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Published:
January 6, 2022

Microsoft 365 Outlook For Dummies

Overview

Get up to speed on Microsoft's world-famous emailing, scheduling, collaborating, and organizing super-app

Microsoft Outlook can do pretty much anything for you—short of cooking you a steak dinner. It can deliver and sort your email, filter out the junk, help you organize your life, send data to the cloud, sync up your various devices, and even integrate with iOS and Android. And in the latest edition of Microsoft Outlook For Dummies you'll learn how to do all of that, and more!

Discover how to create automated mail-handling rules, translate messages into English or other languages, and share your calendar with other people. This latest edition even walks you through each of the four different versions of Outlook and their ideal use cases. You'll also find:

  • Straightforward content that shows you how to draft and send emails, organize your calendars, and set up to-do lists, tasks, and reminders
  • Easy explanations of hidden and advanced features that very few people know about or use, setting you up to impress your coworkers!
  • Navigation tips for the Microsoft Outlook interface

Perfect for novices who are brand-new to Outlook, Microsoft Outlook For Dummies is also a must-buy resource for email veterans looking to pick up the latest tips for the newest versions of Microsoft's world-famous email software.

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About The Author

Faithe Wempen, M.A., is a Microsoft Office Master Instructor, an instructional designer, and the author of over 160 books—­including Computers For Seniors For ­Dummies—that empower consumers to make the most of their ­personal computers and applications.

Sample Chapters

outlook for dummies

CHEAT SHEET

Sending email with Outlook has never been easier. Its familiar ribbon interface has all the features you’ve come to love — plus some new ones. Use this handy Cheat Sheet to discover great tips and keyboard shortcuts to help you get the most out of Outlook.Ten tips for using the Mail module Adjust columns and panes.

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Microsoft Outlook can do plenty for you without any outside help, but a few well-considered accessories, such as Sharepoint, can make your life even easier. Some accessories make up for capabilities that Outlook ought to have but doesn’t. Other accessories help use Outlook data anywhere, anytime. Smartphones and Microsoft Outlook Smartphones are everywhere today, and they’re probably the most powerful Outlook “accessory.
Juggling buttons, keys, and Ribbons can seem to take all day. This list offers some Microsoft Outlook shortcuts that can save you time and tension. How to use the Microsoft Outlook New Items tool To create a new item in whatever module you’re in, just click the tool at the far-left end of the Ribbon. The name and appearance of that icon changes when you change modules, so it becomes a New Task icon in the Tasks module, a New Contact icon in the People module, and so on.
It takes only a few minutes to find out something that a program can do, and you can spend all day trying to figure out something that a program can’t do. Bear in mind that Microsoft Outlook can’t do these ten things when you first get it. Because you can reprogram Outlook with Visual Basic, however, a clever person could make Outlook do many of these things by creating shortcut macros.
Change the default reminder sound. When a reminder appears, you hear a sound (if your sound is turned on, of course). By default, it’s a sound called reminder.wav that comes with Outlook. You can change to some other sound. Choose File, Options, click Advanced, and in the Reminders section, click the Browse button and select a different sound file.
Adjust columns and panes. The columns in the Inbox and other mail locations are adjustable. To widen a column, position the mouse pointer between two column headings and drag to change the width of the one on the left. You can also adjust the relative sizes of the navigation pane, mail list, and reading panes; just position the mouse pointer over a divider between the panes and drag.
Specify the parts of a person’s name. When you create a new contact, whatever name you enter in the Full Name box is automatically parsed into separate fields for the Title, First, Middle, Last, and Suffix. Outlook doesn’t always do a perfect job of this. You can access a dialog box for entering each of those pieces of information by clicking the Full Name button as you are creating a new contact.
Archive old information. Data files can quickly grow to gigabytes in size. Over time, a large data file can become unwieldy, causing Outlook to be slower to start up and shut down. You might want to archive old messages and items into a separate file that you can access as needed. To archive files, click File and then click the Tools button.
Change note colors. Sticky notes don’t have to be yellow. To change a note color, change its category. Select it, and then on the Home tab, click Categorize and choose a different color. This changes the note color in Icon view and any other views that show it as a colored sticky note. Forward a note. To send a note to someone else via email, select the note and on the Home tab, click Forward.
When it’s not what you know but who you know, you need a good tool for keeping track of who’s who. Microsoft Outlook 2019 is a great tool for managing your names and addresses, and it’s just as easy to use as your “little black book.”To enter a new contact, follow these steps: 1. Click People in the Navigation bar to switch to the People module if needed.
If you use Microsoft Outlook 2019 at home or in an office without Exchange Server, you can’t use these features. But take heart: Little by little, Microsoft is finding ways to make Exchange-only features available to all Outlook users, so you can look over this article as a preview of things to come. How to give delegate permissions in Outlook with Exchange Good managers delegate authority.
Creating a new email message in Microsoft Outlook 2019 is insanely easy. Outlook always starts up in the Inbox unless you configure it otherwise. If you want to start up in some other folder than your Inbox, click the File tab and select Options, click Advanced, and in the Outlook Start and Exit section, change the Start Outlook in This Folder setting.
Knowing what you need to do isn’t enough; you need to know what to do next. When you’re juggling 1,000 competing demands all at once, you need a tool that shows you at a glance what’s up next so you can keep your work moving forward.Outlook has several task management tools that help you organize your lengthy to-do list for peak performance.
Sometimes, you need a reminder to do something involving another person — but tying a string around your finger looks silly and doesn’t help much anyway. Microsoft Outlook 2019 offers a better way. For example, if you promise to call someone next week, the best way to help yourself remember is to flag that person’s name in the Contacts list.
You may not always have the answer to every email message you receive in Microsoft Outlook 2019. You may need to send a message to somebody else to answer, so pass it on.To forward a message, follow these steps: 1. In the Mail module, click the title of the message you want to forward. The message you selected appears in the Reading pane.
Microsoft Outlook 2019 can forward an electronic business card to any other person who uses Outlook (or any other program that understands how to use digital business cards). It’s a handy way to email any contact record in your list to anybody else.The most obvious thing you may want to send this way is your own contact information: In the People module, create a contact record for yourself.
You can get more done in a 24-hour day if you keep your Microsoft Outlook 2019 calendar current. You can enter appointments and manage your schedule from within Outlook. How to enter an appointment in Outlook If you’ve ever used an old-fashioned paper planner, the Outlook Calendar will look familiar to you. When you click the Calendar button in the Navigation bar and then click the Day button on the Home tab, you see a grid in the middle of the screen with lines representing each segment of the day.
The whole reason for entering people’s contact information in Microsoft Outlook 2019 is so you can find them again. Otherwise, what’s the point of all this rigmarole?Finding names in the People module is child’s play. You can browse or search from any view of the People module. To browse, just page through the contacts using the vertical scroll bar.
You probably do most of your daily work in programs other than Microsoft Outlook. You might create documents in Microsoft Word or build elaborate spreadsheets with Excel. When you want to send a file by email, Outlook gets involved, although sometimes, it works in the background.You can share a file by sending a link to a file stored on your OneDrive.
You can set up an RSS feed of any type using either Internet Explorer or Microsoft Outlook 2019, and then read them in either place. However, if you are subscribing to a podcast, you might want to use the Outlook method, so you can configure the feed’s settings while you’re at it.Follow these steps to set up a podcast, or an RSS feed of any kind, using Outlook: 1.
Management gurus constantly tell us about the importance of good teamwork and decision making. But how do you get a team to make a decision when you can’t find most of the team members most of the time? You can use Microsoft Outlook 2019 as a decision-making tool if you take advantage of the Outlook voting buttons.
After you enter your contact information, Microsoft Outlook 2019 lets you see the information arranged in many different and useful ways, called views. Viewing your contact information and sorting the views are quick ways to get the big picture of the data you’ve entered. Outlook comes with several predefined views in each module.
Email is Microsoft Outlook’s most popular feature. Some people don't know Outlook can do anything but exchange email messages. It’s a good thing that Outlook makes it so easy to read your email, although it’s too bad so many people stop there. How to read Microsoft Outlook email When you start Microsoft Outlook, you normally see a screen with three columns.
You can accomplish some tasks a lot faster by using keyboard shortcuts. The following tables offer some handy shortcuts to help you be more efficient. This Shortcut Creates One of These Ctrl+Shift+A Appointment Ctrl+Shift+C Contact Ctrl+Shift+L Distribution list Ctrl+Shift+E Folder Ctrl+Shift+M Email message
Sending email with Outlook has never been easier. Its familiar ribbon interface has all the features you’ve come to love — plus some new ones. Use this handy Cheat Sheet to discover great tips and keyboard shortcuts to help you get the most out of Outlook.Ten tips for using the Mail module Adjust columns and panes.
Microsoft Outlook 2019 has a couple of ways to tell you when you receive an email message. The status bar in the lower-left corner of the Outlook screen tells you how many email messages you have overall in your Inbox and how many of those are unread. The word Inbox in the Folder pane changes to boldface type when you have an unread email (see the following figure), and when you look in the Inbox, you also see titles of unread messages in boldface.
You may create or receive an email message in Microsoft Outlook 2019 that’s so wonderful (or terrible) that you just have to save it. You may need to Print the message and show it to someone else. Save it to disk. Send (export) it to a desktop publishing program. To save a message as a file, follow these steps: 1.
It’s easy to get confused in a world where social media properties appear and vanish daily. Fortunately, Microsoft Outlook 2019 can help you keep current by neatly tracking your social media subscriptions, along with your email, contacts, appointments, and everything else you need to keep organized, as shown. You can use Outlook to read RSS feeds you follow.
Outlook 2019 has been the go-to email client for business for nearly two decades, and it's also a favorite of many home and casual users. In Outlook 2019, Microsoft has taken user feedback and provided several new features that make Outlook even easier and less trouble-free to work with.Outlook is like a chameleon.
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