You create notes in the Notes folder. To open this folder, click the Notes icon at the bottom of the Navigation Pane.

After you’ve opened the folder, follow these steps to create a note:

If the current view is set to Icons, Outlook 2007 uses the first approximately 26 characters in the note as the title and displays the title under the icon for the note in the Notes folder.

To read a note, you can double-click it to open the Note window or point to or click the icon for the note and read the text under the icon. Switching to Notes List view (on the View menu, choose Current View, Notes List) shows more contiguous content. To change the content of a note, open it as just described, and then edit it the same way you would edit a text file. Keep in mind, however, that you have no formatting options, so your notes are limited to plain text. To save your changes, simply close the Note window.

After you have opened a note, a note icon appears in the upper-left corner of the Note window, which provides a menu of editing options, as follows:

Although you’ll probably create notes mainly for your own use, you might need to forward a note to someone. For example, a colleague might request a phone number or other contact information that you’ve stored in a note. The easiest way to share the information is to forward the note as an e-mail message. Because Outlook 2007 sends the note as an attachment, the recipient can easily copy the note to his or her own Notes folder, place it on the desktop, or use the Clipboard to copy the data to a new contact entry.

To forward a note, follow these steps:

You can send notes in e-mail messages using other methods too—you’re not limited to embedding the note in the message or attaching it. For example, if you first click in the Folder List at the bottom of the Navigation Pane, you can open the Notes folder and then use the right mouse button to drag the selected note to the Inbox. The resulting shortcut menu allows you to create a message with the note as text in the body of the message, as a shortcut, or as an attachment.

When someone else sends you a note in an e-mail message, you can work with the note directly in the message. The note appears as an attachment to the message, as shown in Figure 24-5. You can open the message and double-click the note to open it in a Note window, but you’ll probably prefer to copy the note to your own Notes folder.

Figure 24-5. When a note is embedded in an e-mail message, you can open the note by double-clicking it.

To copy a note you’ve received to your Notes folder, follow these steps:

If you’ve made a note about a task you must perform or an appointment you must keep, you can easily create an Outlook 2007 task or appointment directly from the note. To do so, drag the note to the Tasks icon or the Calendar icon in the Navigation Pane, as appropriate. Alternatively, you can click the Folder List icon in the Navigation Pane and then select the note and drag it to the Tasks folder or Calendar folder. Outlook 2007 opens a new task form or a new appointment form with the note contents as the subject and contents of the task or appointment.

You can move and copy notes to other folders. How Outlook 2007 treats the note depends on the destination folder itself. For example, if you copy a note to another notes folder, Outlook 2007 treats it as a note. But if you copy a note to the Calendar or Tasks folder, Outlook 2007 uses the note to create a new appointment or a new task.

If you use the right mouse button to drag a note to the Contacts icon (or Contacts folder, if the Folder List is open) in the Navigation Pane, Outlook 2007 creates a new contact and gives you several options for how to handle the note text. Outlook 2007 can add the text to the contact, add it as an attachment, or add it as a shortcut, depending on your selection. You can also copy the note as a journal entry by using the right mouse button to drag it to the Journal icon in the Navigation Pane. You can then choose to create the journal item with the note as an attachment or as a shortcut.

You can move or copy notes by dragging. To move a note to another Notes folder, drag the icon for the note to the destination folder. To copy a note instead of moving it, hold down the Ctrl key while dragging the note.

By default, Outlook 2007 notes are yellow; however, you can change the default color in the Notes Options dialog box. To change the default color of Notes, choose Tools, Options, click on Note Options, and then select one of the five available colors (blue, green, pink, yellow, or white) in the Color drop-down list as your default.

You can change the color of an individual note at any time by changing its category and thus the color it is associated with (see the next section).

You can assign categories to notes, just as you can to any other Outlook 2007 item. Categorizing helps you organize your notes, particularly if you choose to view your Notes folder by category. By default, notes are not assigned to any category. (When displayed by category, unless otherwise assigned to a specific category, the notes show up under None.) You can assign multiple categories to each note. For example, you might assign a project category to a note as well as an Urgent category.

You assign colors to notes in Outlook 2007 by selecting a category and thus the color associated with it. You can have a category with no color association and assign that category to a note, but this will effectively color the note white. You can have up to 25 colors associated with categories, and you can have more than one category using the same color; thus, there is a bit of flexibility in color and category assignment. You might, for example, decide to color all of your marketing communications green and so set up a general Marketing category, a Sales Calls category, and a New Client Meetings category all associated with the color green. In this way, you provide yourself with the visual cue (the color green) that the notes (appointments, meetings, e-mail messages, and so on) colored green are related to marketing efforts, and yet you can still differentiate the nature of the item (general marketing, sales call, new client meeting, and so on) when you sort them by category.

To assign categories to a note, follow these steps:

You can view the categories assigned to notes by using any one of several methods. For example, you can choose View, Current View, By Category (or Notes List or Outlook Data Files) to view the Notes folder organized by category. You can choose File, Print Preview to view all notes with category information. To show one note and the categories assigned to it, you can select a note and then choose File, Print Preview—the printout contains the note’s categories.

To print a note, select the note, and then choose File, Print. Alternatively, you can right-click the note and choose Print on the note’s shortcut menu. Outlook 2007 prints your name at the top of the page, followed by the date the note was created or last modified, the categories assigned to the note (if any), and the body of the note text. You also can choose File, Print Preview to preview the note.

Outlook 2007 stamps each note with the date and time you created it and displays this information at the bottom of the Note window. This date and time remain until you modify the note by adding or removing text. Outlook 2007 then replaces the original date and time with the date and time you modified the text and stores this information with the note.

If you no longer need a note, you can delete it. Deleting a note moves it to the Deleted Items folder. What happens to it from there depends on how you have configured Outlook 2007 to process deleted items. If Outlook 2007 clears out the Deleted Items folder each time you exit the program, for example, the note is permanently deleted at that time. You can delete a note in any of the following ways: