Book V.

♦ Tasks: In the Tasks module, you can find all those things that you need to do whenever you can find the time. You can quickly arrange tasks by due date, priority, or any other category you can think of (such as Pass On to Some Unsuspecting Fool). You master multitasking in Book VI.

♦ Notes: In the Notes module, you keep track of, well, your notes. I know you prefer little bits of scrap paper, the back of cash-register receipts, empty envelopes, and Kleenexes, but why not give the Notes module a shot? See Book VI for help.

♦ Journal: Playing a background role is the Journal (so much in the background that you don’t see it initially on the Navigation pane). Its lowly status is due to the fact that most of what the Journal does is now done automatically for you in Outlook 2010! You see, the Journal was originally created to track your activities. I know you’re thinking, “My busybody neighbor in the next apartment is already doing a pretty good job of that.” Unlike your neighbor, however, the Journal tracks the e-mail, appointments, and To-Do items associated with a particular client. But Outlook itself now does this tracking business without your permission. The only thing you might tell the Journal to track now is which Office documents you work on, and when. When you return to the Journal at some later date, the documents you’ve created or changed since turning on this document-tracking feature appear in a long list.

To tell the Journal to track your Office document history, switch to the Journal by first adding its button to the Navigation pane (see the section “Building better buttons in the Navigation pane,” later in this chapter, for details). A message appears, reminding you, silly person, that Outlook basically tracks all the normal Journal stuff automatically. But you want to turn the Journal on anyway, so click Yes in this message box. In the dialog box that pops up, select the Office programs whose documents you want to track from the Also Record Files From pane and click OK. That’s it! Just return to the Journal when you want to view a list of documents that you’ve changed or created since turning on the Journal’s document tracking feature. You can change to Timeline view to view these documents in a kind of historical timeline if you want by clicking the Timeline button on the Home tab. Double-click an entry to open it in Office.

Outlook is a part of Microsoft Office, so it’s designed to play nicely with its brothers and sisters. Throughout this book, you can find many ways to use the various Office components — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and so on — with Outlook. For example, you might want to use the addresses in Contacts to create form letters in Word, or you might want to insert Excel data into an e-mail message in Outlook. Whether your goal is to get data into or out of Outlook, you can find a simple way to accomplish your task within these pages.

You can jump between modules — Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, and Notes — by choosing the module that you want from the Navigation pane (see Figure 1-1), which is described in more detail later (in the section “Getting Around with the Navigation Pane,” to be precise).

Heeeerrre’s Outlook!

Like most Web pages, Outlook’s window (refer to Figure 1-1) contains a navigation system on the left and a viewing area on the right. The viewing area changes a bit when you move from module to module, but basically items appear in a big, long list.

You can choose the view you want to use to display the items in the current module by clicking the Change View button on the View tab and selecting a view. For example, when you open the Mail module, it displays e-mail by using the Compact view, which probably sounds like Outlook has somehow reviewed all your messages and gotten rid of the meaningless ones, thus compacting the list of messages you need to read. Unfortunately, even Outlook can’t decide for you which messages you should read. (To find out what Compact view actually does, read the Technical Stuff.) The point here is, if you don’t happen to like Compact view you can choose a different view to display e-mail messages. After you choose a view, you can then sort the corresponding items (in this case, messages) by selecting a particular arrangement. Just choose the arrangement you want (such as From order, which arranges messages by sender) from the Arrangement section of the View tab.

Outlook initially arranges messages in Date order, which sorts your mail in the order in which you receive it, grouped by day. Although this is a pretty good arrangement, I recommend that you sort your messages in Date (Conversation) order, which is a slight variant. To do that, select the Show as Conversations option in the Conversations group on the View tab. This option keeps messages in date order, but arranges them in conversations, grouping e-mails that you’ve sent and received on the same subject together. Each conversation is compacted so that initially, only the most recent message in that group (the most recent e-mail in the conversation) is visible. This may alarm you at first, because all of your email is not displayed — only the most recent message in each conversation. As you’ll quickly learn though, Date (Conversation) order (which is known by its nickname, Conversation view) instantly shrinks your Inbox into something more manageable, so this “hiding messages” trick turns out to be a good thing. In addition, it won’t take you long to realize what a life-saver Conversation view is when you’re trying to piece together who said what when. See Book II, Chapter 2 for more information about using Conversation view. In the meantime, I’m switching over to Conversation view, so expect that most of the figures in this book will feature it — but not all, since each Mail view is useful for its own reason, as you learn in Book II, Chapter 2.

So, to recap, the viewing area is located on the right, and it changes depending on which module you’re in. The left side of the Outlook window is where the navigation system (known as the Navigation pane) resides. As you discover in the section “Getting Around with the Navigation Pane,” later in this chapter, the Navigation pane helps you get around the various modules in Outlook.

At the top of the Outlook window, you find the File tab, Quick Access toolbar, and the Ribbon (again, refer to Figure 1-1). There are lots of buttons, buttons, buttons here — and you can figure out how to use them in the following section.

By the way, if you don’t know what a button does, just hover the mouse over it for a second, and a ScreenTip appears, explaining it all to you patiently.

On the far-right side of the Outlook window, you can find the To-Do bar. This guy doesn’t automatically show up in every module, although you can make him appear whenever you want. He’s there to remind you of upcoming appointments and things that you need to get done. You can read more about the To-Do bar in the section “Your Week in a Nutshell: The To-Do Bar,” later in this chapter.

A Ribbon in the Sky

When you start Outlook 2010 for the first time, you probably notice the horizontal string of buttons across the top of its window. Well, okay — you may have first noticed all those unanswered messages, and then the buttons. Anyway, this string of buttons is called the Ribbon, and my guess is that it looks pretty familiar, given that the Ribbon was introduced in Office 2007 (although not in Outlook).

Even if you’re somewhat familiar with the Ribbon and its neighbors, the File tab and the Quick Access toolbar (refer to Figure 1-1), my other guess is that you probably still don’t know some things about them, busy as you were actually using Office 2007, rather than exploring the nuances of its interface. So, indulge me a second while I babble on about these little wonders.

Backstage pass

First, the File tab provides access to the commands that you used to find on the old File menu, such as New, Open, Save, Print, and Exit. Microsoft thinks of these as “behind the scenes” kind of commands, so it grouped such commands into a single platform it calls the Backstage.