Use of these additional
service providers is made possible with the MAPI extensibility interface in
Outlook.
Before you begin, you must have a copy of Outlook 2000. It is imperative that
you have this software and practice with it. In order for you to get a good feel
for this product, you should visit the Outlook 2000 homepage and download the
Product Guide
and the
Features Guide.
You can also take the
Outlook 2000 Tour
with Microsoft. These links should provide you with a solid overview of the
product as well.
Here is an outstanding Technet White paper
by Microsoft:
Building Outlook and Exchange Solutions
This is a necessary read to fully prep you
on how this client works. It is not necessary to fully know how the exchange
server works (you are not expected to be Exchange administrators to take this
exam) but when it’s referenced (and it will be) you will know what it is
you are connecting to and interacting with.
To use and configure Outlook you must have
either an Internal E-mail System (such as Exchange Server) or an Internet E-mail
account. If you do not, then you will be defaulted to your current file system.
If this happens, you will not be able to test all your components, and it may be
difficult for you to practice the tasks in this study guide. Outlook 2000 can be
used without an E-mail server for stand-alone contact, task, and schedule
management.
When you first launch Outlook, you will be
prompted to either connect to a Mail source or use the default file
system.
Now that you have a general idea of what
Outlook is and what it can do for you, let’s look at how to do specific
tasks to prepare for the MOUS exam.
Getting Started
First, you need to setup a source of mail to send or receive anything. This is
the path to get you mail server set up:
First, go to Control Panel => MAIL
applet. If you are using Windows 2000 (and extended the control panel) then you
can follow the path below:
Once you have selected the MAIL applet, you
will be prompted with a new dialog box:
As you can see here, this is where you can
add the Exchange server or set up Internet-based mail. This should be enough to
get you going.
If you need to add and Internet-based
E-mail connection, use the ADD button from the diagram above and add Internet
Mail (see below).
The Outlook Shortcut Bar / Navigate between Outlook components
To switch to different functions and view,
we mainly rely on the Shortcut Bar, which is on the left of the screen. You can
also use the folder list (also found below) to navigate. It is in your best
interest to learn both. If this tool bar does not show up, you will need to
enable it. You can select the Folder list option as well:
Once you select the Outlook bar, it will
attach itself to the left-hand side of your Outlook 2000 application window.
This is it below with a little idea of what each click will bring
you:
Number 1: The Shortcut
bar
You can also use the Folder list as it is
easier to use and provides you with an “Explorer” type folder
listing. Be familiar with both. Below is the folder list.
Number 2: Outlook
Today
Outlook Today will provide you with
basic information like the Date, and what you see below in the diagram. Remember
that it is fully customizable.
Number 3: The
Inbox
The inbox is where you will find your
emails that you have just received unless you have a rule set up or forwarding.
You can simply double click the received E-mail to read it.
Number 4: The Calendar
The calendar is a great way to mark events,
meetings or plans. To create a new event all you need to do is double click on
whatever date and time you want to enter in the calendar , enter the info you
need to put in (see below) and save and close.
Number 5: Contacts
The contacts tab is great to view your
contact list. This is generally where you may add people you do business with
that may not appear in your global address book.
Another cool trick is to add your own
contact to an E-mail. Just drag and drop the contact on an outgoing
E-mail.
Number 6: Tasks
Tasks are set up to remind you of things
you need to accomplish and when. You can add a new task and setup its due
date.
Number 7: Notes
Notes are little stickies (Apple users will
definitely find this VERY familiar) that you can use to leave notes. Click on
the notes tab:
Select new note:
Now you can add your note on to the yellow
notepaper that appears and save it:
Number 8: Deleted Items
This is going to give you the same view as
your Inbox, but it will show items that you had deleted (or have marked for
deletion).
Read mail
To Read mail, you may need to go to the
Inbox and hit the Send/Receive button to get your E-mail, but generally an
Exchange server will push the mail to the clients. You can also use this option
if you have an E-mail server. The following shows my Internet Connection:
Once selected, you will see the Client
either sending or receiving E-mail:
Now, new mail will be delivered to your
inbox. You can highlight the message and read the content from the Preview pane
on the lower half of the screen. To enable or disable the Preview pane, choose
View => Preview Pane.
You can see that you have an E-mail to
read:
Double click it to open and read it.
Send mail / Compose mail by entering text
From within the Inbox, hit New Mail Message
and then enter the recipient address in the To: field.
You can also do a few other things
here:
Another Great trick is to know what Bcc is.
This is BLIND Carbon Copy. This is how you add someone onto the E-mail and it
will not show up on the receiving persons E-mail. This is a good way to add your
manager onto your emails without alarming whom you are sending the E-mail.
Remember – Privacy doesn’t exist in the E-mail age with tools like
this.
Print mail
To print your E-mail, go to the Inbox,
select the message and then hit the Print button. You can either Open the mail
and print it, or just have it highlighted and hit print. Usually better to open
it to make sure. You can do the shortcut below by right-clicking on the message
and selecting Print.
Right click the message and select
Print.
Use mail features (forward, reply, recall)
To reply or forward a message, highlight
the target mail message and click Reply or Forward. Note that if you select
multiple messages to forward, they will be forwarded as attachments.
If you select reply to all, you will Reply
to All the CC (Carbon Copy) addresses as well.
To recall messages you sent to recipients,
go to the Sent Items folder and open the sent message you want to recall or
replace. Choose Actions - Recall This Message and click Delete unread copies of
this message. To replace the message with another one, choose Delete unread
copies and replace with a new message and type in a new message.
Note that the recall / replace features may
not function properly if the recipient is not using Outlook, or if the
connection is made via the internet rather than an intranet.
Flag mail messages
To flag a message for follow up, select the
message and then choose Actions => Flag for Follow Up. (Or you can type
Ctrl+Shift+G)
In the Flag to box, you may click on the
desired flag or type in your own:
Now enter a Due by date:
To flag a message as completed, select the
message and choose Actions => Flag for Follow Up, then select the Completed
check box. This is what it will look like in the Inbox:
Find messages
Click the Find button and then type the
text you want to search for in the Look for box. If you want to search in the
content of items, check Search all text in the message. Finally, click Find Now.
Note that searching through the content can be extremely slow if you have a high
volume of messages in your folder.
Configure basic mail print options
You should go to File => Page Setup, and
Define Print Styles first.
When you are ready to print, choose File
=> Print and go into the Print style box. Then, select the print style you
want to use. If you need to change the format, paper, header and footer or other
options, go to Page Setup from there.
Note: for Page Setup to work correctly, you
need to have a printer installed in your workstation first.
Work with attachments
To attach a file to a message, in the text
box you click Insert => File, select the file to attach and click Insert.
Another way to do this is drag and drop the
attachment directly into the E-mail. You can also drag and drop an E-mail
attachment to your workstation desktop, folder or wherever you want to put it.
Note: if you do not have the file association on your machine it will appear as
unknown:
To open an attachment, select the
corresponding message and then double click the paperclip icon for the
attachment. You can open the message within
the E-mail by double clicking on the document or spreadsheet or whatever was
sent.
Add a signature to mail
There are two ways to do this:
The first way is to add a preexisting
signature and this is done by manipulating the new E-mail by choosing Insert
=> Signature => More
The second way to go about adding a
signature is to create a signature for all messages by choosing Tools =>
Options => Mail Format.
Now select the Mail Format tab:
Once selected, you will see the Signature
Picker on the bottom of the dialog box. You can see that one is not set up
below, so we will create one:
Once you click Signature Picker, select
New. Fill in a name in the ‘Enter a name for your new Signature’ box
and click Next.
Now, I have added my signature and changed
the font
This file is kept as your signature in Rich
Text Format (RTF). This signature is kept in your user profile on your local
workstation. This is the view from Explorer:
This is handy information if you need to
backup your machine and need to know where all your Outlook information is
stored.
Now you can see that you have a signature
to work with.
Customize the look of mail and Use mail templates (themes) to compose mail
To customize the look of a message, first
open a new message by using Word as your E-mail editor (just a personal note...
without the service pack installed, Word as an E-mail editor will cause you
major headaches on most machines).
Then, choose Tools => Options =>
Select General =>
Select E-mail Options => Personal
Stationery => Theme. Then you can select the theme you like.
Customize menu and task bars
Customization is enabled under Tools =>
Customize. Under the Options tab is where you can turn off the annoying menu
folding option (shown below).
Once you are in the customization mode, you
can drag and drop between icons and menu items freely to add or remove them, or
to right click and change their properties. This customization mechanism is used
in Word, Excel and PowerPoint as well.
Create folders
Choose File => Folder => New Folder,
then enter the new folder name and its location in the folder hierarchy. In
addition, you must define the type of items to be contained in this folder. You
cannot mix and match different item types in one single folder.
To take this a step further, let us add a
personal folder to the Outlook window.
What is a personal folder? It is a folder
that is not stored on the Server, but on the local client (your machine) and all
information put into this folder is on the local machine.
To add a personal folder go to Tools =>
Services
After you select Services =>
Add
Select a new Personal Folder => Name the
Folder (which is really a PST file) and hit Open. (I called my PST
“Crammail”)
Now, this name is for the FILE that will be
stored on the local machine as a storage space for you data. Now you can NAME
the folder, as it will appear in the Outlook folder view:
Note: VERY important that if you decide to
password protect this PST file, you better not forget that password.
Now, you will see the folder
appear:
You can see it in the folder
view:
Remember that this folder is LOCAL and not
part of the server. Lets make a sub folder under this one:
Right click the folder and select New
folder
Name the new folder accordingly (I named it
by old mail per month):
You could set mail to be forwarded directly
to that folder though by going to Tools => Services and selecting the
Delivery tab:
Sort mail
You can right click on any of the headers
and choose Sort Ascending or Sort Descending.
To deploy more complicated sorting (such as
multi-field sorting), go to View => Current View => Customize Current View
=> Sort and define the sorting mechanism.
Set viewing options
You can go to View => Current View and
select / deselect the options as you see fit.
Archive mail messages
To archive manually, go to File =>
Archive, and then select ‘Archive all folders according to their
AutoArchive settings’ if you want to archive everything, or simply click
Archive this folder and all subfolders and then pick up the target folder from
the list.
You can optionally specify the date to
determine what to archive. You are recommended to specify a file name and
location for the resulting file though.
Filter a view
To filter a view, you first select the
folder to which you want to apply a filter:
Then go to View => Current View =>
Customize Current View => Filter, and define the filter criteria
accordingly.
Now, you can specify whatever you need
to:
Navigate within the calendar
To navigate around the calendar, you may
rely on the following toolbar at the top of the screen. It gives you different
panes for viewing the dates and months.
Schedule appointments and events
In Calendar view, click New to display the
New Appointment form, and then fill in the information as you see fit. Note that
Appointments are activities in only your Calendar – they do not involve
other people or resources.
To call for a meeting, choose New =>
Meeting Request instead. Meeting Request has one additional field: the recipient
field, as the request will be sent to one or more recipients.
An event is an activity that lasts 24 hours
or longer. A critical difference between an all day appointment and an event is
that the former will display time as busy, while an event will display the time
as free. To create an event, you will need to right click on the Calendar pane
and select the appropriate options.
Set reminders
To set an appointment reminder, open the
target appointment and select the Reminder check box. Select the amount of time
before the appointment that you want the reminder to occur.
Additionally, as an option, you can
customize the reminder sound for this appointment only by clicking the reminder
button. Note that the sound file must be in .WAV format.
Your reminder will appear on your desktop
and appear in a little dialog box:
As you can see, either you can dismiss the
reminder all together or to select a new time for it to reappear click
Snooze.
Print in calendar
To print a monthly Calendar, in calendar
view you choose File => Print, then click Monthly Style in the Print style
box and define the first day and last day to print.
To print one month per page, go to Page
Setup and select Print exactly one month per page. To print only the weekdays,
select Don't print weekends instead. To print a blank calendar, create a new
calendar folder, which contains a blank calendar, then print it out.
To print a specific event, you can right
click it and select print.
Schedule multi-day events
For multi-day event, you can simply define
the start time and end time to be on different dates.
<
Customize the calendar view
Go to View => Current View =>
Customize Current View.
Then you can select other options to
customize with:
Schedule recurring appointments
Right click on the Calendar pane and choose
New Recurring Appointment
You can see that I want to create a new
recurring appointment at 2:30 AM every morning. This is how to set appointments
up to happen repeatedly, without having to keep setting them up. You know that
they will be the same every week.
You will be asked to define the recurrence
pattern as follow:
Please make note of all fields and make
sure you set them correctly.
Add and remove meeting attendees / Plan meetings involving others
To invite attendees to a meeting, go into
the Calendar view and choose Actions => Plan a Meeting => Invite Others.
In the ‘Type name or select from
list’ box, key in the name of the your target and click Required,
Optional, or Resources. “Resources” will mean “Location”
in this context. You have the options to view the free/busy time for invitees,
and you may use AutoPick to find the next available free time for
everyone.
To remove attendee, click to open the
entry, switch to the Attendee Availability tab, right click on the name of the
target attendee and choose Clear.
For even better planning, you can choose
Show Attendee Status and find out the attendees’ response. If both
yourself and the Attendees are supported by Exchange Server, you may actually be
able to view others’ schedules.
You should become a pro at this not only
for this exam. If you have to schedule meetings (And I am sure you will
eventually if not already), you will find it nearly impossible to get 10 people
all in the same company to meet at the same time. This is a good way to VIEW
when people are free or busy so you can schedule appointments around already
agreed upon previous engagements.
Save a personal or team calendar as a Web page
Go to File => Save as Web Page and
define the date range to print.
Now you can define the range:
Book office resources directly
To book resources (such as a conference
room) directly, you need to specify the Location in the meeting
request.
In my example, you can see that I invited
the Microsoft rep to go snowboarding at 5:30 AM, and we should meet at the
conference room first. This is a very simple example, but it can get ridiculous
when really trying to book conference rooms to have meetings. Always make sure
that they too are not busy. If your exchange administrator sets this up
correctly, you can use the dropdown box and predefined objects will appear
automatically, or you can simply type in the location.
Integrate calendar with other Outlook components
Again, you can drag and drop items among
the Outlook folders of different types to produce different outcomes.
When you drag and drop the appointment in
your calendar to the inbox, an E-mail will be automatically created with the
subject predefined (as seen below).
Use Outlook Help and Office Assistant
For any help-related issue, choose Help
=> Microsoft Outlook Help or enable/disable Outlook Assistant.
This is the familiar default assistant, but
you can choose many different ones.
Modify the Outlook Master Categories List
To modify the Outlook Master Categories
list, go to Edit => Categories => Master Category List.
Once there, you can add a new Master
Category, delete an existing category, or reset the list to the default
settings.
