Office 2011 for Mac: Navigating the Outlook Home Tab

By Geetesh Bajaj and James Gordon from Office 2011 for Mac All-in-One For Dummies

3 of 9 in Series: The Essentials of Using Outlook in Office 2011 for Mac

The Home tab of the Ribbon in Outlook 2011 for Mac is where you spend most of your time when working with e-mail. It has most of the commands you need. The buttons on the Ribbon's Home tab, in Office 2011 for Mac, do the following:

E-Mail: Opens a new mail message dialog.
New: Displays a pop-up menu from which you can choose to make a new e-mail message, meeting, appointment, contact, contact group, task, or note.
Delete: Deletes the select message.
Reply: When a message is selected, displays a mail message pre-addressed to the sender of the selected message, with the body of the original message included and indented.
Reply All: Same as Reply, but all recipients in the To and CC fields in the original message are replied to.
Forward: Opens a mail message with the contents of the selected message.
Meeting: Opens a dialog that lets you schedule a meeting, complete with the ability to add a customized meeting invitation to send to invitees, and the ability to use the Scheduling Assistant to help you check for available times in your calendar.
Attachment: Opens a new mail message with the contents of the selected message attached so that you can send it as-is to recipients you specify.
Move: Select one or more messages in the list and then click this button to display a browser that lets you choose a folder in your folder list.
Rules: Displays a pop-up menu that lets you apply existing rules or display the Rules dialog discussed later in this chapter.
Junk: Select one or more messages in the message list and then click this to display a menu with the following options:
- Mark as Junk: Changes the category of selected messages to Junk.
- Block Sender: Adds the sender's e-mail address to the list of blocked senders in Tools→Junk E-Mail Protection→Blocked Senders.
- Mark as Not Junk: Only displays if three or more messages are selected, or if you change the state of a selected message previously classified as junk to not junk.
Unread: Changes the state of a read message to unread. The button may change to Read so you can change the state of a message from unread to read.
Categorize: Using the pop-up menu, you can apply a category to selected messages, display a dialog to add or edit categories, and clear categories from selected messages.
Follow-Up: Click the triangle next to the flag to display a pop-up menu that lets you set a reminder for the selected item.
Filters: Click the triangle on the right of this button to display a pop-up menu from which you can choose a variety of filters or clear all filters.
Find a Contact: Type a contact's name and then press Return or Enter to display the results of your contact search in the Contacts Search.
Contacts Search: Displays the Contacts Search dialog.
Send/Receive: Click this button to tell Outlook to check with the mail server and update the message list and send messages that are queued in the Outbox.