top called the Ribbon. It’s adorned with festive-looking buttons. Many of those buttons are labeled with the names of the things that happen if you click them with your mouse, such as Save, Follow Up, or Delete. A row of tabs appears just above the Ribbon, with each bearing a label, such as Home, Send/Receive, or View. Clicking any of those words reveals an entirely different Ribbon full of buttons for a different set of tasks.
This arrangement came about because people frequently call Microsoft and ask the company to add features to Outlook that don’t need to be added because they’ve been there all along. The Ribbon is supposed to make those mysterious, hidden features more obvious. I think a better solution is to get more people to read this book. As a public service, I’m doing what I can to make that happen. I hope you’ll join the cause.
Normally, you can choose any Windows command in at least two different ways (and sometimes more):
✔ Click a button on the Ribbon or in the Navigation pane.
✔ Press a keyboard combination. An example is Ctrl+B, which means holding down the Ctrl key and pressing the letter B. (You use this command to make text bold.)
✔ Press the F10 key to reveal a shortcut key and then press that key (way too much trouble but possible for those who love a challenge).
One rather confusing Outlook feature is the way many commands are hidden within the tabs on the Ribbon. If you don’t know which tab has the button you need, you have to click every tab until you find the command you want. That’s fine if you’re a speed-reader, but hunting for rarely used commands slows down most of us. Fortunately, after you’ve done a task once, you can usually find your way back to do it again.
Another fast way to get at your favorite Outlook features is the Quick Access Toolbar – a tiny strip of icons in the upper-left corner of your screen. In Chapter 10, I describe how that works and how to make it do what you want.
Icons Used in This Book
Sometimes, the fastest way to go through a book is to look at the pictures – in this case, icons that draw your attention to specific types of useful information. I use these icons in this book:
Part I
Getting Started With Outlook 2016
In this part …
✔ Learn how to use Outlook to read and send email, send attachments, and create appointments and tasks as well as how to use the calendar feature to help you meet important deadlines.
✔ Explore the various parts of Outlook, including views, menus, and folders, as well as the search feature.
✔ Discover how to create contacts and calendar appointments as well as how to use dragging, how to create and modify tasks, and how to further enhance your productivity.
Chapter 1
Outlook Features You Really Need to Know
In This Chapter
▶ Reading and creating email
▶ Sending files by email
▶ Checking your calendar
▶ Entering appointments and contacts
▶ Managing tasks
▶ Keeping notes
I’m kicking off this book with Outlook’s Greatest Hits – the things you’ll want to do with Outlook every single day. The list sounds simple enough: sending email, making appointments, and so on. But most people only use about 5 percent of Outlook’s power. Even if you move up to using 10 percent of Outlook’s features, you’ll be amazed at how this little program can streamline your life and spiff up your communications. People get pretty excited about Outlook, even if they take advantage of only a tiny fraction of what the package can do. But there’s more here than meets the eye; Outlook does ordinary things extraordinarily well. I know you want to do the same, so read on.
Explaining Why So Many People Use Outlook
Millions of people use Outlook because millions of people use Outlook. That’s not redundant – Outlook is the standard tool for communicating, collaborating, and organizing for hundreds of millions of people around the world. When so many people use the same tool for organizing the things they do individually, it becomes vastly easier for everyone to organize the things they do together by using that tool. That’s the case with Outlook. It’s a powerful tool even if you work all alone, but that power gets magnified when you use it to collaborate with others.
What’s new about Microsoft Outlook 2016
The most important news about Outlook 2016 doesn’t concern what’s in it but how you buy it. Microsoft has gone whole hog with a new strategy that lets customers rent software rather than buying boxes of discs to install. That’s good news for you. Instead of having to shell out hundreds of dollars for new versions of Microsoft Office every few years, you can now just pay a small amount every month for a subscription to Office 365, which gives you the right to put the software on up to five computers. You also get online storage for your files and advanced email services as part of the package. For the moment, you can still buy Outlook the old-fashioned way, but Microsoft has made it very clear that in the future, they expect everyone to rent, not buy.
Doing Anything in Outlook the Easy Way
Well, okay, maybe you can’t use Outlook to decipher hieroglyphics, but if you know a little about basic email techniques, you can do a lot in Outlook, such as click an icon to do something, to view something, or to complete something.
✔ Open an item and read it: Double-click the item.
✔ Create a new item: Click an icon in the Folder pane, click the New button on the Ribbon at the top of the screen, and fill out the form that appears. When you’re done, click the Send button
