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Unlike its counterparts in the Office suite, Outlook 2007 isn’t just a single-purposed tool like, for example, Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel; instead, it is a conglomeration of functionality designed to help you manage all aspects of your daily life.

This chapter is all about getting the most out of Outlook messaging, which builds on the well-cited paradigm of enhanced workflow and organization. We’ll take you through how to enhance the send/receive experience with templates and rules, how Outlook integrates with Windows Live Messenger, and how to send and receive faxes; we’ll finish up with a section about how to access Outlook remotely using Outlook Anywhere.

To fully appreciate the value of Outlook as an organizational aid, you need to employ a variety of key facilities to help you sift, group, and consume information. This chapter will train you in using these features, scrutinizing the following functionality:

One of the most important facets of Outlook is that it manages contacts. In Outlook terms, a is simply a record of the postal addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and fax numbers associated with someone with whom you need to keep in touch. For example, you might have personal contacts such as your mother, dentist, and lawyer, and you might have business contacts such as customers, suppliers, and managers.

Scheduling your busy life can be a chore, and you don’t want to have to fight your software to do it. Outlook 2007 includes some minor, but welcome, improvements to its Calendar module, with particular emphasis on sharing calendars with your co-workers and associates through Exchange Server, through Office Online, and through the Internet.

It’s not always possible to produce immediately structured and targeted actions based on information you hear in an ad hoc way. For this reason, with notes and the Journal, you can take down notes and maintain daily records using Outlook; both methods are vital in helping you stay organized and on top of what you have to do.

We all have things to do. We all need to keep track of those things too, lest we get caught up in a web of consequences.

You will have noticed by now that when you view email in Outlook, if that email is spread across multiple folders, these folders look very much like those you’d see in Windows Explorer when viewing the file system (see Figure 8-1).

In Outlook terms, a is a keyword or phrase used to assist you in organizing and monitoring Outlook objects, such as emails, contacts, appointments, tasks, and notes. These Outlook objects are known simply as , and we will refer to them henceforth as such.

Once you start getting more familiar with Outlook 2007, using the plethora of functionality and features within this most capable product, you’ll undoubtedly find that some aspects of the interface don’t quite work for you in the way you’d like. You’ll probably also find certain automation tasks that are not available with Outlook straight out of the box. Nevertheless, Outlook, like all its counterparts in the Office 2007 suite, is highly extensible, so you can customize it to your heart’s content.