среда, 5 февраля 2014 г.

Chapter 1. Get started with Outlook 2013


IN THIS CHAPTER, YOU WILL LEARN HOW TO
  • Identifying new features of Outlook 2013.
  • Connecting to email accounts.
  • Troubleshooting connection problems.
  • Working in the Outlook 2013 user interface.
  • Getting help with Outlook 2013.
Bill Gates’s dream of “a computer on every desktop” is becoming more and more of a reality — many people today work (and play) on computers both at work and at home. However, the digital world is rapidly expanding beyond that original dream — desktop computers turned out to be only the beginning. Laptops, netbooks, tablets, slates, and other portable computers, as well as smartphones such as Windows Phones, iPhones, and Android phones that run mobile applications are becoming a standard part of the productivity package. Electronic messaging — whether email, social network updates, instant messages, or text messages — keeps many of us in contact with colleagues, clients, friends, and family members for a dizzying portion of each day. For people who are dependent on electronic communications — and even more so for those who work in enterprises that use Microsoft Exchange Server, SharePoint, and Lync to manage collaboration — Microsoft Outlook 2013 offers an ideal solution. Outlook 2013 not only provides email functionality, but also integrates with instant messaging programs and Microsoft SharePoint resources. Outlook enables you to manage messaging and information — address books, calendars, task lists, and more — in one attractive interface. More importantly, Outlook makes this information immediately available to you when and where you need it. From one place, you can quickly store, organize, manage, and retrieve many types of information.
In an enterprise environment, Outlook interacts with Microsoft server products to provide unified communications services including real-time presence and status information, specialized functionality for internal messaging, access to fax messages and voice mail messages, offline access to SharePoint site content, and many other useful features.
You can use Outlook to:
  • Send, receive, read, respond to, organize, and archive email messages.
  • Create attractive business graphics and incorporate and edit external images in your communications.
  • Send documents, spreadsheets, presentations, pictures, and other files as message attachments, and preview attachments you receive from other people.
  • Schedule events, appointments, and meetings; invite attendees; and reserve conference rooms, projectors, and other managed resources.
  • View upcoming appointments and tasks, and receive reminders for them.
  • Share schedule information with other people, inside and outside your organization.
  • Store contact information in a transferable and easily accessible format.
  • Keep track of tasks you need to complete, schedule time to complete your tasks, and assign tasks to co-workers.
  • Organize and easily locate information in messages, attachments, calendars, contact records, tasks, and notes.
  • Filter out unwanted and annoying junk messages.
  • Have information from favorite websites delivered directly to you.

In this chapter, you’ll get an overview of the new features in Outlook 2013 to help you identify changes if you’re upgrading from a previous version. Then you’ll configure Outlook to connect to one or more email accounts, and explore the program’s user interface. Finally, you’ll learn how to get help with the program.

PRACTICE FILES

You don’t need any practice files to complete the exercises in this chapter.
Microsoft Office 2013 encompasses a wide variety of programs, including Microsoft Access 2013, Excel 2013, InfoPath 2013, Lync 2013, OneNote 2013, Outlook 2013, PowerPoint 2013, Publisher 2013, and Word 2013. Office is available in various editions that include different combinations of Office programs; you can also purchase most of the programs individually.
The programs in the Office suite are designed to work together to provide highly efficient methods of getting things done. You can install one or more Office programs on your computer, or work with online versions of some programs in a web browser. Some programs have multiple versions designed for different platforms. Although the core purpose of a program remains the same regardless of the platform on which it runs, the available functionality and the way you interact with the program might be different.
The program we work with and depict in images throughout this book is a desktop installation of the Outlook 2013 client application for Windows, which we installed directly on our computers. The standard client installation has all the available Outlook functionality. It is available as part of the Office 2013 suite of programs, as a freestanding program, or as part of an Office 365 subscription that allows users to install desktop programs from the Internet.

TIP

Office 365 is a cloud-based solution that small, midsize, and large businesses can use to provide products and services to their employees through a subscription licensing program.


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