Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Mar 26, 2004

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The next version of Outlook doesn't have a ribbon, but it has some neat new features.

First of all it coordinates with the new Internet Explorer 7 to handle your RSS feeds. In our recent updates on RSS and Podcasts, we generally used an aggregator to handle the subscriptions and had to cut and paste links into an area of the aggregator to handle subscriptions.

By using Outlook 2007 with IE7, the process is greatly streamlined.

With the new Internet Explorer 7, an icon on the main menu turns orange alerting you that feeds are available.

Figure 1190

Clicking on a live feed in IE7 gives you a chance to subscribe right away.

Figure 1191

Turning our attention to Outlook now, we can see that there us a new RSS Feeds area directly in our Email Inbox.

Figure 1192

You no longer need an aggregator; by subscribing to feeds using IE7 you can easily access them within the Outlook Inbox.

You have a chance to read the headlines right away, view the content in the Preview pane, and click on links or download media files (podcasts) directly from within Outlook.

Again the advantage of RSS is that you don't need to use IE7 to go out to your favorite web sites to view content every day; by subscribing to the feeds it is delivered to you just as though it were a (real magazine) subscription.

Speaking of the preview panel, many of us have been taught that it is dangerous from a security perspective and we've stopped using it. With Outlook 2007 I am more confident in the new security features and keep my preview panel open — it saves me a lot of time.

Other new Outlook security enhancements include:

Automatic Junk E-mail filter
Supported e-mail postmarking
Block automatic picture downloads
Advanced antiphishing blocker
Safer automatic preview of messages

While Outlook doesn't have a ribbon at the top of its new interface, it does have a To-Do bar at the right hand side. With the bar hidden it looks unobtrusive.

Figure 1193

But with the bar expanded it provides a nice summary of upcoming events on the calendar and tasks.

Figure 1194

Color Categories

Another very cool organizational tool and something that makes Outlook a bit more colorful is the addition of color coded categories in Contacts and the Calendar.

The Calendar has had color events before, but now the color codes are coordinated so that you can implement a system of colors (red=key contact; yellow=personal) and make it work into the calendar as well.

Right-clicking on a contact gives you the color category option.

Figure 1195

Doing the same thing for an event or appointment in the calendar provides the same functionality.

Figure 1196

Wouldn't productivity expert Peggy Duncan be pleased — a much clearer way to see your most important people and appointments visually.

There are also category options under Tasks and within Email — if you want to take it to its logical conclusions.

Of course if you implement Outlook search folders these will also adhere to categorization systems that you design. If you like you can rename each color to correspond to the specific category you would like it to represent.

Predictions

With the end of the year my editors encourage us to make some predictions.

First, I would expect that many office users will balk at upgrading — especially because in larger offices it will mean increased costs for (re)training.

There will be initial grumbling about not finding features as quickly, but as documents get produced that look a lot more presentable and professional, these reactions will subside.

I think Microsoft's initial attempt at Office Live will be disappointing, but a lot of Office users will take advantage of Vista's new Meeting Space feature to hold ad hoc conferences and collaborate.

There will be a great deal of confusion as to whether to use Office Live, the new Office Groove or SharePoint and the lack of integration among these tools will lead to gnashing of teeth.

The focus may well become less about collaborating on documents and more about managing meetings — and new tools like Quindi and MeetingSense will make headway in the market — eventually becoming absorbed into Live Meeting or some other Office tool.

Users who take the time to get comfortable with Office 2007 and Vista will be pleased with the new look and feel of the products while purists who just want to crank out documents will think it may have been money ill spent. The PowerPoint community will love both products because their presentations will look much better and become more effective.

Visio and OneNote will finally become mainstream applications instead of niche products as more people get exposed to them.

In general both the new OS and Office 2007 will become old hat by this time next year and we'll be speculating as to what else Microsoft can do to breathe life into products that enhance productivity but may not have any features left to add.

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