A Great All-round Package (MS Outlook 2000)

Member Name: aljones

Product:	MS Outlook 2000
Date:	01/03/02 (261 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Plenty of features

Disadvantages: No newsgroup reader

Microsoft Outlook isn't just an e-mail client. While many people use it for just that, it has a wide range of other functions and utilities. And for once, I have to say Microsoft have done a decent job of something. Despite continually using Microsoft products, I am continually finding myself muttering about how useless they are, but so far not once have I had cause to do this with Outlook.

The first and most prominent use of Outlook is as an e-mail client, especially seeing as Microsoft also sell Outlook Express, or rather give it away, which is a stripped down version of Outlook that functions as just an e-mail and newsgroup reader. The e-mail facility of Outlook is pretty decent. It gives you all the function you would expect, and a few more just in case. It has the usual folders for your Inbox, Outbox, sent e-mail and your draft e-mails. You can also create folders, and of course folders within other folders, so that you can organise all the e-mail that you've received. It does nothing particularly special, but it is pretty good. It will inform you when new mail arrives, by popping up a little window, or playing a sound.

But, we all know how e-mail works, and like I said, while I think Outlook does it well, it doesn't do anything special. So what else does it do? Well, my other main use for it as an organiser. It has a very nice Calendar system built into it. You can view all the months for the year down the right hand side of the screen, and in the centre you can choose to view a single day or several days (you choose how many, up to a maximum of 6 weeks on the one screen). Obviously, the more days you show, the less detailed they become. While looking at individual days, the day is split up into half hour time slots. Adding an event to the Calendar is pretty straightforward. Clicking on 'New' brings up a screen where you can edit your new event. You an say what it is, where it is, how long it lasts, when to remind you, add
notes to it, and select whether you are actually busy or not. Very handy for noting yours days off. The reminder facility is great, as you get a very nice little message pop up at the time you set reminding you of the event you've added. I use it a lot for various things, such as reminding me to do my timesheet on the last day of the month.

Next up, Outlook provides you with a Contacts list. OK, so it's an address book for you to store your friends e-mail addresses, but it also stores a fair bit besides. You can store names, nicknames, e-mail addresses, postal addresses (work, home, and others), phone numbers, web addresses, job titles, fax numbers, and make countless notes about the person, and more. I don't use half of the functions of the contacts list, but gradually I'm using them more and more and finding them very handy. It organises your contacts alphabetically, and you can either select them from the Contacts page in Outlook, or just select their name while writing an e-mail by clicking on a button next to the 'To' or 'CC' fields.

OK, still sounding good? Well, there is more. Outlook also provides a Task List. Adding a task is similar to adding an event into the Calendar. You select 'New' and up pops another window. You can enter a brief description to be shown in the list, the date its due by, and the date it should start on. You can also make notes about your new task, and set a reminder when you should be nearly finished. You can also flag its priority, and while in progress, you can set how far you have got through it by changing the percentage complete field. There is also a field to mark whether it's not started, in progress, finished, or waiting on someone else. All very handy especially when working on several projects or jobs at once as I often find myself doing. You don't have to use all of its features, and instead you can choose simply to create a task with a description, and once
you've finished, tick it off the list.

There is also a notes page. Personally I find a bit pointless, but if you're the sort of person who has 101 post-it notes scattered around your monitor, then you'll probably find these notes quite handy. They are little yellow post-its for your PC, and sit under a nice little 'Notes' item on the Outlook menu bar. Again, clicking 'New' will bring up a little yellow window which you type a little note onto. Very simple, fairly effective, and to some probably quite useful.

The final feature is the Journal. Again, I don't actually use this, but essentially what it does is track your work in Outlook. It records details of e-mails sent and received, and interacts with your Calendar I believe. Don't quote me on that, like I said, I don't use the thing, and in all honesty, I doubt many people would, as it seems pretty pointless to me.

Outlook can also function as a web browser, though admittedly not a great one. Simply by selecting an item from the favourites menu (which has the same contents as your favourites menu in Internet Explorer) will bring up that web page in the space where your e-mails and Inbox would normally appear. You've then got an address bar that you can type an address into, hit enter and up pops that web site. Simple. You get the usual stop, refresh, back and forward buttons, but to be quite honest, not a lot else. It does the job but it certainly isn't recommended as a long-term web viewing solution, but handy if your company doesn't give you access to a web browser (though I don't think many have a choice these days with it being built in to Windows).

So, all-in-all Outlook is fairly feature packed for what at first appears to be an e-mail reader. Unfortunately, it can't read newsgroups so if you make use of these you will almost certainly want Outlook Express installed, which offers, as far as I know at least, none of
the extra features of Outlook. Other than, I think Outlook is great. It seems pretty reliable, and has a host of extra features that in general are very useful. Its unlikely you'll want to purchase it separately, but is a very nice addition to the MS Office suite of applications.

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