Microsoft Outlook 2002 Features

What's New

AutoComplete Addressing
As a user enters an e-mail address, Outlook automatically recognizes it and completes the name based on previously sent e-mail to the recipient. This enables users to quickly send e-mail to others without spending time searching for e-mail addresses.

Outlook Hot Mail Support
Users can now easily access e-mail from their Hotmail account (or other Internet mail providers) directly from within Outlook. This enables users to quickly and easily send mail out from any of their e-mail accounts without leaving their Outlook application.

Send Using (E-mail Account Selection)
Users with multiple e-mail accounts (such as a Hotmail account and an account on Exchange) can choose on a per message basis what account to use to send their message. When the user chooses an account, an information bar shows which account is used to send the mail. Explicit rules are built in to determine which account should be used as the default (e.g., when replying to a message, the account is used that the message was originally sent to) or users can assign a default account for Outlook to use.

Smart Tags in Wordmail
With Word as the default e-mail editor, users can take advantage of the Smart Tags that are available in Word (including AutoCorrect, Paste Options, Address, Name, Date, or customizable Smart Tags). Smart Tags are context-sensitive buttons that give users the options and information they need at the time they need them. See the Office XP and Word Product Guides for more detailed information.

Message Format in Wordmail
Users can easily change between different mail formats on the fly and on a per message basis. By giving users the option to switch between HTML, rich text, or plain text, they can more easily format their message so that the recipient can have the best viewing experience.

Mailbox Cleanup
Users can quickly view the size of their mailbox, search for files by size or by age, and then delete, move, or archive those files to clear up space. Exchange users can also automatically be notified when they are approaching their mailbox size limit and choose from the above options for cleaning up their mailbox.

Text Auto Cleanup
Outlook can now automatically clean up plain text e-mail formatting that often contains extra line breaks that make the message difficult to read. Outlook automatically removes the extra line breaks (an option exists to turn this off as well) when a user opens an e-mail message, previews the message in the preview pane, or prints the message so that it is easier to read.

Hyperlinks in Subject Line
Outlook mail messages now recognize URLs that are placed in the subject field. This enables users to easily browse to the Web Site using their default browser without having to copy the address first and paste it into their Web browser.

Group Schedules
Users can save multiple group calendars within Outlook for quick and easy access to their team or conference room schedules. Within this single calendaring interface, users can view the free and busy times of their group as well as easily e-mail or set up an appointment with the entire group.

Outlook Free/Busy Sharing
Outlook now enables users to share Free/Busy information with others on the Internet for free. This makes it easy to schedule meetings with other Outlook users with whom you don’t share an Exchange server with.

Reminder Window
Users now get a single reminder window for all their appointment or task reminders. This enables the user to easily dismiss, snooze, or open one or all of the reminders at once.

Calendar Coloring
Users can identify their important appointments via the new color-coded calendar. The user can apply a color to individual appointments or they can automatically apply color by creating automatic formatting rules. Each color has a label that can be customized by the user.

Propose New Time
When receiving a meeting request, users now have the option to propose a new meeting time to the meeting organizer rather than just declining the request. Furthermore, users who have Exchange server can see the free and busy times of each attendee before submitting the new meeting time.

MSN Messenger Integration
When a user opens a contact card or an e-mail message (or views it via the Preview Pane), they can identify whether that person is online and can immediately initiate an MSN Messenger session with them from within Outlook.

Display as Name Field
Contacts now include a Display As field for e-mail names. The name you type in the Display As box appears in the To: field when you compose a message instead of the actual e-mail address.

Cancel Request to Server
Users can easily cancel a request for Outlook to connect to their Exchange Server if their network connection is disconnected. This allows Outlook version 2002 to be more resilient to network or server disruptions and enables users to stay working.

Outlook Virus Enhancements
Outlook now helps users and organizations safeguard against malicious viruses by:

• Blocking e-mail attachments associated with unsafe files.
• Preventing programs from gaining programmatic access to a user's address book or sending mail on the users behalf. Users are notified and given the option of continuing with the action. This prevents propagation and spreading of the virus to other users.
• Giving administrators options to customize the above settings to meet the security needs of their organization.

Document Recovery
Wordmail gives users the option of saving their current files at the time an error occurs in the application. As a result, users spend less time recreating their mail messages and spend more time working.

Application Error Reporting
Outlook enables users to automatically report any errors that occur directly to Microsoft or their corporate IT departments. This gives Microsoft (or organizations) the data needed to further diagnose and correct these errors and provide users with direct access to workarounds or other information on the error.

Application Recovery
This provides a safer method for shutting down an application that is not responding. Users can choose to shut down a non-responding application while at the same time initiating recovery of the Wordmail message and reporting the problem to Microsoft or their corporate IT department.

Integrated Corporate/Workgroup and Internet Mail Only Modes
Outlook is no longer divided into separate Internet and Exchange modes. The new E-mail Accounts wizard enables you to create several e-mail account types (Exchange, POP3, IMAP, HTTP, LDAP, MS Mail, etc.) in one profile. Multiple profiles are still supported. You can choose the account you want to send and receive messages for.

Outlook Customization via the Custom Installation Wizard
As part of the Custom Installation Wizard, administrators can create, modify, and replace profiles as necessary without having to use multiple utilities. Administrators can also configure an Exchange Server connection, remove outdated information services, customize Outlook default settings, or choose from a variety of other options for setting up Outlook for a single user or a group of users.

Retention Policies
Administrators can easily set up rules that mandate how long documents or e-mail can be retained. This functionality encourages users to eliminate old or sensitive items and allows administrators to purge old items, regardless of their location.

Auto-Select Message Encoding
Outlook automatically detects the appropriate Internet mail encoding for outbound e-mail messages. Note: This feature requires Internet Explorer 5.5 or later.

Lunar Calendar Support
Outlook now supports Lunar Calendars. Users can easily view their Lunar Calendar information within their calendar and set up recurring appointments based on that calendar.

Improved Features

Wordmail
The newest version of Outlook makes significant improvements to Wordmail (which is now the default e-mail editor) in reliability, message size, and feature set. More specifically, when using HTML mail format, Wordmail removes document specific tags that were previously included so that users could edit it back in Word. This reduces the overall size of the e-mail message. Wordmail also enables users to take advantage of a variety of new Word enhancements. See the Word Product Guide for more details.

Find
Users can more easily find important messages, appointments, or tasks with the improved Find bar that enables users to access features previously available only with Advanced Find. For example, users can specify which folders they want to search for on their computer or on a network. Furthermore, both Find and Advance Find enable users to stop a search that's in progress and restart where it left off.

Preview Pane
The preview pane enables users to follow a hyperlink, respond to meeting requests, and display properties of an e-mail address without requiring the user to open the message.

Address Book Column Headings
Column headings are now resizable in width. This enables the user to reveal or conceal columns to show only the information they find useful for address book entry lookup.

LDAP Address Book
The LDAP address book is more sophisticated with advanced searching and faster responses to lookups:

• An LDAP directory now has many of the same search features as found with the Exchange Global Address List, along with entry details.
• Paged Results Support: allows scrolling through directory entries from servers returning Paged Results.
• Support for Virtual List (VLV): entries can be browsed as easily as with the Exchange Global Address List.

Contact Address Book (CAB)
The Contact Address Book makes use of the Contact’s "Display Name." With this column, you can look up contact entries more efficiently, especially with multiple entries for the same contact name. When using the new Local Web Storage File, this CAB has full Unicode support.

Synchronization Improvements
Outlook is now easier to set up for use in an offline mode with a single command and all protocols (IMAP, POP, MAPI) can be synchronized at once. Different accounts can also be synchronized in differently, depending on whether users are offline or online. Users can also choose which information from the mail (the header only or the entire email) is synchronized. A new Progress Reporting feature notifies the user how long the synchronization process takes. The user can choose to selectively cancel different account synchronization if wanted.

Exchange Server Connection Improvements
The Outlook version 2002 connection to Exchange is more efficient so users can download their mail faster. This is possible due to a decreased number of "round trips" that the data must go through, as well as less data that is being transferred over the connection than with previous versions of Outlook. Furthermore, the connection to the directory is more resilient, meaning that if the connection to the Global Catalog server is disrupted, Outlook asks for a referral to another directory server and connects to that server seamlessly.

E-mail Configuration
A new E-mail accounts interface enables users to easily add or change e-mail accounts, directories, or address books.

System Requirements:

Computer/Processor
The recommended system is Windows 2000 Professional on a computer with a Pentium III processor and 128MB of RAM. Pentium 133 MHz or higher processor required.