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Microsoft Outlook 2007

Article summary

Microsoft Outlook 2007 is a comprehensive time and information manager for your busy digital life. You'll never have problems with personal information again. Take control of the tools you need to prioritize, organize and search. Schedule and block off time to follow up on items, manage your daily priorities and use Windows SharePoint Services technology to manage every aspect of your digital life more effectively. Manage your shared information and content in one interface, through SharePoint Services -- documents, calendars, contacts, tasks, and other information are easier than ever to handle Stay safe from junk mail and phishing Web sites - The improved junk e-mail filter and has added new features that disable links and warn you about threatening content within an e-mail message Color-code your information for easier organization -- it's a simple, visual way to distinguish items from one another Manage all your blogs to RSS feeds directly through Outlook 2007 New Attachment Preview helps you see your Office Outlook 2007 attachments with one click directly in the reading pane, saving you time and effort

Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 provides an integrated solution for managing your time and information, connecting across boundaries, and remaining in control of the information that reaches you. By delivering innovations you can use to quickly search your communications, organize your work, and better share your information with others, this software keeps you connected and up to date, at work dealing with colleagues and customers, or at home corresponding with friends and family.

Office Outlook 2007 provides an integrated solution to help you better manage your time and information. View larger.

Keep Better Track of Your Daily Priorities
Outlook 2007 now features a re-designed interface within the authoring experience, making composing, formatting, and acting on e-mail an easier and more intuitive experience. Specifically, all of the rich features and capabilities of Outlook 2007 are now accessible and easy-to-find within the message. For instance, you can use the To-Do Bar--which gives you a consolidated view of your calendar, upcoming appointments, tasks, and flagged mail--to organize your day and manage your priorities.

Manage Your Time and Information
Outlook 2007 gives you a wide variety of time-saving options, including Instant Search to help you quickly locate all the information you're looking for right from within the Outlook 2007 interface. Not only can you search by keyword through your information, but Instant Search also looks for those keywords within your e-mail attachments. For more directed search results, the Instant Search pane provides helpful criteria to narrow your entry.

Calendar overlay view makes it easy to navigate your personal calendar and your team calendar at the same time. View larger.

Visually Identify Information
Using Outlook 2007 Color Categories, you can easily personalize and add categories to any type of information. Color Categories give you an easy, visual way to distinguish items from one another, so it's a snap to organize your data and search your information. Preview attachments in one click with Attachment Preview and avoid having to re-send attachments repeatedly.

Connect Across Boundaries
Outlook 2007 lets you share all types of information with coworkers, customers, friends, and family. First, you can create and subscribe to Internet calendars (which provide a way to view and remain up to date on industry events) or personal interest calendars and schedules. Then, send your calendar information to anyone with calendar snapshots, an HTML representation of your calendar that lets you share this information with anyone. Or you can publish your Internet calendar to Microsoft Office Online. Using Microsoft Passport credentials, you can then invite a group of your coworkers, customers, friends, or family to view and work with your calendar so that everyone has the latest information.

Enjoy Full Integration with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Technology
With Outlook 2007, you can fully interact with information stored in Windows SharePoint Services technology anywhere, anytime, and connect Windows SharePoint Services calendars, documents, contacts, or tasks. Once you've done so, you'll enjoy full editing capabilities, so that any changes you make to the information stored in Outlook 2007 can be reflected in the server version.

Increased Functionality and Collaboration
You also have the option of enjoying increased functionality and collaboration with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Using Outlook 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 in conjunction results in increased collaboration capabilities and security enhancements. Exchange Server 2007 provides the latest in dynamic mailbox connections, unified messaging features, and improved protection from junk e-mail.

Use Instant Search to locate the information you want within an integrated, familiar interface. View larger.

You can also send text messages from Outlook with one easy click, thanks to Outlook Mobile Service, a feature that allows you to send and receive text and picture messages between Outlook 2007 and any mobile phone. Outlook Mobile Service also enables you to forward Outlook e-mail messages, contacts, appointments, and tasks to yourself or other people as text messages. You can even set Outlook 2007 to automatically send e-mail messages, reminders, and your daily calendar as text messages right to your mobile phone.

Work With RSS Feeds
You can now fully subscribe to and interact with Really Simple Syndication (RSS) Feeds right from Outlook 2007, the most natural place to manage this kind of information. It's easy to get started adding RSS Feeds using the RSS Subscriptions home page within Outlook 2007.

Electronic Business Cards
Outlook 2007 lets you customize and share electronic business cards so you can create, customize, and share your information with customers, clients, or friends. Effortlessly add photos, company logos, or other personal information to your card so that the recipients have an easy way to identify and remember you and your business.

Anti-phishing capabilities in Office Outlook 2007 warn you about potentially threatening content right from within the e-mail message. View larger.

Improved E-Mail Control and Protection
Outlook 2007 helps you control your information while keeping you safer from junk mail and malicious sites. The junk e-mail filter, introduced in Outlook 2003, helps prevent junk e-mail messages from cluttering your Inbox. Outlook 2007 also features new anti-phishing features that disable threatening links and warn you about possibly malicious or phishing content within an e-mail message. For additional protection and security, Exchange Server 2007 acts as the first scan on incoming e-mail, determines the legitimacy of the e-mail message, and if applicable, disables links or URLs present in the e-mail message to help protect users.

Control Distribution of Sensitive Work
Help protect your company assets by preventing recipients from forwarding, copying, or printing important e-mail messages by using information rights management (IRM) functionality. You can even specify an expiration date for the message, after which it cannot be viewed or otherwise acted upon. (IRM functionality requires Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or later running Microsoft Windows Rights Management Services).

Maintain Compliance With Managed E-mail Folders
Exchange Server 2007 offers managed e-mail folders, a new approach to document retention, archiving, and regulatory compliance. You'll be able to see and interact with these folders just like any other mail folder, but the messages stored within them gain retention, archive, and expiration policies defined by the administrator. With managed e-mail folders, users and administrators can easily comply with various forms of external regulation and internal company policies regarding message retention.

Outlook 2007 E-mail Postmark
The Outlook 2007 E-mail Postmark helps ensure that e-mail reaching your inbox is legitimate and that e-mail you send will be trusted by the recipient's client. Creating mail with E-mail Postmark uses new technology that Microsoft has developed as part of the ongoing effort to curb junk mail. This technology asks the sender's computer to perform a computation or puzzle, and then assigns this work as a token of legitimacy to the e-mail message. These e-mail postmarks are designed to make it very time-consuming and technologically detrimental for users to send mass e-mail like spam, yet they do not change the user experience of sending e-mail.

Customer's review

MICROSOFT'S LATEST RIP-OFF

Well, they've done it again. Microsoft has introduced a "new" product that does the exact same thing as the "old" product (Outlook from Office XP Professional Edition). But with the introduction of the Vista Operating System, the "old" version no longer works properly. So, Microsoft has again forced my hand into buying a new product that I don't really need because I already own a version, but I am forced to buy a new version in order to get it to work properly on my machine.

Thanks, Microsoft, for continuing to take my money for things that I already have and am forced to buy again.

They got it right this time (Well mostly)

I bought Outlook 2007 after a trial installation. It works and it works well. As part of my work I send and receive a ton of email. I use the task manager and calendar features a lot. My wife and I synchronize appointments weekly and Outlook 2007 manages it all well.

The look has changed slightly from previous versions. Microsoft seems to favor what I'd call a little more "cartoonish" look, probably more familiar to a Mac user than Windows. Setting up Outlook is straightforward - once you figured out how to open the box. I still have to marvel at the complexity of this task. I suppose the warning label "if you can't open this box you probably shouldn't be using this software" should have told me (that was a poor a joke - but the box is a pain to open).

Outlook allows you to presents an "all you need to know" view with mail, tasks and upcoming appointments conveniently displayed on one screen. You can color tasks and appointments to reflect priorities or individuals which makes it convenient for people who like to "glance".

For email, I use the traditional folder view on the left with the contents at the top and the preview pane at the bottom. Processing rules are simple. Right-click a message and "create rule". You can also flag junk mail, a convenient addition to any anti-spam software you may have, though you'll probably end up with two different "junk" folders.

Like previous versions, Outlook gets very processor-intensive when sending/receiving or archiving. I use a fairly high-end four-processor system stuff with RAM and I still feel Windows hesitate when I see the little "flying envelope" in the task bar. I archive manually because the system becomes almost unusable when Outlook archives.

I love the new calendar. It feels more "friendly" and arranges multiple appointments side-by-side. Add a color for each type of appointment and it's very easy to manage. Ditto the tasks. As with other MS products, there's a lot of customization available, tool bars and buttons to add and little bells and whistles that you've come to expect from them.

There's an "instant search" feature which can be enabled. It speeds up searches through vast numbers of folders and archives. However, I find it easier to use the search without it. I don't do that much searching and I think the indexing process slows me down.

Adding and managing email accounts is much nicer than previous versions. Signature management is also very nicely implemented and I like the fact that while signatures are tied to email accounts, you can mix and match them on the fly as needed.

Okay - here's the reason for "just" four stars and the cons. Outlook 2007 is almost right, but it wouldn't be a Microsoft product without some drawbacks...

When saving attachments to the computer / network, Outlook feels it necessary to recreate its browsing index, usually at the most inconvenient time and it can take several minutes to run.

There are periodic crashes. Outlook shuts down, you get the "did you want to let Microsoft know" message and then it restarts and runs along okay for a few weeks. Never been able to figure out the crashes. Nothing seems to be damaged or disabled as a result.

It should have been part of Office - especially at the price.

So, if you're a heavy email user, this is a product worth trying. The 90-day download gives you all the features and enough time to get a good feel for it. Despite the couple of annoying features, I wouldn't switch back to a previous version. It's the best version to date.

Dave

Disappointed again with a Microsoft Product...

Well, i had high hopes for this product, but once again Microsoft can't program themselves out of a paper bag. Same problems as with older versions, use this program to sync to my Verizon Pocket PC for the Calendar feature, but it takes 4-5 tries to get Outlook and Vista to work together to even see my phone, let alone the 4-5 times it takes to get everything to sync into my phone... Went back to Mozilla (from Firefox) as my workhorse e-mail gatherer... I just wish Microsoft would get off their "high-horse," admit they have messed up since the first incursion of Windows and re-write the OS so that it can run correctly. If the door is broken and doesn't open right or can't locked, painting it a bright color and putting a new doorbell on won't help!!!!

And Microsoft still wonders why you need virus/ security suite protection, when Apple's stuff does not need it.... oh well, "if it's broke don't fix it" is a big neon sign in Seattle, WA inside Microsoft headquarters....

Works like a Charm

I updated from Outlook XP, and it has made my life easier. It is very user friendly and has many extras that XP didn't have. Also, I have no problems while sync my blackberry and Windows Mobile divice.