The Microsoft Outlook Ideas Book

A fast-paced guide for instruction and inspiration on creating powerful solutions for small businesses and organizations using Outlook. Throw away your other applications, and learn to use Outlook in practical ways that you never imagined possible!

In Detail

Microsoft Outlook, in tandem with Microsoft Exchange Server, provides a powerful environment for sharing information. This book will show you how to take advantage of that to construct solutions for your business or organization from the features of Outlook.

This book is a collection of scenarios that incorporate and link many Outlook components to produce surprisingly powerful functionality.

Without the need for code or specially-written applications, you will be extracting information from your Outlook Calendar, Contacts and Tasks folders to create solutions like these:

• Monitoring staff leave and printing schedules
• Managing meeting rooms and printing invoices
• Managing fleet vehicles, their records, and servicing
• Managing a school class calendar, student records, attendance, assignments, and reports

What you will learn from this book

• How to apply the features of Outlook to avoid transferring and duplicating data into other programs
• How to expand your view of Outlook and its capabilities
• Techniques that will enable you to create your own solutions that are relevant to your situation and environment
• The confidence and vision to explore and use existing software to develop your own solutions

Approach

This book takes a practical, hands-on approach to working with Microsoft Outlook. Carefully structured to lead you through all the steps of each examples, this book will help you to use Outlook in ways you never imagined possible.

Who this book is written for

This book is for users who are comfortable with the basic functions of Outlook, but who want inspiration and direction on manipulating its features to produce powerful methods of viewing, presenting and reporting the wealth of information that it can hold. Users of Microsoft Access and Excel will recognize the functions and constructs used in some of the examples.

The techniques in this book are applicable to all versions of Outlook from 2000 upwards. Where there are functional differences between the versions, these have been noted.

You need to be running Outlook with MS Exchange Server to use this book

About the Author

Barbara March's long career in office administration, in many different industries, and her passion for computer software led her into software training. After obtaining Microsoft Office Specialist qualifications at Expert level and becoming a Microsoft MOUS Master Instructor, Barbara extended her knowledge and expertise further in MS Office by achieving outstanding pass marks in ECDL Advanced examinations. This knowledge and expertise, she has applied in all her posts including her current role as a data analyst in a local authority.

Barbara's analytical mind forces her to question the accepted boundaries of the software she uses and to apply her flair and imagination to find ways to use the software capabilities to the limit and to the benefit of her performance and professionalism.