Summary of new features available in Outlook 2000

This article provides an overview of the new features in Microsoft Outlook 2000 in these categories:

• General
• E-Mail
• Calendar
• Contacts
• Web Views
• Rules
• Development Environment

General

• Folder Most Recently Used (MRU) list: For users who share calendars or other folders, Outlook now keeps a list of the last 10 opened folders in the File, Open submenu for quick access.
• Printing: The look of the Calendar details printout has been improved. You can also print your calendar and hide the details of your private appointments.
• ToolTips: If you hover the mouse pointer over an appointment in the Daily or Work Week view, a ToolTip appears revealing any text that is not displayed.

E-Mail

• To turn on Microsoft Office e-mail, on the Tools menu click Options. On the Mail Format tab, click to select the Use Microsoft Word to edit e-mail messages check box.
  
  After you turn on this feature, when you create new e-mail messages, you will use Microsoft Office e-mail technology. Microsoft Word starts with the Outlook mail header. Compose the message body in Word directly, fill in the recipient and subject information, and then click Send to send the message.
  
  You can also use Microsoft Office e-mail in Word by starting Word as you normally do to compose a document. When you want to send it, on the File menu, point to Send To, and then click Mail Recipient, or click the new E-mail button on the toolbar to expose the Outlook mail header. You can then address the document and send it.
• Synchronization: You can have Outlook connect to your Microsoft Exchange Server computer and update (synchronize) at specified intervals. You can select all folders or a set of pre-selected folders to update, and define the update interval.
• One-off editor switching: After you open an e-mail message or start a new e-mail message, you can change the editor for that message. To do this, on the Format menu, click the e-mail editor option that you want to use, such as Plain Text, HTML, or Rich Text.

Calendar

• You can easily save your calendar as a Web page.
• Direct Booking: You can use Outlook to schedule resources without administrative supervision or running an Outlook client for each resource. To use this feature, on the Tools menu, click Options, click Calendar Options, and then click Resource Scheduling.
• Meeting Planner: You can expand distribution lists in a meeting planner. This is useful when you want to invite select people from a distribution list. The improved AutoPick feature in the meeting planner also makes it easier to find the first time available when only the required people are free, or when all people and one resource are free.
• Context Menu of Appointments: You can change the state of an appointment between Free/Busy, OOF, or Tentative from the shortcut menu of an appointment. To change your availability status, right-click your appointment. Point to Show Time As, and then click the appropriate option.
  
  You can also add and delete specific members from a meeting and send only those people meeting notices.

Contacts

• Contact Activities: You can track activities with contacts. A Contacts field on all item types allows the association of all Outlook items with a contact. The field can be filled by contact selection or automatically if the item is created by means of the Contact Actions shortcut menu. The Activities tab displays all items that are associated with a contact in this way. The Activities tab also uses the contact's e-mail addresses to find e-mail sent to or received from the contact.
• Personal Distribution Lists: You can create personal distribution lists in your Contacts folder. For example, you can create a distribution list that contains all of your friends, and name it "Friends." You can then type Friends in the To field of a message to send the message to everyone on the distribution list. To do this:
  1. On the Tools menu, click Address Book.
  2. Click New Entry, and then click New Distribution list.
  3. Click to select the members that you want to add to that distribution list, add the members to the list, and then click OK.
  4. Name the list, and then click Save and Close, just as you would if you had created a new contact.
• Mail Merge with Word: You can choose a subset of contacts, and merge the relevant contact information into a letter, fax, envelope label, or e-mail message. To do so, with the Contact list open, on the Tools menu, click Mail Merge.
  
  NOTE: If the option is not visible, hover the mouse pointer over the chevrons at the bottom of the menu to reveal the other menu items, and then click Mail Merge. It will be visible from this point forward.
• Duplicate Detection: When you create a new contact or copy a contact in a folder, Outlook checks if a contact with the same name or e-mail address already exists. If a duplicate is found, you can choose to update the existing contact.

Web Views

• Use Outlook to browse favorite Web sites:
  • To view a Web page in Outlook, on the View menu, click Favorites to select from your Microsoft Internet Explorer favorites.
  • To add that Web page URL to the Favorites menu, on the Favorites menu, click Add to Favorites.
  • To use Outlook to browse other Web sites, turn on the Web toolbar, and then type the URL in the Address box.
  • To turn on the Web toolbar, on the View menu, click Toolbars, and then click Web.
• Associate a Web view with a folder. To do this, right-click a folder, and then click Properties. Click the Home Page tab, and type the URL in the Address box. Whenever you select this folder, the specified Web page is shown. Click the folder again, and the contents of the folder are shown instead. Or, from the View menu, click Show Folder Home Page button to toggle between views.

Rules

• Run Rules Now: You can run rules on the current contents of a folder with this is a new Rules Wizard feature. You can access the Run Rules Now feature from the main Rules Wizard page.
• Internet Read Receipts: You can ask for read receipts in Internet Only Mode. By supporting Request for Comments (RFC) 2298, in Outlook, you can request and respond to requests for read status. In addition, the recipient decides if he or she does not want to respond to these requests.

Development Environment

Outlook has a greatly expanded Object Model with over 30 new events, 20 new objects, and 20 new methods, including support for COM add-ins, integrating HTML- based solutions, and the ability to add icons that point to URLs or mail folders to the Outlook Bar.