Lookin to Outlook! (MS Outlook 2000)

Member Name: JamesD22

Product:	MS Outlook 2000
Date:	05/03/01 (229 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: You can keep track of everything and anything and never miss another appointment or birthdays.

Disadvantages: You won't forget any birthdays so no more excuses.

Outlook

This is the office program from multi millionaire Bill Gates who if you did not know wants an extension on his already huge mansion! Microsoft has pulled out every possible stop for this fantastic program that I swear by on a daily basis be it home or at work.

Outlook is fast and super efficient if it were not for the fact that we had to program it to tell it what to do I would say it was cleverer than the average man! Well it is cleverer than me at least it remembers things, yes I know I tell it to remember but if I did not then I never would, if you know what I am getting at?

So what features does this nifty little program have to offer OK I won?t go into great depth I will cover the main features that most people know and a few hidden extras that may be beneficial to the new techno geeks out there.

Outlook comes as part and parcel of Office 2000 and earlier Windows packages such as ?98 and ?95, it is the standard POP mail program available to most of us, but this is more than an email package it is an information manager in and out of office.

Outlook 2000 helps you organise and manage all your information from a single location. And in today's workplace, more efficient information management means increased productivity and better bottom-line results

~ Outlook Today

This is the first feature listed in Outlook and is what you could say the days page of your diary. It has everything that you have scheduled for the day that you have scheduled into the many other features with in Outlook. This is like an overview of all the features on one page.

~ Calendar

This is an excellent feature with an endless list of capabilities, I have found that it comes in more than handy at home and is an extremely valuable tool for work. At home I use it for keeping note of the every day easy to forget birthdays and appointments, such as doctors, car going in for service or working an early. I p
ost all my shifts on here so as I always know what days I am actually working, brain is getting a bit ditty in my old age you see!

At work the powers of the calendar are amazing never forget another meeting time or location by entering the details into your calendar once you receive them. You can also set up meetings and send the details via email to all attendees, when they read the mail it will automatically be added to their calendars and they are requested to send an email to accept or decline your invitation.

Important tasks that recur on a regular basis can be added and a reminder can be set of when ever you want it to up to 2 days before the actual event. If it is a simple task you can have the reminder set of just 5 minutes before it is due to happen.

This is just some of the features of calendar but don?t want to go to in depth, as I would be here for weeks!!

~ Contacts

This is simply what it says a list of contacts that you have added to your Outlook, but unlike an ordinary address book it has all possible detail about someone possible from there nicknames to where the work at what desk and for what company. It is fantastic and there is no limit to how many people you can have in your address book.

You can also set up distribution lists that are groups of people you normally send the same email to i.e. if you are manager in a team you can set up the team as a list and just choose a name and locate that name and you can send one email to one group of people.

~ Inbox

This is where all your new mail will be stored and can be customised in many different ways.

When you receive mail from certain people you can set up rules that will redirect that mail to special locations, i.e. you could set up a folder for your manager?s emails and they are easier to locate and can be dealt with promptly.

There are loads of different ways to view new mail some are as follows:

-
By Sender
- Last 7 days
- Newest messages first

These are just a few, you can also customise colours i.e. say you mum and dad send you emails you can specify a colour to their names and every time they send you an email you will know it was from them making it much easier to pick up.

Again there is an endless list of features for the inbox for you to explore but remember it will probably take a while to discover the full potential of the program.

~ Journal

I have never really used this but would assume that it is for what it suggests, keeping notes of the day in case you ever need to go back and check when something was done.

You can set it up to automatically record any actions that have occurred with any of your Office 2000 applications, within Outlook you can customise it to record what emails have been received and sent without actually taking notes.

Journal is automatic and can be switched on or off at any time.

~ Tasks

This has pretty much the same idea as the calendar but is aimed more at your own day ahead and any tasks that you may need to complete and within what timescales. You can go back to the task and mark it is complete, you can set recurrence reminders if it is a task that is carried out frequently.

You can also assign the task to someone else via email and have them confirm to you when they have started the task, when they expect to complete it and when they actually do complete it so that you also can keep track of the tasks progress.

This is another handy little tool for ensuring you achieve maximum productivity, meet deadlines and ensure that you don?t forget to do it. No more tying string around your thumb!

~ Notes

This is a massive space for simply dropping notes on, when first logging into notes you may be a little confused as you are only presented with a blank screen, I know I was confused.

After exploring a little
more and double clicking on the page I noticed a little like electronic Post It note appeared on screen with the date. You simply add you notes to the little pad click back on the blank screen and the note you have written appears as a Word attachment on your desk space.

That is the main features of Outlook and a very brief overview of what each section has to offer.

There are other little extra that come in handy for every day use and there are lots of features to help prevent getting rid of information before you need to i.e. when you delete something from your inbox accidentally it will go to a deleted items folder.

When it gets there it can only be deleted by confirming that you are sure that it has to go to the rubbish tip, however, you can set up a further protection where you can also recover deleted items for up to 30 days, this has proven to be valuable time after time at work.

Overall Outlook is your right hand man in the office and has great loads of uses in the home as well, so go on explore that package you have sitting on your PC, discover it?s full potential and enjoy! I am still exploring and still finding out more every day.

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