Outlook

In past versions, Outlook and Word had a potentially much more intimate connection than they have in Office 2007. That’s because you could use Word itself to view, edit, and compose your e-mail. Although Outlook’s e-mail editor might look a whole lot like Word, it’s not Word anymore. Instead, it’s a small, mostly independent subset of Word, borrowed from the Word programming team. If you have only Outlook 2007, you still have the same Word-like editor. In fact, if your word processing needs are fairly simple, you might not even need Word. But let’s not be hasty. After all—we have an Office 2007 Bible we want to sell you!

We’ve already looked at how to use the Outlook address book to perform an e-mail merge. See Chapter 10 for the nitty-gritty details.

Using the Outlook Address Book in Word

One of the more conspicuous relationships between Word and Outlook is the use of the Outlook Address Book for addresses in Word documents—especially letters and envelopes. For example, in the Mailings tab of the Ribbon, click Envelopes or Labels in the Create group, and then click the Insert Address tool (see Figure 42-10).

The Select Name dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 42-11. If you have multiple Contact folders set up as address books, click the Address Book drop-down arrow and choose the one you want. Note that the Search option enables you to search the Name Only or More columns. When you use Name Only, the dialog box displays only names that start with what you type.

Alternatively, click More Columns, type what you’re looking for, and click Go. This search feature searches for occurrences of the search text anywhere in any contact field. If that search gives you too many hits, click Advanced Find. Use the Find dialog box to search for names containing text you type. When you find the person or business whose address you want, select it and click OK.

This method is great for envelopes and labels, but what about for inserting the address in the body of the letter, or what if you want to type “John’s mailing address is . . .”? You could simply use the envelope or label feature, select the address from the dialog box, and then dismiss the Envelopes and Labels dialog box (unless your address book is set up to display the contact’s name rather than name and e-mail address). Someone reading this does exactly that. Caught you, eh?

Rather than send you on a hunting expedition, let’s save a little trouble right now. The Address Book or Insert Address tool does not exist in any freestanding Ribbon. The only way to get to it in the default ribbon is using the Envelopes and Labels dialog box.

However, there is a better way. If you were following along, dismiss the various dialog boxes, right-click the Quick Access Toolbar, and choose Customize Quick Access Toolbar. You probably saw this coming, right? To drive home the point, set Choose Commands From to Commands Not in the Ribbon. About halfway down the first page of A commands, locate Address Book. Click it and then click Add. If you don’t like where it is, you can use the up or down buttons to move it.

Smart Tags, Outlook, and Word

Another way in which Outlook rears its Outlookish head in Word is through the use of Smart Tags. If Smart Tags are enabled, when you type the name of someone in your Contact list, you can access that contact’s information, as shown in Figure 42-12. Note the other options as well. You can initiate an e-mail, schedule a meeting, open the Outlook contact’s record, insert the contact’s address, or even create a new contact record if one doesn’t already exist.

If people’s names don’t show up as Smart Tags, or if they do but you can’t access Outlook information from them, then perhaps your options need adjusting. Hover over the Smart Tag, click the i button, and choose Smart Tag Options (refer to Figure 42-12). In the AutoCorrect dialog box, examine the options. (Note that you also can display Smart Tag options by choosing Office Button Word Options, clicking the Proofing category, clicking AutoCorrect Options, and then clicking the Smart Tags tab in the dialog box that appears.) Ensure that both the Label Text with Smart Tags checkbox and the Person Name (Outlook e-mail recipients) Recognizer are checked, as shown in Figure 42-13.