38. Outlook 2013 Basics

Outlook is a personal information manager program or PIM for short. You can use it to record, track, and manage all types of personal information. Acting as both a project manager application and an email client, Outlook can help you organize appointments, plan and coordinate events, jot down notes, manage addresses and phone numbers, and track your many email messages. In short, Outlook is a powerful communications and organization tool, one that’s sure to quickly become an indispensable part of your computing activities whether you use it on your computer, laptop, or tablet. In this chapter, you find out how to get started by putting the application to work for you.

You can use Outlook to

• Send, receive, and read email messages, reply to messages, forward and copy messages.

• Send file attachments, such as spreadsheets, documents, pictures, and presentations.

• Sort junk email from regular email and rid your Inbox of spam.

• Receive regular information from your favorite websites and social media networks using Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds.

• Create a corporate or personal signature to appear at the bottom of every message.

• Organize and archive messages, or remove emails you no longer want to keep.

• Schedule appointments or all-day events on your calendar, and turn on reminders to sound off and alert you to upcoming activities.

• Plan and coordinate meetings with other users and keep abreast of who is attending and who is not.

• Share your schedule with other users and view their schedules as well.

• Manage tasks you need to complete, and delegate them to others.

• Record contact information for all the people in your life, from colleagues and coworkers to friends and family.

• Quickly find a message, contact, attachment, or task using tags, categories, and search options.

FIGURE 38.1 Welcome to Outlook 2013.

Outlook acts quite literally like a personal assistant; you can open it every day and accomplish things you need to get done, from the urgent to the mundane. Outlook consists of several key components, which are called modules. Here’s what you can expect with each module:

• Mail—Use this component to manage, send, and receive email messages. You can control junk email, organize messages into useful folders, and access multiple email accounts.

• Calendar—Use this component to keep track of your schedule, recording appointments, specifying all-day events, and assigning reminders when a date or scheduled time approaches.

• People—Use this component to manage all the people you contact, including friends, family, work colleagues, clients, and the like. Keep important information, such as phone numbers and emails, at easy reach, and add to the info as you go.

• Tasks—Help keep your important projects and To-Do lists organized with this component, which lets you monitor a task’s status, due date, and share it with other users. Whether you’re working on an important office assignment, or just trying to organize your daily activities, the Tasks component can help you stay on top of it all.

• Notes—Use this component to jot down notes for yourself and keep track of important information, such as ideas, questions, and quotes.

Here’s a rundown of some of the improvements and new features:

• You can quickly reply to a message using the new inline reply feature, which lets you respond with a click directly in the Reading pane.

• The message list now displays the message subject, sender, and first line of content so you can quickly check a message at a glance.

• You can also directly access commands to flag, delete, or mark your message from the message list.

• You can use the new quick peek feature to sneak a peek at current information for your calendar, contacts, or tasks.

• The new Weather bar in the Calendar module enables you to see the current weather conditions for a specified location, which is pretty handy if you want to know what the weather’s doing for an appointment later in the day.

• The new People Card view shows a single contact’s information gathered from multiple sources, such as social networks, Microsoft Lync, or Outlook, and you can easily initiate contact with a click.

• Outlook supports a variety of email accounts, including anything based on Exchange or Exchange ActiveSync-compatible, POP (Post Office Protocol), or IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol). This means you don’t have to have extra add-ins to connect to services such as Hotmail or Gmail.

• Quickly insert online pictures into your message body by searching for pictures among the Office Clip Art collection, your SkyDrive account, or using the Bing Image Search tool.

• You can assign a custom background design to the ribbon and title bar area of the program window to spruce things up on your screen.

• Use the new Navigation bar to easily switch between the Outlook components, and you can choose which items to appear by default.

• Click the Start button and type Outlook; then click Outlook 2013 at the top of the Start menu.

• Double-click the Outlook shortcut icon on the desktop (if there is one).

• Click the Start button, and then click All Programs, Microsoft Office 2013, and Outlook 2013.

If you are using Windows 8, try one of these methods:

• From the Windows 8 Start screen, type Outlook; then from the Apps search screen, click Outlook.

• If you added a tile for Outlook on the Start screen, you can click it to open Outlook on the desktop.

• In Desktop view, you can click Outlook’s shortcut icon on the desktop, if available.

In Windows 8, Outlook launches over on the desktop, which means you can minimize and maximize the program window, and the taskbar shows the open Outlook program icon.

After you open Outlook, the first thing you see is the Mail module, shown in Figure 38.2.

FIGURE 38.2 Viewing Outlook’s Mail module.

When you’re finished using Outlook, exiting is easy. Do any of the following:

• Click the Close icon in the upper-right corner of the program window.

• Click the Outlook icon in the upper-left corner and click Close.

• Right-click the Outlook icon on the taskbar and click Close Window.

• Click the File tab and click Exit.

As soon as you activate the Close command, Outlook closes entirely.

If you’d rather get the program window out of the way for a bit while you tackle other computer tasks, you can minimize the window; click the Minimize button. Minimizing the Outlook window reduces it to a button icon on the desktop taskbar. To open it again, click the icon.

It’s a good idea to keep the Outlook program running in the background, even while you work with other programs. If you close it, you won’t hear or see any reminders about pending appointments or emails received, thus making it difficult for your personal assistant to assist you.

FIGURE 38.3 Familiarize yourself with the various window elements.

Let’s go over the various elements you see onscreen and what they’re used for in Outlook:

• Outlook icon—Click this icon to display a drop-down menu of program window controls, such as Minimize (reducing the window to an icon on the taskbar), Maximize (enlarging the window to optimize workspace), and Close (exiting the program).

• Title bar—Look for the name of your active account at the top of the program window, along with the name of the module you’re currently viewing.

• Folder pane—This pane displays different folder structures depending on which module you’re using. If it’s Mail, the Inbox and subfolders appear for messages; if it’s Calendar, navigation calendars appear. This pane can expand and collapse to free up onscreen workspace.

• Information Viewer—In the middle of the window, you do all your work, such as viewing messages or appointments.

• Navigation bar—Use this bar, which can expand or collapse, to switch between Outlook components. Each icon represents a module; click an icon to view the module.

• Status bar—The bottom area of the window displays status information, such as the amount of messages in the Inbox, and so on.

• Program window controls—Use these controls to minimize, maximize, and close the program window. These same controls are also available through the Outlook icon. In addition to window controls, you see icons for accessing Help and collapsing/expanding the ribbon.

You discover more about using the various Outlook elements as you tackle different tasks and features.