1. Introduction to Outlook

Does it feel like you’re going a hundred different directions at once and juggling dozens of tasks each day? Keeping track of all the details in your busy life is often a chore, whether you’re at work or you’re at home. How would you like to have someone always available to assist you, remind you about things you need to do, and help you manage important happenings without having to pay the assistant a salary, provide an office and phone, or carpool with the assistant? Meet Microsoft Outlook 2013. Outlook is a tailored organizational tool you can use to help your complicated life seem a bit less complicated and a lot more organized.

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 learn 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 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 co-workers to friends and family.

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

Those are just a few items off the top of the list, and we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface yet.

Today, Microsoft Outlook is a highly recognized program and an integral part of the Office suite. Each new version of the program offers more improvements and features, and Outlook 2013 is no exception. The new Outlook sports a more modern, polished interface with a sleek ribbon full of tools and features, as shown in Figure 1.1.

Acting quite literally like a personal assistant, you can open Outlook 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 because it’s more techy sounding. 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.

The real beauty of Outlook is how well everything works together and with other Office applications (if you happen to use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and so on). You can use the modules individually or you can use them with each other, such as turning an email recipient into a contact in your Address Book, or turning a task into an appointment on your calendar. With just a little bit of knowledge and know-how, you’ll soon find Outlook is an integral part of your daily life.

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 lets you 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.

• You can create site mailboxes to let everyone on your team access the same Outlook data for much improved SharePoint integration.

Surely that’s enough to whet your appetite for more!

Outlook 2013 fully supports touchscreen technology, so if you have a touch-enabled device, you can interact with the program using the touchscreen in addition to the regular old mouse and keyboard. For example, you can pinch to zoom on messages and calendar events, and you can hold your finger on an item to access available context-sensitive options. You can also minimize the ribbon to free up onscreen space and move around more freely.

If you haven’t jumped through all the setup hoops yet, you can do so before diving into learning how to use Outlook. Basically, the setup hoops consist of a Microsoft Outlook Account Setup Wizard that greets you the first time you use Outlook 2013 and welcomes you to the program. The wizard walks you through the steps for establishing an email account and making a profile, and then hands over a lovely gift basket welcoming you to the Microsoft family. I might have just imagined the complimentary gift basket when I installed Outlook, but wouldn’t it be cool if that did actually happen at the end of every software installation? Freshly baked banana muffins would make a good addition to a welcome basket, I think.

An Internet connection and a Microsoft account are extremely important for getting the most out of Outlook. A Microsoft account is a free, cloud-based account that lets you use SkyDrive (cloud storage), Hotmail (free email service), Skype (online video conferencing), and more. In fact, a Microsoft account gives you access to a wide range of services and tools, including productivity tools to help you manage files, and social tools that help you communicate and share with others. If you already use a Microsoft service like Hotmail or Messenger, you already have a Microsoft account, but if not, you can create a free one. The key word here is free.

Because you can’t very well email people without an Internet connection, you definitely need a reliable way to access the Internet. Most people nab an account with an Internet service provider of some sort, whether through Wi-Fi or hard-wired with cables (like DSL or cable modems), and typically for a fee. The key word here is fee. It usually costs a little something to rent a larger company’s Internet connection, especially if you expect it to be reliable.

After you’ve established an Internet connection, a Microsoft account, and installed Outlook, you’re ready to start exploring the program.

• 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.

Figure 1.2 shows the Windows 7 Start menu with the Microsoft Office programs listed, one of which is Outlook.

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 1.3. I’ll show you how to navigate around the program window in a minute, but first let’s talk about how to exit the program. Yes, I know you’re not ready to quit using Outlook yet, but this is as good a spot as any to tell you how to close the window.

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.

I highly recommend that you 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.

If you’re new to using Outlook, take a few moments and familiarize yourself with the program window’s many nuances, some of which are conveniently pointed out in Figure 1.4. You can learn more about using many of these elements in the next chapter.

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).

• Quick Access toolbar—Use this toolbar to quickly perform a common Outlook task, such as undoing or redoing an action. By default, the toolbar shows only the Undo command, but you can add other common tasks to the toolbar, such as the command for sending/receiving or printing.

• 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.

• Ribbon—The collapsible bar across the top of the window houses most of the commands you need to work in Outlook. Related commands are grouped into tabs, and you click a tab to view its various commands.

• 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’ll learn more about using the various Outlook elements as you tackle different tasks and features. If you are new to using Outlook, however, you may benefit from understanding how the program window controls work.

Program windows are resizable, and you can minimize them to get them out of the way to tackle other computer tasks. You can resize the Outlook program window by clicking the Restore Down icon located in the program window control group (see Figure 1.5). This reduces the size of the window, as shown in Figure 1.6, and you can then drag it around by its title bar to move it. You can also click and drag a window corner to resize the Outlook window. To make it full-screen size again, click the Maximize button, which appears in place of the Restore Down button when the window is smaller in size. To minimize the window and hide it completely, click the Minimize button; click the Outlook icon on the taskbar to view the Outlook window again.

To utilize Help, click the Help icon in the upper-right corner of the program window. An Outlook Help window opens, as shown in Figure 1.7. You can scroll through the featured topics, if you like. You can click a link to learn more about a subject. Help displays additional information in another window, as shown in Figure 1.8.

After you open a Help window, you can do the following:

• Use the navigation buttons (Back and Forward) at the top of the Help window to move back and forth between topics.

• Click the little icon that looks like a house, aptly named Home, to return to the main Help window you started in.

• If you’re having trouble viewing the window’s type size, you can click the Text button to toggle back and forth between regular and large type.

• Need to print out a help topic? Click the Print button.

• Use the Search box to search for keywords and topics.

• To close the Help window, click its Close button (the X in the upper-right corner of the window).