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Microsoft Outlook

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For the e-mail and news client bundled with certain versions of Microsoft Windows, see Outlook Express.
Microsoft Office Outlook
Developer(s)Microsoft
Stable release
12.0.6316.5000
Operating systemMicrosoft Windows
TypePersonal information manager
LicenseProprietary EULA
WebsiteMicrosoft Office Outlook Homepage

Microsoft Office Outlook or Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft. The 2007 version is available both as a separate application as well as a part of the Microsoft Office suite.

Although often used mainly as an e-mail application, it also includes a Calendar, Task Manager, Contact Manager, note taking, a journal and web browsing.

It can be used as a stand-alone application, but can also operate in conjunction with Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server to provide enhanced functions for multiple users in an organization, such as shared mailboxes and calendars, Exchange public folders, SharePoint lists and meeting time allocation. There are also many 3rd party add-on applications that integrate Outlook with devices and other software such as BlackBerry mobile phones and Skype internet communication software. Developers can also create their own custom software that works with Outlook and Office components using Microsoft Visual Studio.[1] In addition, Windows Mobile devices can synchronize almost all Outlook data to Outlook Mobile.

Versions

Outlook replaced Microsoft's previous scheduling and mail program, Schedule+ and Exchange Client.

Versions of Microsoft Outlook include:

Name Version Number[2] Release Date[3] Notes
Outlook for MS-DOS - - Bundled with Exchange Server 5.5
Outlook for Windows 3.x - - Bundled with Exchange Server 5.5
Outlook for Macintosh - - Bundled with Exchange Server 5.5
Outlook 97 8.0 January 16, 1997 Included in Office 97 and also bundled with Exchange Server 5.5.
Outlook 98 8.5 June 21, 1998 Freely distributed with books and magazines for coping with newest Internet standard such as HTML mail[4]
Outlook 2000 9.0 June 7, 1999 Included in Office 2000 and also bundled with Exchange 2000 Server.
Outlook 2002 10 May 31, 2001 Included in Office XP.
Office Outlook 2003 11 October 21, 2003 Included in Office 2003 and also bundled with Exchange Server 2003.
Office Outlook 2007 12 November 30, 2006 Included in Office 2007, except Office Home and Student edition.
File:Microsoft Outlook 2000 - Outlook Today.png
The "Discussion Folder" screen in Microsoft Outlook 2000.

Outlook 98 and Outlook 2000 could be installed in one of two configurations:

  • Internet Mail Only or IMO mode: A lighter application mode with specific emphasis on POP3 accounts and IMAP accounts and including a lightweight Fax application.
  • Corporate Workgroup or CW mode: A full MAPI client with specific emphasis on Microsoft Exchange accounts.

Macintosh

Microsoft also released several versions of Outlook for the Apple Macintosh; however, most mail features were disabled after Office 98. After Office 98, Entourage replaced Outlook on Macintosh systems, although in 2001 Microsoft released Outlook 2001 for Mac to allow Classic users to access Exchange servers. Over the past few years, Microsoft has improved Entourage to provide Mac users with a Mac OS X-compatible Exchange client, though it does not have the entire functionality provided by Outlook.

Outlook 2007

Outlook 2007 was available in retail stores at the end of January 2007. A trial is available for download on Office Online.[5] New features in Outlook 2007 include:[6]

  • A to-do bar added to the shell UI that shows a snapshot of the user's upcoming appointments and active tasks for better time and project management
  • Improved calendar views that display the tasks due below each day on the week view and supports overlaying multiple calendars
  • Send your calendar information with calendar snapshots, which creates an HTML representation of your calendar so you can share this information with anyone
  • Ability to publish calendars in Internet Calendar format to Microsoft Office Online or to a WebDAV server
  • Send text and picture messages from Outlook with Outlook Mobile Service to a mobile phone. Forward Outlook e-mail messages, contacts, appointments, and tasks as text messages. Automatically send e-mail messages, reminders, and your daily calendar as text messages to a mobile phone
  • Integrated RSS aggregator
  • 'Instant Search' through a context indexer based search engine with Windows Desktop Search
  • Enhanced integration with Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server
  • New programmability features[7]
  • Preview Handler extension for previewing email attachment without leaving Outlook
  • Ability to add a picture or company logo to a contact or electronic business card[8]
  • Office Fluent user interface
  • Color Categories give you an easy, visual way to distinguish any type of information from one another, so it's easy to organize your data and search your information
  • Save as PDF or XPS
  • Discontinuation of Common User Access cut and paste support
  • Improved anti-phishing filters
  • Office Outlook 2007 E-mail Postmark is designed to make it very time-consuming and technologically detrimental for users to send mass e-mail like spam, yet they do not change the user experience of sending e-mail.
  • Information Rights Management (IRM) restricts and/or expires distribution of email using Windows Server 2003 or later running Windows Rights Management Services (RMS)
  • Managed policy compliance features integration with Exchange Server 2007

Internet standards compliance

HTML rendering

Outlook 2007 was the first Outlook to switch from Internet Explorer HTML rendering to Microsoft Word 2007 HTML rendering. This means HTML and CSS items not handled by Word are no longer supported. On the other hand, HTML messages composed in Word will look more or less as they appeared to the author.

This most affects those publishing newsletters, because they frequently use intricate HTML and/or CSS to form their layout. For example, forms can no longer be embedded in e-mail.

Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format

Main article: Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format

Outlook uses a proprietary attachment format called Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format (TNEF) when editing messages in Rich Text Format, utilizing embedded (OLE) documents or Outlook-specific features. It is usually present in a form of attached files winmail.dat or win.dat in the message. These files may also contain any regular files attached to the message.

TNEF is not RFC compliant. In addition no e-mail client besides Outlook itself support it natively, although numerous tools for decoding TNEF files exist.

Calendar compatibility

Outlook does not fully support data and syncing specifications for calendaring and contacts, such as iCalendar, CalDAV, SyncML and vCard 3.0. Outlook 2007 claims to be fully iCalendar compliant; however, it does not support all core objects, such as VTODO, VJOURNAL.[9] Also, Outlook supports vCard 2.1 and does not support multiple contacts in the vCard format as a single file. Outlook has also been criticized for having proprietary "Outlook extensions" to these Internet standards. It supports offline storage files up to 2GB in size.

Security concerns

As part of its Trustworthy Computing initiative, Microsoft took corrective steps to fix Outlook's reputation in Office Outlook 2003. Among the most publicized security features are that Office Outlook 2003 does not automatically load images in HTML e-mails or permit opening executable attachments by default, and includes a built-in Junk Mail filter.[10] Service Pack 2 has augmented these features and adds an anti-Phishing filter.[11]

This release was well received, and regarded as the primary driver of Office upgrades among business users.[citation needed]. However, it still used Internet Explorer as its renderer of HTML content, a product whose security flaws are well documented and ongoing. Some defects in IE can be exploited by malicious emails. Outlook 2007 has switched to using the Microsoft Word HTML renderer to avoid this - although this change created its own problems.

Outlook Add-ins

Main article: Outlook add-ins

(Other possible and frequently used names: Microsoft Outlook add-ons, Microsoft Outlook plug-ins, Microsoft Outlook extensions, etc)

Outlook Add-ins are small helping programs for the Microsoft Outlook application. The main purpose of the add-ins is to add new functional capabilities into Microsoft Outlook and automate some routine operations. Add-in also refers to programs where the main function is to work on Outlook files such as synchronisation or backup utilities.

From Outlook 97 on, Exchange Client Extensions are supported in Outlook. Outlook 2000 and later support specific COM components called Outlook AddIns. The exact supported features (such as .NET components) for later generations were extended with each release.

Outlook Express

Main article: Outlook Express

Outlook Express is an e-mail, newsgroup, and contact management application that Microsoft made available at no charge with older versions of its Internet Explorer web browser. Other than the similar name there is no connection between the two products and they originate from different divisions of Microsoft. While both offer access to POP3 and IMAP4 e-mail accounts, only Outlook offers client access (MAPI) to Microsoft Exchange. Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) does not include an e-mail client, however, and Windows Vista (which includes IE7) replaces Outlook Express with Windows Mail. In Windows 7, Windows Live Mail replaces Windows Mail. For Windows XP, Outlook Express has also been succeeded by Windows Live Mail.

Importing from other email clients

Currently, Outlook supports importing messages from Outlook Express and Lotus Notes. There are some ways to get the emails from Thunderbird: the first is to use a tool[12] that can convert a Thunderbird folder to a format that can be imported from Outlook Express. This method must be processed folder by folder. The other method is to use a couple of free tools that keep the original folder structure[13].

See also

References

  1. ^ Top 10 Reasons to Use Outlook - Business Center - PC World
  2. ^ The version numbers follows the Office numbers.
  3. ^ Release dates are for US product launches.
  4. ^ HTML Mail with Microsoft Outlook
  5. ^ Try the 2007 Microsoft Office system
  6. ^ Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 product overview
  7. ^ What's New for Developers in Outlook 2007 (Part 1 of 2)
  8. ^ Add, change, or remove a picture for a contact
  9. ^ "Microsoft Office 2003 editions comparison". Microsoft. Retrieved 2008-10-03.
  10. ^ "MS-STANOICAL - v1.01 Outlook iCalendar Standards Compliance" (PDF). Microsoft. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
  11. ^ Microsoft 'Security at Home' website
  12. ^ IMAPSize
  13. ^ Export messages and folders from Thunderbird to Outlook / Outlook Express / Windows Mail
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