Office 2000 Premium Part I: Word, Excel, and Outlook A Look At OutLook Douglas Smith
What's New?
Outlook 2000 has been around for a long time and has seen a lot of changes--most for the better, of course. There are many new features and enhancements with Outlook 2000. Here's what we have found with this new Microsoft offering. Straight out of the box, we noticed that there is now an Outlook Today, a customizable quick overview that summarizes Mail, Calendar and Tasks in one window. This can be configured to start when first accessing Outlook. There are now Standard Office 2000 personal productivity features that can personalize menus, toolbars, and the quick customized toolbars. Quickly locate contacts as well as search on Microsoft Exchange Server Public Folder properties from anywhere within it, using the Quick Find Contact selection. The Startup Wizard has been greatly enhanced to automatically detect appropriate installation options and import existing accounts, profile information, folders and personal address books from earlier Outlook versions, or from Express, Netscape Messenger or Eudora. Outlook 2000 now generates and tracks internet-standard read receipts, and can publish a personal or team calendar as HTML. There are now ScreenTips in Calendar view, it can hide private appointments. NetShow buffs can now schedule and automatically start it at designated times. Create Distribution Lists based on multiple Contact folders and Microsoft Exchange Server Global Address List. Auto Merge capability for the Contacts list will help eliminate duplicates, and all activity for each contact can be tracked. A lot of enhancements have been included in Outlook 2000 based on user and beta tester comments.
What's Good?
There have been great pains taken to provide seamless integration between all Office 2000 components, and with Internet Explorer 5.0 and the Internet. Outlook 2000 has developed into a world-class Office E-Mail and Personal Information Manager in large part because of this seamless integration. Outlook 2000 is now a full-fledged messaging and collaboration client, enabling one to organize and share information across a company intranet or over the Internet. One of the neatest and most appealing features is that now users can easily create a shortcut in the Outlook Bar to any file, folder or Web page. Click on an Outlook Bar shortcut to a Web page and display the Web page in the right-hand Outlook pane, and do basic Web navigation. Another great feature is the ability to associate one or more Web pages with any personal or Exchange Server folder. If you have ever had 'synchronization' pop up while online, you know how frustrating this can be--it seems to freeze everything until it completes. Well, Outlook 2000 can now specify collections of Microsoft Exchange Server folders to be synchronized together, based on speed of connection or time available. There are many other enhancements that we really liked, but these seemed the best to us.
What's Bad?
What we don’t like is still evident in many versions of Outlook, and that is the inability to view messages that remain on the ISP's server. Most email programs these days allow a user either to pull up messages that remain on the server and manage them there, or to see type of icon telling what messages still remain on the there. We missed the ability to turn off HTML messages, since many viruses are transmitted these days in such emails. One of my Most Wanted features for using dialup is the ability to start offline, including easy checking of mail. Outlook 2000 remains a very bulky program, very slow on less than a good strong Pentium with plenty of memory--so beware!
How Does It Stack Up Against The Competition?
While standalone PIMs like Ecco and Time and Chaos surpass Outlook in some areas, none is able to match Outlook's comprehensive set of features. Outlook 2000 widens the gap even further. Its new and improved features, a revised interface (including built-in AutoPreview and three-pane Preview displays), and a multitude of powerful functions make this the best version yet! Upgrading is always a big question mark for me, but I had no problem with this one, the overall improvements make Outlook 2000 a good choice for new users or those upgrading from earlier versions.
