OL2000: How to Use Your Outlook Items with Other Office Programs

This article describes how you can open the items within your Microsoft Outlook folders from Microsoft Access 2000 and then use these items with other Microsoft Office 2000 programs. These procedures provide an alternate method to using the Import and Export feature from within Outlook 2000.

For these procedures to work, you must have both Microsoft Outlook 2000 and Microsoft Access 2000 installed. You should also have Microsoft Word 2000 and Microsoft Excel 2000 installed.

1. Start Access 2000.
2. Create a new database.
3. On the File menu, point to Get External Data and then click either Import or Link Table.
4. In the "Files of type" list at the bottom of the Import or Link dialog box, click Outlook.
5. In the Link (or Import) Exchange/Outlook Wizard, follow the prompts to select the Outlook folder your want to access and type a name for the new table.

NOTE: The linked tables do not contain any custom fields. Only the built-in fields are included. Also, it does not link all address fields. Only the parsed fields of the Business address are included. Concatenated versions of the other addresses may appear.

After you have the new table of your Outlook items open in Access, you can export them to other Office programs. With your table selected, point to Office Links on the Tools menu in Access, and then click either "Merge It with MS Word," "Publish It with MS Word," or "Analyze It with MS Excel."

You can also export the table in other formats. With the table selected, click Export on the File menu. In the "Save as type" list click the format you want to use when exporting.