Most companies include Outlook as a part of their Office 2000 installation (by default). You can also acquire and install the program separately.
The first time you run Outlook, you'll need to configure it for the current user. You'll need to supply a user name and e-mail address, provide mail servers (if you haven't already set up e-mail on the computer), and specify whether to set up Outlook with the Internet Only configuration, the Corporate Or Workgroup configuration, or the No E-Mail configuration. Table 23-1 summarizes some key features of each type of Outlook configuration.
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Use the Corporate Or Workgroup configuration only if you need Exchange Server or other mail service support. The Internet Only configuration is highly optimized for Internet E-Mail and, in general, performs much faster for Internet-based e-mail than the Corporate Or Workgroup configuration does.
To configure Outlook 2000 for a new user in your company, follow these steps:
Figure 23-1. Outlook configuration choices.
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You can change your Outlook configuration at any time after Setup completes by choosing Options from the Tools menu, clicking the Mail Services or Mail Delivery tab, and then clicking the Reconfigure Mail Support button. You won't have to reboot, but you may have to exit Outlook using Exit And Log Off from the File menu and restart Outlook. You will also need access to the Office 2000 installation files.
Table 23-1. Differences between Outlook 2000 configurations
Feature | Internet Only | Corporate Or Workgroup | No E-Mail |
---|---|---|---|
Calendar and Contacts | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Internet e-mail (POP3/SMTP) | Yes | Yes | No |
IMAP4 folders | Yes | No | No |
LDAP directory support | Yes | Yes | No |
Send/receive faxes | With WinFax Starter Edition | With Windows 2000's Fax Service | No |
Exchange Server support | Via POP/SMTP (Exchange 5 or later) and IMAP4 (Exchange 5.5+) | Yes | No |
Exchange Server public folder support | No | Yes | No |
Exchange Server Global Address List | Via LDAP (Exchange 5 or later) | Yes | No |
Voting, message recall | No | Via Exchange Server | No |
Read receipts | Via Message Disposition Notifications standard | Via Exchange Server and Message Disposition Notifications standard | No |
Delivery receipts | No | Via Exchange Server | No |
Autodial for e-mail | Yes | No | No |
Send and receive meeting requests | Yes | Yes | No |
Send iCalendar meeting requests | Yes | Yes | No |
Read iCalendar Free/Busy info | Yes | Yes | Yes |
See Free/Busy details | No | Via Exchange Server | No |
Direct booking of resources | No | Via Exchange Server | No |
Newsgroup support | Via Outlook Express (installed) | Via Outlook Express (installed) | Via Outlook Express |
Once you've configured Outlook 2000, you'll want to set up multiple mail accounts so that a user can send and receive mail on several different e-mail accounts or message services. When you install Outlook, the Setup program helps you establish your primary message account, but you can easily establish additional accounts any time after Setup completes.
The first point to remember about establishing additional Outlook 2000 mail accounts or services is that some differences exist between the Internet Only and the Corporate Or Workgroup configurations. Both are easy to set up, but just to simplify matters, we'll look at each configuration separately.
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If you chose to import settings from another e-mail program or a previous version of Outlook that had multiple mail accounts configured, Outlook 2000 preserves these mail settings, probably obviating the need to configure additional accounts.
The Outlook 2000 Internet Only configuration is optimized for sending and receiving standards-based Internet e-mail, and you can set up Outlook to send mail using Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP), to receive mail using both POP3 and IMAP4, and also to search LDAP directories. To set up additional accounts like this, follow these steps:
Figure 23-2. The Mail tab of the Internet Accounts dialog box.
Outlook 2000's Corporate Or Workgroup configuration supports a wide variety of messaging services, such as Internet E-Mail, Exchange Server, Microsoft Mail, Lotus cc:Mail, Fax, and LDAP directories. To use these services you need to add them to your Outlook profile, which is based on the Windows Messaging/Exchange client. (You can view your profile or set up additional profiles by using the Control Panel tool labeled Mail or Mail and Fax.) To set up these services, follow these steps:
Figure 23-3. The Services tab of the Services dialog box.
By default, Outlook stores all of its local data in a single file with a .PST file extension called a personal folders file. This file is stored in the following hidden folder: \Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\outlook.pst.
However, you might find it more convenient to relocate this file or to specify an existing file if a user already has a personal folders file. Outlook's Internet Only configuration is somewhat limited in the methods of changing the location of the default personal folders file, while the Corporate Or Workgroup configuration provides a little more flexibility. Use the appropriate method depending on which Outlook configuration you're setting up.
Unfortunately, the Internet Only configuration doesn't provide a simple way to change the location of the default personal folders file, where all Outlook items are stored. The reason for this is somewhat mysterious, but regardless of the Microsoft Office development team's decisions, you can circumvent this limitation in a couple of ways. The following two sections explain how.
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To find out where the personal folders file is currently stored, right-click Outlook Today on the Outlook Bar and choose Properties. Then click Advanced and take note of the path listed in the Path box.
Opening a Different Folder If you're using the Internet Only configuration, the easiest way to move your personal folders file is to open the personal folders file you want to use, have Outlook deliver your e-mail to this personal folders file, and then close the old personal folders file. To do this, follow these steps:
Figure 23-4. The General tab of the Properties window for a personal folders file.
Trashing a File The second way to change the location of your personal folders file is to find it and move it. If you haven't used Outlook yet and therefore have no data in your Outlook folders, we suggest moving this empty folder file to the Recycle Bin. Note that this method doesn't work well with Outlook 98. (It's prone to throwing tantrums and refusing to work; if you have Outlook 98, we recommend using the approach described earlier.) Once you're rid of this unwanted file, follow these steps to open an existing personal folders file or to create a new file in the location of your choice:
Figure 23-5. The Create Microsoft Personal Folders dialog box.
The technique for changing the location of your personal folders file (the container of all Outlook items) in the Corporate Or Workgroup configuration is a lot more sensible than that for changing it in the Internet Only configuration. While you can still simply delete your old personal folders file and then create a new one in the location of your choice, Outlook also provides an interface for managing different personal folders files and specifying which one to use for receiving e-mail as well as which Contacts folders to use as address books. (The Internet Only configuration has a limited ability to maintain multiple address books.)
To change the default personal folders file location, use the following steps; to learn how to manage different address books, see the next section, "Managing Address Books."
Figure 23-6. The Delivery tab of the Services dialog box.
The Outlook 2000 Corporate Or Workgroup configuration has a couple different address books that are available to users depending on the services they have installed. If the address books aren't set up optimally for users or if the users don't understand the differences between the address books, this can cause problems.
To help you deal with this issue, this section explains the different address books available in the Corporate Or Workgroup configuration. Then in the two sections that follow, you'll learn how to create a new Contacts folder and set it up as an address book, and you'll learn how to change the way Outlook handles these address books.
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The Internet Only configuration doesn't have the same ability to manage different address books as the Corporate Or Workgroup configuration does. You can set up multiple folders to store contacts and configure them as address lists just like the Corporate Or Workgroup configuration; however, you can't specify which Contacts folder should be checked first, and LDAP directories that you set up to function like an address book don't show up in the Address Book window (only in the address book available when sending messages).
The default address book in Outlook 2000 and the address book that we recommend you use to store all of your address information is the Contacts folder. This folder can contain just about any type of address information you'd like to store: e-mail, Exchange mailbox, X500, postal, telephone numbers, Web page addresses, and so on. It's also customizable and integrated extremely well into Outlook.
If you're connected to an Exchange server, you also have the Global Address List, a directory of mail accounts kept on the Exchange server. (You can also access this list by using the Internet Only configuration if your Exchange server is configured as an LDAP server.) This address list is read-only, but you can add addresses from the Global Address List to your personal address book (PAB) or Contacts folder (whichever one you have set up to store your personal addresses) by right-clicking the address and choosing Add To Personal Address Book from the shortcut menu.
The Corporate Or Workgroup configuration also allows you to use a .PAB file to store addresses. This feature was mainly retained for backward compatibility with old Exchange and Windows Messaging clients, which use the PAB as the default address book. We generally don't recommend using a .PAB file unless you need to maintain compatibility with one of these programs.
Outlook 2000 can use any folder containing contacts as an address book—you're not limited to just one Contacts folder. To create a new folder in which to store contacts, and to make this folder available as an address book, follow these steps:
Figure 23-7. The Create New Folder dialog box.
Figure 23-8. The Outlook Address Book tab of the Properties window.
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This procedure works in the Internet Only configuration as well as in the Corporate Or Workgroup configuration; however, with the Internet Only configuration, the Contacts folder can't become your default address book. In addition, you need to use the View menu's Folders And Groups command in the address book in order to see other Contacts folders you've created.
Outlook lets you easily configure which address book to store your personal addresses in, which address book to display when addressing messages, and the order in which Outlook checks your address books when searching for an addressee, if you're using the Corporate Or Workgroup configuration. To configure these options, follow these steps:
Figure 23-9. The Addressing tab of the Services dialog box.