Chapter 30 -- Collaborating On Line with E-Mail, NetMeeting, Discussions, and Faxes

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Chapter 30

In this era of telecommuting, long-distance associations, and on-the-move lifestyles, online communication plays a much larger role in collaboration than it has in the past. Online communication gives people a convenient way to work together by sharing documents and ideas in near real time across networks, regardless of where participants are located. To help make online communication possible, Microsoft Office XP offers a number of online collaboration features.

The online collaboration features found in Microsoft Word work in conjunction with other Office applications to expand the Internet and network options available to you from within Word. For example, Word works with Microsoft Outlook to enable you to create and send e-mail messages using the Word window, and Word works in conjunction with Microsoft Internet Explorer to provide Microsoft NetMeeting conferencing capabilities. In this chapter, you'll learn about a few of the most common online collaboration tools accessible from within Word. In particular, you'll learn how to use Word to send e-mail messages, conduct online conferences and meetings, participate in Web discussions, and send faxes. Let's start by looking at the most common online communication activity—sending e-mail messages.