Things I Love About Outlook

 

• You may choose to use Microsoft Outlook to be in sync with all your personal and business mail accounts. You can configure Exchange, IMAP, POP3 accounts as well as use the Hotmail Connector for Hotmail and now Outlook.com ALL at the same time! You may also opt to use Microsoft Outlook for your personal email account alone or along with your corporate or business needs. To be precise, it is highly customisable to your needs, preferences and requirements. It's a one stop email client.
• It's been around since the 1990's and it integrates with the rest of Microsoft Office.
• It integrates with Windows Desktop Search.
• It has sticky notes you can use as reminders or for lists. You can even drag and drop them onto your desktop. They're very handy! 
• I love the calendar! I can schedule reminders, either one time or with a recurrence so I don't forget to do things like change the back up tapes or take a vitamin pill. I can even invite others to participate, like when it's time to give our dog Dazzle her regular Revolution dose for flea, tick, and heartworm control!



Dazzle

 

• I just invite my husband and when he accepts the request it goes into his calendar and reminds him when the medication is due. I love it's reminder function! I can snooze something I don't need to do right this moment. I also use the calendar to help set goals and time lines for myself.
• If you have a handheld PDA or Smart Phone, you can sync the device with Outlook. Skype talks to Outlook. ACT! talks to Outlook.  
• While it's not quite foolproof (reading some of the questions on the Microsoft Outlook Forum will show anyone that nothing is foolproof), it's mostly pretty straightforward.
• For you Network Administrators/System Administrators, Outlook plays well with Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory plus you get OWA (Outlook Web Access) so you can check your work email from any browser.
• Outlook's superior rules raise the bar. You can sort email, automatically send them into particular folders, and even set automatic responses for some. With newer versions of Outlook with Exchange as the mail server, you can even customise your Out of Office for internal and external users with different messages for each.
• Outlook's improved security features are great. You have to now make a conscious decision to bypass them. It has great junk mail filtering and, as long as you keep Outlook up to date, it will block web bugs, downloaded images, disallows executable attachments, and even prevents ActiveX applets from executing. 
• You can share mailboxes or even assign tasks to others. When you assign a task, you'll even get status updates, too.   
• Voting buttons! You can use them to help facilitate work flow, choose a restaurant, or even with training. Example: we send a link via email monthly to employees to a training presentation. Once they read it, they can use the voting button to say that yes, they have read and understood the training.
• When entering dates, you never have to type in the entire date. Outlook will offer a date for you. You can simply hit enter to accept it. If a date is in the current month, just enter the day and Outlook will enter the rest of the date for you. For instance, if the current month is March and you enter 14, Outlook assumes you mean March 14 of the current year and fills in that date.
• If you use Outlook 2010, you have access to Information Rights Management. Information Rights Management (IRM) allows individuals and administrators to specify access permissions to documents, workbooks, and presentations. This helps prevent sensitive information from being printed, forwarded, or copied by unauthorised people. After permission for a file has been restricted by using IRM, the access and usage restrictions are enforced regardless of where the information is, because the permission to a file is stored in the document, workbook, or presentation file itself. In other words, you can prevent someone from forwarding, pasting, or even printing your email.