Microsoft Office

IFrom the MS Outlook blog: f you read RSS feeds in Outlook like I do, you might notice that the default list view isn’t ideal for blogs written by a single person. Since the author is usually the same for my RSS feeds, I’d much rather have the subject of the article be the most prominent piece of information. So what’s my solution? To create a custom view for my RSS feed folders!

Creating a custom view

1. To define a new view for your RSS feeds, start by clicking View | Current View | Define Views…
2. Click New… to create a new view:
3. Fill out the Create a New View dialog box…

Rename the view (I chose to name mine “RSS”)
Leave the default type on Table.
And change the Can be used on option to All Mail and Post folders.
Click OK.

4. Click on the Fields… button.

5. The only change you need to make here is the order in which the fields are displayed. Click Subject and then click Move Up, then click OK.
6. Now you’re ready to apply this view to your RSS feed folders! In one of your RSS folders, go to the View menu and select your new view (mine’s called RSS) and you’re done!

To use this view on other RSS folders, repeat Step 6 for each folder.

Using RSS Feeds in Outlook 2007

Using Outlook to manage and read your RSS feeds has several advantages over a stand-alone aggregator, including the ability to place flags and run rules on any RSS feed to which you subscribe.

Some of you might be wondering what is RSS? Really Simple Syndication (usually referred to as RSS) is a way to get updates to websites sent to you instead of having to go back to the web to see if any changes have been made. In this way, you can keep up-to-date on news and information from many different sources in one place. For example, you could subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog to be notified when we post a new article. You could also subscribe to the MSNBC Top Headlines RSS feed to keep up to date on top news stories. Many companies are starting to use RSS feeds internally to provide their employees with information that doesn’t need to be e-mailed to the entire company.

In the past, people had to use a stand-alone RSS reader such as FeedDemon or an Outlook add-in such as NewsGator to view their RSS feeds. Outlook 2007 now includes a built-in RSS reader, so now you can treat your RSS the way that you treat your mail (using flags, categories, search folders, rules, etc.) without having to use a separate application.

While Outlook is running, it will periodically check the feeds to which you have subscribed and download any new content. Outlook shows an unread count for each feed next to the folder, so you can quickly see if there are new items you haven’t read yet. Because Outlook downloads the RSS feed data from onto your computer, you can access that data even while offline.

Treat RSS just like E-mail
You can delete posts as you read them or keep posts of interest long after they have been removed from the feed. You can also categorize posts, move them to a separate folder, or flag them for follow up as you please. For example, if you are subscribed to a feed from your company’s website, you can easily keep posts mentioning your projects and discard those that are of no interest to you. Or you can set up rules that move interesting RSS posts to your Inbox to bring them to your attention.

If you decide that a feed is no longer important, you can remove the feed by deleting the feed’s folder in Outlook. Outlook will stop downloading new content for the feed and move all the existing downloaded posts to Deleted Items.

One of the really great things about RSS in Outlook is how well it integrates with some of the other features in the product. For example, I have several RSS feeds to which I subscribe but am not interested in every post they publish. Instead of scrolling through each feed manually, I use a Search Folder that searches my subscribed feeds for posts with keywords on topics of interest.

It is easy to create a poll in Microsoft Office Outlook by including voting buttons in an e-mail message. When recipients respond to the poll, you can either automatically tabulate the results of the vote in Outlook or export the responses to a Microsoft Office Excel 2007 worksheet.

Add the voting buttons

Create a new e-mail message, or open a message that you want to reply to or forward.
In the message window, on the Options tab, in the Tracking group, click Use Voting Buttons.

Click one of the following:

Approve;Reject This option is best when you need an authorization for an action. For example, you can send an e-mail request to several recipients seeking their approval of a project proposal.
Yes;No When all you need is either a yes or a no, this is a good way to take a quick poll.
Yes;No;Maybe When you don’t want to limit the choices to yes and no, this voting option offers an alternative response.

Custom Click this command to create your own custom voting button names. For example, you can ask your colleagues to choose among three days of the week for a recurring weekly staff meeting.
When the Message Options dialog box appears, under Voting and Tracking options, select the Use voting buttons check box.

Select and delete the default button names, and then type the text that you want. Separate button names with semicolons.

Compose your message, and then click Send.

(more…)

Automatically reply to messages with the Out of Office Assistant

You can set up Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to send an automatic response to some or all of the people who send you e-mail messages.

Important The Out of Office Assistant command only appears on the Tools menu when you are using a Microsoft Exchange Server account. If you are using an Exchange Server account, click in the Inbox folder, and then the Out of Office Assistant command does not appear on the Tools menu, we encourage you to contact a Microsoft support professional for assistance. An alternative method to automatically reply to messages is available for all Outlook users. Go to Automatically reply to messages.

On the Tools menu, click Out of Office Assistant.

Note The Tools menu appears on the main Outlook window. The main window is the same window that appears when you start Outlook and includes the File, Edit, View, Go, Tools, Actions, and Help menus. There is no Tools menu in windows where you create or view items such as e-mail messages, contacts, or tasks.

If the Out of Office Assistant command does not appear, an alternative method to automatically reply to messages is available for all Outlook users. Go to Automatically reply to messages.

Click Send Out of Office auto-replies.
If you want, select the Only send during this time range check box to schedule when your out of office replies are active. If you do not specify a start and end time, auto-replies will be sent until you click Do not send Out of Office auto-replies.
On the Inside My Organization tab, type the response that you want to send while you are out of the office.
To send auto-replies to people out of your organization, continue with steps 4 and 5.

On the Outside My Organization tab, select the Auto-reply to people outside my organization check box, and then type the response that you want to send while you are out of the office.
Note Organization is usually defined as your company and includes people who have an Exchange Server account on your e-mail system.

When the Auto-reply to people outside my organization check box is selected, the Outside My Organization tab displays (On) next to the tab name.

On the Outside My Organization tab, click My Contacts only or Anyone outside my organization to specify the people to whom auto-replies are to be sent.
Note The contact must exist in your Exchange Server Contacts folder. If the contact exists only in a folder that is a part of a Personal Folders file (.pst), the auto-reply message will not be sent.

In Outlook 2007, with WordMail, we have made it easier to differentiate between different email responses. We added what we call thread shading to emails. Every time we see a new email response (or thread) we shade the entire “extra” content part. Now reading an email allows you to more easily see where one response or thread starts and ends. Check out this screenshot from Outlook 2007:

Thread Navigation and Shading
Reading emails has remained pretty much the same since it first came out; you read an email as one long piece of text. You have to keep scrolling down a message until you have read all responses, where each of the responses are usually separated by the presence of some “extra” content like lines or message headers, which contain information like who sent the email, to whom, when it was sent, etc.

In previous versions of Outlook, reading an email usually meant a lot of scrolling or use of the keyboard to move up and down an entire email message. You needed to notice the “extra” content to figure out when an email response started or ended.

We didn’t stop there. Sometimes you want to be able to skip over whole responses or threads at a time, or even skip to the first or last response within an email. In Outlook 2007 we have made this scenario easy. Moving your mouse over any of the shaded regions will reveal our thread navigation controls.

With these thread navigation controls you can easily navigate to the next, previous, first, or last thread within an email. Emails are becoming more and more popular, with some of us getting hundreds a day. Hopefully this feature will make reading emails a bit easier.

Panning on Tablet PCs
If you are using a Tablet PC, we have added another way for you to easily read and navigate your email through the Panning Hand feature. The Panning Hand command can be found at the top of the vertical scroll bar.

When the Panning Hand is turned on, you can use the Tablet PC pen to scroll up and down an email.

Smart Scaling of Images in the Reading Pane
I don’t know about you guys, but I love being able to quickly read my emails with the Outlook Reading Pane. Unfortunately, the Reading Pane only has a small portion of the total width of my screen’s real estate. Usually, that’s not a bad thing, but if I receive an email with a very large image, my Reading Pane becomes harder to use for reading. The reason is because now I not only have to worry about vertical scrolling, but also horizontal scrolling.

In Outlook 2007 we have made reading such emails easier. Outlook detects if an image is too large based on the Reading Pane real estate size, and it appropriately scales down the image to fit it on screen without the need of a horizontal scroll bar. Check out the same email within Outlook 2007. You can now see the entire chart all within the Reading Pane.

We hope this feature makes it easier for you to read your emails more efficiently (no need to double-click an email message to view it outside the Reading Pane).

Hit Highlighting for Instant Search Results
The last thing I want to show you guys in this post is how we improved the user experience of search with WordMail. In Outlook 2007 you can search for specific emails by using the Search control. Doing so will not only find email messages that contain that string, but WordMail will also highlight and show you where in the email the text can be found.

Applies to: Microsoft Office Access 2007, Excel 2007, InfoPath 2007, OneNote 2007, Outlook 2007, PowerPoint 2007, Project 2007, Publisher 2007, SharePoint Designer 2007, Visio 2007, Word 2007

ScreenTips are small windows that display descriptive text when you rest the pointer on a command or control.

Enhanced ScreenTips are larger windows that display more descriptive text than a ScreenTip and can have a link to a Help topic. Enhanced ScreenTips are available in the following 2007 Microsoft Office system programs: Access, Excel, PowerPoint, and Word.

In the following 2007 Microsoft Office system programs: Access, Excel, PowerPoint, or Word

Click the Microsoft Office Button, and then click Access Options, Excel Options, PowerPoint Options, or Word Options.

Click Popular.

Under Top options for working with Access, Top options for working with Excel, Top options for working with PowerPoint, or Top options for working with Word in the ScreenTip style list, click the option that you want:

Show feature descriptions in ScreenTips

This option turns on ScreenTips and Enhanced ScreenTips. This is the default setting.

Don’t show feature descriptions in ScreenTips This option turns off Enhanced ScreenTips. You still see ScreenTips.

Don’t show ScreenTips This option turns off ScreenTips and Enhanced ScreenTips.

In the following 2007 Microsoft Office system programs: Visio, InfoPath, OneNote, Publisher, SharePoint Designer, or Outlook

On the Tools menu, click Customize.

Click the Options tab.

Under Other, select or clear the Show ScreenTips on toolbars check box.

In Microsoft Office Project 2007

On the Tools menu, point to Customize, and click Toolbars.

On the Options tab, under Other, select or clear the Show ScreenTips on toolbars check box.

From Microsoft Outlook Team Blog: You’ve seen several posts on the Outlook Team Blog focused on ways to help you more effectively manage your incoming e-mails and appointments in Outlook. Office Labs has also been exploring some innovative methods to help people manage the vast amounts of information they receive on a daily basis.

To help alleviate this information overload, Microsoft Office Labs released Email Prioritizer last week on www.officelabs.com. The prototype – inspired by Microsoft Research’s “Priorities” project – is an add-in for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 that was built by the Office Labs development team here in Redmond. Email Prioritizer provides a “do not disturb” button that temporarily pauses new email arrival from ten minutes up to four hours. Email Prioritizer will also assign priority ratings of 0 to 3 stars to incoming mail to help users focus their attention on the most important email messages.

While we encourage you to test out our prototypes, they are unsupported concepts with no plans for inclusion in any products. Please direct any feedback you have on Email Prioritizer to Office Labs at emailpfb@microsoft.com.

Thanks!

* Email Prioritizer is a plug-in for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 (running on Exchange Server) that helps you manage email overload. This concept test provides a “do not disturb” button that temporarily pauses new email arrival, and prioritizes email with a 0-3 star rating system. We hope this prototype helps you focus on the emails that are most important to you.

Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager offers powerful customer and contact management to help you save time, improve sales and marketing, and deliver better customer service. Organize and manage all your contact, prospect, and customer information in one place. Track leads and opportunities throughout the sales cycle. Easily create, personalize, and track direct marketing campaigns in-house. And centralize your project-related information so you can stay organized and monitor tasks with automated reminders.

1. Manage all your contact, prospect, and customer information in one place.
Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager enables you to organize and manage all customer, contact, and prospect information — including contact information, e-mail messages, phone calls, appointments, notes, and documents — in one place so that you can effectively manage your sales opportunities and activities and provide better service to your customers.

2. Manage sales leads and opportunities more effectively.
Manage your leads and prospect information in a single place so you can easily identify and follow up on opportunities throughout the sales process.

3. Easily manage marketing campaigns from concept to delivery.
Step-by-step tools walk you through the process of creating, distributing, and tracking personalized marketing campaigns.

4. Get a dashboard view of your key customer and prospect metrics.
The fully customizable dashboard provides an overview of your important information to help you make decisions and prioritize tasks.

5. Forecast sales and analyze data using flexible reports.
Choose from an array of customer, lead, and opportunity reports, then sort and filter information to help get a complete picture of your sales pipeline.

6. Customize your contact, prospect, and customer information.
Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager offers additional options to help you tailor customer and prospect information to your needs.

7. Keep your project information in one place.
The Business Project feature helps you track, view, and access all your project-related information in one place, including Office Word documents, Office Excel spreadsheets, activities, e-mail messages, meetings, notes, and attachments.

8. Share information easily with multi-user access.
Provide employees with more secure multi-user access to customer, lead, and opportunity information.

9. Track customer and financial information together with Microsoft Office Accounting.
When you use Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager combined with Office Accounting 2008, you can access customer financial history. Track billable time on your Outlook calendar and send it to Office Accounting 2008 for customer invoicing.

10. Stay in touch while you’re offline.
Go on the road with confidence, knowing you have access to your vital customer contact information. View and enter information in Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager from your laptop or Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC, and synchronize your data when you return.

Office Outlook 2007 helps users better manage their time and information, connect across boundaries, and help remain safe and in control. Here are the top 10 ways that

1. Instantly search all your information.
Having problems finding the information you need? Use Office Outlook 2007 to search for keywords, dates, or other flexible criteria to locate items in your e-mail, calendar, contacts, or tasks to save valuable time. Instant Search in Office Outlook 2007 is fully integrated within the interface so you never have to leave Outlook to find the information you need.

2. Easily manage your daily priorities and information.
Check your priorities for the day by looking at the To-Do Bar where your flagged mails and tasks are clearly laid out. The To-Do Bar also connects tasks you may have stored in other Microsoft Office programs like Project, OneNote, and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services technology. Finally, the integration of the To-Do Bar items on the calendar helps you easily schedule and block off time to follow up on items.

3. Get better results faster with the Microsoft Office Fluent user interface.
Office Outlook 2007 has redesigned the look and feel of the messaging interface to make composing, formatting, and acting upon information an easier and more intuitive experience. You now have all of the rich features and capabilities of Outlook in an accessible and streamlined location, making it simple to navigate your options.

4. Connect with people easily and effectively.
New Office Outlook 2007 calendaring functionalities provide easy ways to share your calendar with anyone within or outside of your organization, giving your important contacts immediate access to your information. You can create and publish Internet calendars to Microsoft Office Online, add and share Internet calendar subscriptions, e-mail calendar snapshots, or even send a customized electronic business card to one of your clients, making it easy to communicate with anyone.

5. Increased collaboration and functionality with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.
Office Outlook 2007, used in conjunction with Exchange Server 2007, offers a rich and complete Outlook experience. Users benefit from a new scheduling assistant that automates time-consuming calendaring tasks, the ability to schedule and customize out-of-office communications, and managed folders that facilitate compliance needs. Office Outlook 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 also combine to deliver a new level of secure collaboration, offering multiple messaging approaches with enhanced security that are easy to use and reassure users they can be confident in the security of their messages.

6. Manage your shared information and content in one interface.
Office Outlook 2007 provides you a rich interaction with information stored in Windows SharePoint Services technology at any time. You can connect Windows SharePoint Services documents, calendars, contacts, tasks, and other information to Office Outlook 2007, giving you a central place to manage your information. Additionally, you have full editing capabilities, so that any changes you make to this information stored in Office Outlook 2007 will be reflected on the server version.

7. Enjoy new measures that help keep you safe from junk e-mail and malicious sites.
Office Outlook 2007 has taken new measures to help keep you safe from junk mail and “phishing” Web sites. To help protect you from divulging personal information to a threatening Web site, Office Outlook 2007 has an improved junk e-mail filter and has added new features that disable links and warn you about threatening content within an e-mail message.

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

9. Organize your information in new, rich ways.
Using Color Categories in Office Outlook 2007, you can easily personalize and add categories to any type of information — e-mail, calendar items, contacts, or tasks. Color Categories give you a simple, visual way to distinguish items from one another, so it’s easy to organize your data and search for information.

10. Manage all your communication in one interface.
With Office Outlook 2007, you can now read and manage your Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds and blogs right from within Office Outlook 2007, the most natural place to manage this information. Using the integrated support for RSS feeds in Office Outlook 2007, you no longer have to leave Outlook to read the latest world news, catch up on your favorite sports team, or remain up to date on interesting blogs. It’s easy to get started adding these subscriptions using the built-in home page in Office Outlook 2007 provided by Office Online.

Wondering where your favorite Outlook 2003 commands are located in Outlook 2007? Or just want to explore the rich new design with a little guidance?

When you click the link below, the interactive guide will start. Once you’re there, rest the mouse pointer over an Outlook 2003 menu or button to learn its new location in Outlook 2007. To see an animation of the location of the command or button in Outlook 2007, just click it.

Start the guide

Want to download this guide? This visual, interactive reference guide helps you find your favorite Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 commands in the new 2007 interface.

Overview

Wondering where your favorite Outlook 2003 commands are located in the new Outlook 2007 interface? Or just want to explore the rich, new design with a little guidance? Help is here. We’ve developed a visual, interactive reference guide to help you quickly learn where things are.
You can use the guide any time you’re connected to the Internet or download it here any time you like.

Instructions

To install this download:

1. Download the file by clicking the Download button (above) and saving the file to your hard disk.
2. Double-click the ol2003_2007CmdRef.exe program file on your hard disk to start the setup program.
3. Follow the instructions on the screen to complete the installation.

Instructions for use:

1. Double-click the Interactive - Outlook 2003 to Outlook 2007 command reference.exe file to start the demo.
2. Rest the mouse pointer over an Outlook 2003 menu or button to learn its new location in Outlook 2007.
3. To see an animation of the location of the command or button in Outlook 2007, just click it.

To remove this download:

1. To remove the download file, delete the ol2003_2007CmdRef.exe file.
2. To remove the interactive guide, delete the Interactive - Outlook 2003 to Outlook 2007 command reference.exe file.

Download | Source

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With Microsoft Office Outlook Connector, you can use Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 or Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to access and manage your Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail or Microsoft Office Live Mail accounts, including e-mail messages and contacts for free!

With Outlook Connector, you can use Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007 to access and manage your Windows Live Hotmail or Office Live Mail accounts, including e-mail messages and contacts for free! Calendar, tasks and notes can also be accessed and managed in Outlook for accounts with a paid subscription.
Outlook Connector enables you to use your Live Hotmail accounts within Outlook:

• Read and send your Office Live Mail/Windows Live Hotmail e-mail messages.
• Manage your Live Mail Contacts.
• Use advanced options for blocking junk e-mail messages.
• Manage multiple e-mail accounts in one place.

With a paid subscription, Outlook Connector enables these additional features:

• Manage, share, and synchronize your Windows Live Calendar in Outlook.
• Access your Tasks and Notes.

System Requirements

• Supported Operating Systems: Windows Vista; Windows XP

• This download works with the following Office programs:
  • Microsoft Office Outlook 2003
  • Microsoft Office Outlook 2007

• The following is also required:
  • Internet access via dial-up or broadband (provided separately); local or long-distance charges may apply

• For Calendar Tasks and Notes Functionality
  • A paid subscription-based e-mail account from MSN Hotmail, Windows Live Hotmail or Office Live

Files you can download:

1. Outlook_Connector_12_0_FAQ.doc
2. Outlook_Connector_12_0_FAQ.docx
3. OutlookConnector.exe

Source 

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