Microsoft® Office Outlook® 2007 sports a lot of new features that improve usability and add functionality. What’s more, many of the familiar features in earlier versions have been revamped or fine-tuned in Office Outlook 2007. All of these changes come together to make Outlook 2007 an outstanding tool for communication, time and information management, and collaboration.
If you are an experienced Microsoft Outlook user, one of your first questions is no doubt, "What’s new in Outlook 2007, and how do I find all of these new features?" That’s what this chapter is all about. While we don’t cover every little change or nuance of the new Outlook 2007 interface or new and improved features here, we offer a broad overview of the new features in Outlook 2007 to help you get up to speed quickly. Let’s start with the most obvious—the user interface.
Certainly the most obvious difference in all of the 2007 Microsoft Office system applications is their new interfaces. Like the other Microsoft Office system applications, Outlook 2007 sports a new interface. In some ways, however, the differences in Outlook 2007 are not as pronounced as they are in some of the other applications, such as Microsoft Office Word 2007. Outlook 2007 blends some new interface components with improvements to its existing components to achieve a new look and feel. Fortunately, you should be able to become comfortable with this new look and feel in a short time. Once you’ve made that transition, you’ll come to really appreciate the new interface.
Let’s take a look at the biggest difference from earlier versions—the Ribbon.
Unlike some of the other Microsoft Office system applications, the main Outlook 2007 window uses a familiar menu bar and toolbar combination to give you access to commands, options, and tools in Outlook 2007. These other applications, such as Office Word 2007, use a new feature called the Ribbon to give you quick access to commonly used features. Outlook 2007 does make use of the Ribbon, however, as you can see in Figure 1-1. The new message form is one of the many forms in Outlook 2007 that sports a Ribbon rather than the more familiar menu bar/toolbar combination.
The Ribbon is something of a paradigm shift. Rather than provide a linear menu list of commands, the Ribbon divides features onto individual tabs, each of which comprises tools with related functions. For example, all of the tools that relate to inserting items into a new message are located together on the Insert tab of the new message form.
Each Ribbon tab is divided into groups, and each group organizes the features for a specific function. On the Message tab of the new message form, for example, the Basic Text group organizes the tools you use to format text in the message.
Is the new Ribbon design good or bad? After you spend the time to become familiar with it, you’ll probably come to the conclusion that the Ribbon is an improvement over the "old" interface. The Ribbon helps expose some useful and powerful features that many people never used because they weren’t aware they existed or they didn’t take the time to dig through the menus to find them.
The Navigation Pane was first introduced in Microsoft Outlook 2002 as part of Microsoft Office XP and took the place of the Outlook Bar. The Navigation Pane gives you quick access to all of your Outlook 2007 folders (Inbox, Calendar, and so on) and adapts depending on which folder you are using. For example, when you open the Calendar folder, the objects offered in the Navigation Pane change to reflect features available in the calendar, such as views.
The Outlook 2007 Navigation Pane looks at first blush to be much like the Navigation Pane in Outlook 2002 and Outlook 2003. The main difference in Outlook 2007 is the capability to show the Navigation Pane in a collapsed state, as shown in Figure 1-2.
Essentially, the Navigation Pane, when collapsed, acts a little like the Microsoft Windows® taskbar in autohide mode. The Navigation Pane sits at the left edge of the Outlook 2007 window as a narrow vertical toolbar. You can click items in the Navigation Pane to expand them for use. For example, click the Navigation Pane section to display the Favorite Folders and folder list or views for the current folder. After you click a folder in the list to select it, the pane is hidden again. Using the Navigation Pane in collapsed mode makes more space available for displaying the contents of a folder (such as your monthly calendar) while still keeping the Navigation Pane’s features readily available.
The To-Do Bar, shown in Figure 1-3, is another new feature in Outlook 2007 that brings together information from different Outlook 2007 sources and makes it readily available. It combines the Date Navigator, appointments for the day, and current tasks in one pane.
As with the Navigation Pane, you can configure the To-Do Bar to automatically hide after you use it. In this mode, the To-Do Bar sits at the right edge of the Outlook 2007 window as a vertical toolbar. When you click the To-Do Bar, it expands to display its contents. You can then click a date to view its appointments in the Calendar window, work with tasks, and so on. When you click again in the main Outlook 2007 window, the To-Do Bar collapses back to a vertical toolbar.
The Outlook 2007 interface is significantly changed in other ways in addition to the Ribbon, Navigation Pane, and To-Do Bar. For example, the Calendar window has been given a visual and functional overhaul. See the sections titled "Calendar Changes" and "E-Mail Changes" later in this chapter for details. Additional interface features are explored in other chapters where appropriate.