2. Basic Outlook Operations

Before you jump in and start whipping up emails and appointments willynilly, it’s a good idea to take some time and familiarize yourself with the basic methods Outlook offers to access tools, commands, and features. Learning how to find your way to the commonly used commands and features now can help you speed up your work later. Microsoft Outlook presents commands, settings, and options through dialog boxes, context menus, toolbars, and the ribbon. In many cases, you can access the same tools and features through several different avenues.

It’s also a good idea to figure out how the Folder pane, Information Viewer, and Navigation bars work so you can easily maneuver around the various modules and their associated tasks. In this chapter, I’ll show you how Outlook presents commands and tools for you to use, and how to control the Navigation bar and the way panes work.

Now here’s something rather interesting—the commands found on the various tabs change based on what module you’re using. If you’re working with the Mail module, for example, the Home tab shows tools related to emailing, but if you’re working with Calendar, the Home tab shows commands for changing Calendar’s display. Pretty nifty, eh? Just keep this in mind when you’re looking for a command in a certain spot, but it’s not there—you probably need to switch modules to find it again.

When you open a specific item in Outlook, such as a message window or an appointment window, the individual window has its own ribbon of tabs pertaining to the item. These tabs of commands are unique to the task at hand. If you’re writing an email message, for example, the message window displays tools for formatting the message text or inserting pictures, shapes, and so on, as shown in Figure 2.2.

If you see a drop-down arrow—which is simply a downward pointing arrow icon—next to any ribbon feature, you can click it or tap it to display a menu of additional choices or options. Figure 2.3 shows an example of a drop-down menu. After the menu drops, you can click (or tap if you have a touchscreen) a selection from the menu to apply it to your document.

The ribbon also features list boxes, called galleries, as shown in Figure 2.4. You can scroll through the gallery to view selections and click or tap the one you want to apply.

You can also expand the gallery to view all the settings at one time, as shown in Figure 2.5.

As for the tabs found on the ribbon, here’s a rundown of the main tabs:

• File—This tab opens a special screen called Backstage view, with various file-related commands, such as Open & Export, Info, and Print.

• Home—This tab organizes all the basic commands for working with module items.

• Send/Receive—This tab lists commands for sending and receiving messages for your email account folders.

• Folder—Use the commands on this tab to control how you work with folders in Outlook, including moving items between folders or sorting folders.

• View—You can find all the various ways to change your view of a module’s contents on this tab, including controlling panes.

In addition to these, remember that task-specific tabs may appear when you are working on a specific type of Outlook item, such as a message window or task window.

To hide the ribbon, double-click any tab name on the ribbon. Outlook immediately hides the entire thing except for the tab names, shown in Figure 2.6. To display the ribbon again, double-click a tab name.

If you want the ribbon to always appear locked in place, click the Pushpin icon located at the far right end. Click the same area to unlock the ribbon again.

You can also choose to display more or fewer shortcuts on the toolbar. Click the arrow icon at the end of the bar to display a drop-down menu (see Figure 2.8). Check marks next to the command names indicate the icons that appear on the toolbar. To add an icon, click the command name. To remove an icon, click it to uncheck it and delete it from the toolbar.

As you can imagine, placing shortcuts up at the top of your program window can be a time saver if you find yourself performing the same tasks over and over, such as printing an email message, and you tire of looking through the ribbon or other dialog boxes to find a command.

For example, when you select text in an email window, a mini toolbar appears near the cursor. You can use this toolbar, shown in Figure 2.9, to quickly apply basic formatting commands to the message text. If you ignore the mini toolbar and keep working, it eventually disappears. To activate a command from the toolbar, click the button.

If you right-click while performing a task, such as reading email, a context menu pops up listing commands related to what you’re doing. For example, if you right-click a task (see Figure 2.10), the context menu includes commands for marking the task, categorizing it, sending it to OneNote, and more. To make a selection from the context menu, click the command.

Dialog boxes display many of the same tools found in the ribbon, including buttons, list boxes, drop-down menus, spinner arrows, check boxes, and text boxes or fields in which you enter data. You can also find slider controls, tabs, and option buttons among the many dialog boxes in Outlook.

The bottom of a dialog box typically has command buttons to execute the changes or to exit the box without changing anything. Click OK to execute the settings you specified, or click Cancel to forgo the changes.

Some dialog boxes may include buttons that open additional dialog boxes. Tools and settings you find on Outlook’s ribbon may open dialog boxes as well. You are sure to encounter lots of dialog boxes as you work, but once you know what to expect from them and how to enter your input, you can handle them with ease.

Depending on your screen display, not all icons may appear listed on the bar. You can click the bar’s ellipsis to view additional icons, as shown in Figure 2.14. If you happen to collapse the Folder pane, which you learn how to do in the next section, the Navigation bar appears listed vertically (see Figure 2.14), but only if the bar displays icons instead of text labels.

You can control the display of the Navigation bar using the Navigation Options dialog box, shown in Figure 2.15. To find your way to this dialog box, use one of these methods:

• Click the ellipsis on the Navigation bar and choose Navigation Options from the pop-up menu.

• Click the View tab, click Folder pane, and then click Options.

When you’ve got the dialog box open, you can do the following:

• To turn text labels on, deselect the Compact Navigation check box.

• To change how many module icons appear listed in the bar, set another number of visible items in the Maximum Number of Visible Items box.

• To change the order of module icons in the bar, adjust the display by moving module names up or down in the list.

When you finish making your changes, click OK to apply them.

You can expand and collapse the pane to free up onscreen workspace. Click or tap the Minimize button located in the upper-right corner of the pane, pointed out in Figure 2.16. When collapsed, the pane folds to a skinny columnar display along the left side of the program window, like the example in Figure 2.17. To expand it again, click the Expand button.

You can also control the Folder pane using the Folder pane drop-down menu on the View tab, as shown in Figure 2.18. For example, you can turn the pane off entirely by selecting the Off option. To turn it back on again, revisit the drop-down menu and choose Normal.

You can also resize the Folder pane. Just move your mouse pointer over the pane’s right border and drag it to a new size, wider or thinner. You can do the same thing with any pane in Outlook; drag the pane’s border to resize the pane, whether it’s the Reading pane, the message list, or the To-Do bar. Figure 2.19 shows what the Folder pane looks like when it’s being resized.

To control the Reading pane, click the View tab and click the Reading pane drop-down arrow, as shown in Figure 2.22. Next, select a setting you want to apply. Outlook immediately changes the window to reflect your selection.

The To-Do bar opens a full-on pane for peeks, as shown in Figure 2.24. The To-Do bar is not turned on by default, but you can summon it anytime you want it. Click the ribbon’s View tab, click the To-Do bar drop-down arrow, and click which part you want to view, as shown in Figure 2.25. You can turn on just one peek or all three. A check mark next to the item’s name indicates it’s displayed; no check mark means the item is turned off. To turn them all off, click the Off command. To turn off individual peeks in the bar itself, you can click the peek’s Close button.