Summary

Outlook 2007 is a pretty user-friendly electronic-messaging client with lots of bells and whistles, such as task and calendaring capabilities and contacts. When Outlook 2007 is installed properly on a server, a user can easily install Outlook on a workstation and begin using it without having to respond to a single installation query.

Creating, composing, and reading Outlook messages are very straightforward tasks. The Outlook address book, which can include Exchange mailboxes, distribution groups, contacts, and public folders, simplifies the e-mail addressing process. As with managing messages, basic public folder creation and management is an easy task, most of which can be done right in the Outlook client.

Among other things, Outlook profiles allow a single user to access a range of mail accounts with ease. Each user may have one or more Outlook profiles. When creating an Outlook profile, you can choose to access messaging services such as Exchange Server and Internet mail servers. You can also include personal folders and specific kinds of address books in a profile. By selecting a profile when Outlook 2007 starts, you choose which set of messaging services and other features will be available during your Outlook session.

The Outlook 2007 menu structure is complex, and unlike most of the other applications in the suite, it doesn't benefit much from the new Ribbon UI, but it's familiar to most users and easy to use when you're clear on what certain menu items do. Exchange Server 2007 brings several significant enhancements to the Outlook 2007 menu structure. One of these enables an Outlook user to recover items that were accidentally deleted (including items hard-deleted from folders).

The Exchange service Autodiscover should reduce the support burden for Outlook 2007 users by reducing the number of calls to the help desk and the confusion surrounding getting an initial Outlook profile configured when they first start using a new desktop computer.