Outlook 2007

Part of my ‘living in beta’ experiment has been using Outlook 2007 beta as my primary email client. It has been great! I absolutely love the interface and the additions from Outlook 2003. But first let me mention the bad, and since this is a beta I am hopeful that this won’t happen in the final release. The main thing that causes me a problem is in the calendar section. If I open a shared calendar on our Exchange server it is fine until I try to close the shared calendar. Then the whole program crashes and needs to be restarted. Other than that one minor glitch I have had no problems with it. Now on to the fun.

The first thing that is new in Outlook 2007 is the To-Do Bar. This can be setup to show you a month (or more) calendar, X number of your next appointments, and your Tasks and emails flagged for follow up. Here’s a screenshot:

 

The best thing about this is that it combines the Task list and the For Follow Up folder. I use Tasks and I often flag emails For Follow Up. In Outlook 2003 I had to toggle between my task list and my ‘for follow up’ folder. In Outlook 2007 it groups them all together so I now have one list to look at instead of two.

Although the main Outlook 2007 window does not incorporate the ‘ribbon’ look as the rest of the Office 2007 line, when you create a new message (or new appointment, etc.) you do get the ribbon effect. In case you haven’t seen it before, here are the ribbons available when you create a new message:

 Message Ribbon

 Insert Ribbon

 Options Ribbon

 Format Text Ribbon

I am a big fan of the Outlook program in general and am excited about this new version. The To-Do Bar alone is worth the upgrade.

First week

*Whew!* What a week! First week of classes is always a busy busy time at work. Plus I’m teaching a course this semester, so it was an extra-busy first week. I didn’t do an exact count but I did a little more than 200 calls this week, 40 a day on average. Probably a little more than that, but that’s a close estimate. *takes deep breath*

 cross-posted to christophertaverna.com