Microsoft Outlook 98 Field Guide
Authors: Stephen L. Nelson
Venue:  (2000)

From the Book:What Is a Field Guide? Sometime during grade school, my parents gave me a field guide to North American birds. With its visual approach, its maps, and its numerous illustrations, that guide delivered hours of enjoyment. The book also helped me better understand and more fully appreciate the birds in my neighborhood. And the small book fit neatly in my backpack. But I'm getting off the track. This book works in the same way as that field guide. It organizes information visually with numerous illustrations. And it does this in a way that helps you more easily understand and enjoy working with Microsoft Outlook 98. For new users, the Field Guide provides the essential information necessary to start using Outlook. But the Field Guide isn't only for beginners. For experienced users, the Field Guide provides concise, easy-to-find descriptions of Outlook tasks, terms, and techniques. When You Have a Question Let me explain then how to find the information you need. If Outlook is new to you, you'll usually want to flip first to the Environment section, which is really a visual index. You find the picture that shows what you want to do or the task you have a question about. If you want to know how to send e-mail messages, you flip to pages 4 and 5, which talk about how you send an e-mail message over a network using Outlook. Next you read the captions that describe the parts of the picture. Say, for example, that you want to attach a file to send along with your message. On page 4, there's a caption that describes what message attachments are. You'll notice that some captions use boldface terms or are followed by additional boldface terms.These provide more information related to the caption's contents by referring to entries in the second section, Outlook A to Z. Outlook A to Z is a dictionary containing right around 200 entries that define terms and describe tasks. (After you've worked with Outlook a bit or if you're already an experienced user, you'll often be able to turn directly to this section.) So if you have just read the caption in the Environment section that talks about message attachments, you'll see the term item in boldface, indicating a cross- reference. If you don't know what an Outlook item is, you can flip to the Items entry in Outlook A to Z. When an entry in Outlook A to Z appears as a term within another entry, I'll often boldface it the first time it appears in that entry. For example, as part of describing what an Outlook item is, I might tell you that an appointment is an example of an Outlook item. In this case, the word appointment appears in bold letters - alerting you to the presence of another entry explaining appointments and how you create them using Outlook's Calendar. If you don't understand the term or want to do a bit of brushing up, you can flip to the Appointment entry for more information. When You Have a Problem The third section, Troubleshooting, describes problems that new and casual users of Outlook often encounter. Following each problem description, I list one or more solutions you can employ to fix the problem. When You Wonder About a Command The Quick Reference at the end of the Field Guide describes the Outlook menu commands and toolbar buttons. If you want to know what a specific command does, turn to the Quick Reference. Don't forget about the Index either. You can look there to find all references in this book to any single topic. Conventions Used Here I have developed a few conventions to make using this book easier for you. Rather than use wordy phrases such as "Activate the File menu, and then choose the Print command" to describe how you choose a menu command, I'm just going to say, "Choose the File menu's Print command." Finally, I want to let you know about a couple of conventions I used when creating the figures for this book so that you won't get confused if the figures you see here look a little different than what you see on your screen. When I installed Outlook to create the figures for this book, I didn't upgrade from Outlook 97. This is why my Outlook Bar's buttons are called Outlook Shortcuts, My Shortcuts, and Other Shortcuts. If you upgraded from Outlook 97, your buttons may be called Outlook, Mail, and Other. But you have pretty much the same icons in each group as I do. The computer I used for creating the figures for this book is also part of a network. So I installed the Corporate or Workgroup version of Outlook If you installed the Internet Only or No E-Mail version of Outlook, your Address Book might look a little different and you will have fewer options in some dialog boxes. Finally, I performed the full installation of Outlook so that I could tell you about some of the features in that version. If you installed the Standard or Minimal version, you might not have all of the features I talk about.