Outlook 2016 For Dummies
Overview
Be more productive and simplify your life with Outlook 2016!
Ever feel like you're drowning in your inbox? Outlook 2016 For Dummies helps you lower the metaphorical water levels by quickly prioritizing incoming email. Instead of wading through messages and tasks all day, use Outlook as it was intended—as a productivity tool—to organize your tasks on the to-do bar, filter junk email, make the most of Outlook's anti-phishing capabilities, manage email folders, use smart scheduling tools, leverage RSS support, collect electronic business cards, and integrate your Microsoft OneNote, Project, Access, and SharePoint files. This book is updated to reflect the latest and greatest features integrated into the Outlook 2016 user interface to ensure you're at the top of your Outlook game.
With over 1.1 billion users worldwide and 90% market share for productivity suites, a figure that roughly translates into one in seven people the world over, odds are you'll need to learn how to use Microsoft Office programs—including Outlook—if you want to excel in the workplace.
- Get up to speed on the new and improved features of Microsoft Office 2016
- Take advantage of often overlooked features that can simplify your day
- Discover new ways to filter junk email—and reclaim the hours that you spend sorting through spam each year
- Organize tasks and schedule meetings, keeping everyone up to date on the latest project and account progress
If you're ready to take your productivity to the next level Outlook 2016 For Dummies is a must-read!
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About The Author
Bill Dyszel is a nationally known expert on personal information management and sales automation technology. He frequently speaks at various technology conferences, and he works as a consultant for organizations that need help selecting, developing, and implementing business solutions.
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outlook 2016 for dummies
CHEAT SHEET
Sending email has never been easier than it is in Outlook 2016. You'll notice the familiar Ribbon interface, and you'll still find all the Outlook features you've come to love — plus some new ones.Use this handy Cheat Sheet to orient yourself with Outlook's new look and feel. There's also a helpful table of Outlook shortcut keys.
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Many people like to add a signature to the end of every message they send. A signature is usually a small portion of text that identifies you to everyone who reads your message and tells something you want everyone to know. Many people include their name, the name of their business, their business's web address, their motto, a little sales slogan, or some squib of personal information.
Outlook.com is a free web-based email service provided by Microsoft. It’s somewhat like Google’s Gmail service but has a twist — a link to your desktop Outlook data. Microsoft has combined Hotmail and Windows Live into one email service and has added support for contacts (including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) and your calendar.
A good Contacts list is precious; it’s more valuable than that snazzy office chair you covet or even that enviable cubicle near the coffeepot. Outlook.com can help you keep your Contacts list up to date from wherever you are.
For example, if you go to a conference or convention and exchange business cards with lots of people, you probably want to get those names into your Contacts list as soon as possible.
Unless you change Outlook’s AutoArchive settings, Outlook does not archive your items automatically. Some businesses, however, might have it enabled for their users. Other companies might instead use an autodelete service to purge old messages, but check your company’s email retention policy before you make any changes to the AutoArchive settings.
You may be an old hand at moving and resizing boxes in Windows. Notes in Outlook follow all the rules that other Windows boxes follow, so you'll be okay. If you're new to Windows and dialog boxes, don't worry — notes are as easy to resize as they are to write and read.
To change the size of a note, follow these steps:
Click the Notes button in the Navigation pane (or press Ctrl+5).
Outlook
What could be more convenient than dashing off a quick email using Outlook while sitting in the park or riding a taxi? It’s so much better than being stuck at the office. The scenery is a lot nicer, and the coffee even tastes better.
To compose an email message in Outlook mobile, follow these steps:
Tap the new email icon at the top right side of the list of email messages.
In addition to the six Quick Steps that appear in the Quick Step box when Outlook is first installed, you have even more Quick Step templates you can choose from. To use these additional Quick Step templates, follow these steps:
Click the Inbox icon in the Mail module’s Folder pane (or press Ctrl+Shift+I).
Your list of incoming mail messages appears.
You get to decide when to include the one signature you’re allowed to create in Outlook.com. Your signature for business might be very grand and official — the better to impress lackeys and sycophants as well as to intimidate rivals. In that case, you might prefer to leave it off the messages you send to your friends — unless, of course, your only friends are lackeys and sycophants.
Outlook
Both versions of the mobile Outlook Calendar feature a prominent plus sign you can tap to open the new appointment form. To set specific details about the appointment you have in mind, tap each line of text on the form to reveal settings for that detail. You can set date, time, location, and more by going through the form and setting each item to what you want.
Need to create an appointment on Outlook.com? If you’re a heavy-duty road warrior, you probably keep your calendar on a smartphone for your own reference, but for everyone else, those appointments and meetings are very likely on an Outlook Calendar. The appointments and meetings you post in Outlook are linked to Outlook.
What if your plans change and you no longer need an Outlook note? Fortunately, notes don't have to stick around forever. You can write one this morning and throw it out this afternoon. What could be easier?
To delete a note, following these steps:
Click the Notes button in the Navigation pane.
Your list of notes appears.
Unlike paper stick-on notes, Outlook notes stay where you put them so you can always find them — or at least your computer can find them. As a matter of fact, you can find any item you create in Outlook just by using the Search tool.
To find a misplaced note, follow these steps:
Click the Notes button in the Navigation pane.
Forwarding a note in Outlook really means sending an email message with a note included as an attachment. It's helpful if the person to whom you're forwarding the note also uses Outlook.
To forward a note, follow these steps:
Click Notes in the Navigation pane.
The Notes list appears.
Click the title of the note you want to forward.
A subtle but important improvement in Outlook 2016 is the way the help system moves beyond helping you and almost tries to do things for you. That sounds creepy, but it’s not. It’s actually pretty useful.
There’s a text box near the top of the screen containing the words “Tell me what you want to do. . .” When you click that box and type something you want to do with Outlook, it brings up a list that begins with links to things you can actually do.
To get good use from the Journal in Outlook, you have to use it (details, details . . .). You can set Outlook to make Journal entries for nearly everything you do or you can shut the Journal off entirely and make no entries in it. If you put nothing in the Journal, you get nothing out.
In previous versions of Outlook, you could record everything automatically, but that feature is no longer supported in Outlook 2016.
The only thing that seems to take more time than a meeting is planning one. Although Outlook can’t quiet the blowhard who bores everyone at weekly staff meetings (gotta let the boss have some fun) or your uncle Ralph at a family gathering, it can reduce the time you spend planning them.
If you’re charged with that duty, you can get a boost from Outlook.
As with other Outlook modules, the Journal comes with multiple views that show your entries in different ways — whether that's a record of phone calls or a list organized by the names of the people you've dealt with.
The Current View choices on the Ribbon let you quickly change from one view to the next.
Timeline view
The Timeline view is an arrangement that shows a strange little chronologically ordered diagram of all your Journal entries to show which entries you created first and which you created last.
You can organize and view your Outlook notes in so many clever ways that you'll also want to print what you can see (or at least the list of what you can see). Computer screens are pretty, but there's still nothing like ink on paper — and thus the option to print a note.
Colors don't show when you print notes — even if you have a color printer and you've organized notes by color.
You can also print your Outlook Journal (or parts of it) to see recent or upcoming activities. Stick it on the wall where you can look at it often.
To print your Journal, follow these steps:
With the Journal open, click the entries you want to print.
If you select nothing, you print the entire list. Also, if you use one of the views — Timeline, Entry List, Phone Calls, or Last 7 Days — or even create your own view by grouping, sorting, or filtering, what you see is what you print.
Outlook
The first thing you’ll do with Outlook on your phone or tablet is to simply read email. The iPad screen shows you a layout of email messages that might remind you of desktop Outlook. It shows a list of messages on the left side and a reading pane on the right that displays the content of one message. To view a different message, touch the message you want to view in the list on the left and the contents of that message will appear.
When you write a note in Outlook, you no doubt plan to read it sometime. Reading notes is even easier than writing them. To read a note, follow these steps:
Click the Notes button in the Navigation pane.
Your list of notes appears.
Double-click the title of the note you want to open.
The note appears on-screen, as shown in the following image.
Outlook
Replying to an email message in Outlook is almost as easy as reading one. On the bottom of the message screen are three icons that look like bent arrows. The leftmost one — a single arrow pointing left — is the Reply button. Touch that one if you want to reply only to the person who sent the message to you. Touch the middle arrow — the one that looks like two bent arrows stuck together — if you want to reply to everyone to whom the message was addressed.
Outlook
If you travel a lot, you may need to check in to Outlook.com frequently to see if the IRS wants you or whether your family has invited you to Aunt Mabel’s 100th birthday. (Parties are so much more fun.) Outlook.com lets other people send you a special email that invites you to a meeting. You can accept that request to be automatically included in the meeting.
When you feel the urge to dash off a quick email from your favorite Internet café, you can do that in a jiffy with Outlook.com. You’ll probably have your message finished before your barista finishes mixing that high-octane mocha latte supremo. After your caffeine jitters die down, follow these steps:
Click Inbox in the Folders list.
Sensitivity isn’t just something Oprah talks about. You may want your Outlook message to be seen by only one person or you may want to prevent your message from being changed by anyone after you send it. Sensitivity settings enable you to restrict what someone else can do to your message after you send it, and they let you set who that someone else can be — even Oprah.
Outlook
With the desktop version of Outlook, you can set your Out of Office message to let coworkers know when you’ll be out of town (or just plain unavailable). You have a similar tool in Outlook.com — only it’s called the Automated Vacation reply and it’s a great way to let all your friends know when you’re on vacation (and make all of them envious).
Outlook
By now, you’ve no doubt noticed that some Outlook actions take multiple clicks of the mouse to complete, such as the process of replying to a message and then deleting it. That’s not a big deal if you only perform a particular action every once in a while, but if it’s something you do regularly in Outlook, it can quickly become a pain.
Outlook makes it easy to accumulate dribs and drabs of data. That can make it tough to find information. Outlook has a tool called Instant Search that addresses that exact problem — and it’s pretty slick.
Near the top of the Information Viewer pane, in the center of the screen, you see the Instant Search box. It’s a box with a magnifying glass on the right and some text on the left.
Outlook
Several years ago, Microsoft bought a company called Skype that offers a very slick online service combining conference calling, video chat, instant messaging, and other kinds of collaboration tools. Little by little, Microsoft has brought Skype into the Microsoft Office family in order to make it easier to connect far-flung coworkers who want to get things done.
Notes in Outlooke are handy enough to stash tidbits of information any way you want, but what makes notes really useful is what happens when you need to get the stuff back. You can open your notes one by one and see what's in them, but Outlook's Notes module offers even handier arranging, sorting, and viewing options.
A note is the only type of item you can create in Outlook that doesn't use a normal dialog box with menus, Ribbons, or toolbars. Notes are easier to use — but somewhat trickier to explain — than other Outlook items.
No name appears on the Note icon, and no name exists for the part of the note you drag when you want to resize it, although you can see what one looks like in the following image.
Sending email has never been easier than it is in Outlook 2016. You'll notice the familiar Ribbon interface, and you'll still find all the Outlook features you've come to love — plus some new ones.Use this handy Cheat Sheet to orient yourself with Outlook's new look and feel. There's also a helpful table of Outlook shortcut keys.
You can accomplish tasks a lot faster when you use Outlook, and you can be even faster if you use Outlook's shortcut keys. The following tables offer several handy shortcuts to help you work more quickly and more efficiently with Outlook 2016.
Outlook 2016 Shortcuts
This Shortcut
Creates One of These
Ctrl+S
The Calendar Home tab on the Outlook 2016 Ribbon lets you choose how you prefer to view your appointments. You can choose among views for a day, a workweek, a week, or a month, as shown in the following image. You can also choose a schedule view for seeing several schedules at once.
Outlook 2016's Contacts is more than just a list of names and email addresses. You can take advantage of the Contacts Home tab on the Outlook 2016 Ribbon to create new contacts, to arrange the way you view the contacts you have, or to create email messages or mail merge documents. The following image shows the popular Business Card view.
More than an email program, Outlook 2016 can also help you schedule and track personal and professional projects. On the Tasks Home tab on the Outlook 2016 Ribbon, you'll see tools for managing your workload more quickly and effectively, as shown in the following image. You can choose from a variety of views that can help you keep track of pressing priorities.
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