Installing Outlook 2007 Unlike other Office modules, you must first uninstall earlier versions of Outlook before installing the new one. If you are only trying out Outlook and do not want to fully convert over your e-mail system, rather than installing a full version, a better option is to use Microsoft's Office demonstration tool. This tool runs a full copy of Outlook inside your browser using preloaded sample data (it loads a Citrix environment and works best with Internet Explorer). You can do everything other than send and receive mail in this demo (and you can make but not save configuration changes). There is also a nice set of tutorials installed with the demo to help you learn the new features. Here's the link for that: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/HA101687261033.aspx. I chose a full install of the trial version, rather than the browser demo, because I was ready to commit to the new software. After I uninstalled my old version and installed the new one, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the install routine not only found and captured all my old mail stores and e-mail accounts (and other Outlook data like Tasks, Contacts, Notes, and so on), but it also picked up nearly all of my custom view settings. And it picked up nearly all my ClearContext views as well. There is one major exception to all this which I mention next. Of course I would do a complete backup prior to any major change like this. The exception to install conversion success is that any TaskPad configurations will not be picked up by the new To-Do Bar. Task data is picked up, just not the TaskPad view settings. These differences are because, under the covers, the To-Do Bar is implemented completely differently than the TaskPad was. So you will need to do the configuration adjustments described below, no matter what. Sorry, no shortcuts. (Note: a TWC version of ClearContext that does install the TWC TaskPad configurations in the To-Do Bar is now available. See my homepage for the link). Microsoft Office Command "Ribbon" A discussion of Outlook 2007 would not be complete without mentioning this. The entire suite of products in Office 2007 has been redesigned to use a command "ribbon" instead of the previous menu and toolbar combinations. This is the most discussed change by far in the press. While ribbons take getting used to, I really like them. I think many of us were getting overwhelmed by the long menus and enormous stacks of toolbars being added to Office applications. What ribbons do is organize all the commands that previously resided in those tools into a much more logical user interface. Their graphical nature works better than many of the older toolbars. And even though they take some adjustment at first, I suspect new application users will learn to use application features more quickly than with the older style. There is a lot of power in these ribbons. They allow you to start with simple controls at the surface, and then step into more complex controls, and they do that very effectively. Below is a sample of the ribbon at the top of a new mail item. Much of it is user configurable. Oddly, Outlook 2007 does not use the new ribbon in it's main application window, but rather only within the Outlook items themselves (e-mails, tasks, contacts, and so on). In contrast, all other Office 2007 products have made the replacement in the main application window. That's all I am going to say about command ribbons since the changes there are fairly independent from the TWC system. A little experimentation on your part will lead you through a complete understanding of how they work; they are fairly intuitive. One tip to get you started: the circular Windows logo button in the upper left corner replaces the File menu of the past.
Getting Started with Outlook 2007’s To-Do Bar and Flagged-Mail Tasks
But before you get too
excited note that these new “tasks” are not equal citizens with true
Outlook tasks, and so for experienced TWC users this new feature
will present a challenge; you will need to figure out how to fit
them into your system. That’s one thing this article intends to help
you with.
Showing the To-Do Bar Another way to change the display state once the bar is open is to use the small buttons on the top right of the To-Do Bar. For example, to minimize you can click the small right-pointing chevron in the upper right corner of the To-Do Bar as shown below. Once minimized, the To-Do Bar looks like this.
To
fully open a minimized To-Do Bar, click on the left chevron at the
top of the minimized To-Do Bar; this opens it back up to the Normal
or fully opened state. By the way, in Outlook 2007, this same
minimize behavior is applied to the Navigation Pane (the Navigation
Pane is the folder list that occupies the left side of the Outlook
application window).
Note
however once you’ve clicked that X, there are no buttons you can
click to bring the To-Do Bar back for that major folder view, so to reactivate the To-Do Bar
you’ll need to go to the View menu, choose To-Do Bar, and choose
Normal. Notice these activation and de-activation decisions are
specific for each of the major folder views (Mail, Calendar,
Contacts, Tasks). So if you close the To-Do Bar in the Calendar
folder view, when you navigate to the Mail view it may still be
open. And if the To-Do Bar is closed for all major folder
views, and you want it open for all, you'll need to open it one at a
time for each major folder, using the those View menu commands again
when your reach each major folder. In contrast, the popped open state causes the To-Do Bar to pop open on top of the Inbox without collapsing column widths, actually covering the right columns (see figure below). You achieve this state by clicking in the lower portion of the minimized To-Do Bar, well below the chevron (see the yellow portion in figure below).
The
resulting To-Do Bar display truly is a temporary popup; if you click
anywhere else in Outlook, this overlaid To-Do Bar will close again.
Resize the Tasks list to see More Tasks (if needed)
By
now you have noticed that the new To-Do Bar is not a one-to-one
replacement of the older TaskPad. The old TaskPad only included a
tasks list, while the new To-Do Bar also incorporates a new area
that lists upcoming appointments. And on a bit more subtle note, the
monthly mini-calendar row (called the Date Navigator) above the
task list in all versions, is in 2007 now technically part of this
new To-Do Bar construct (in older versions of Outlook that item was
actually separate from the TaskPad). So by default, the task list in
the new To-Do Bar really only occupies about the lower third of the
To-Do Bar (see figure below). If you agree that the Tasks portion seems too short on your screen, the way to remove that appointments section is by right clicking on the To-Do Bar header, and in the context menu that appears, clear the checkmark next to the Appointments item, as shown below. Below is how it looks once you do that. Or to make just a little more room, you can simply configure the Appointments section to show fewer upcoming appointments using the Options... item in that same context menu. Regarding the size of the To-Do Bar, there is one other new feature compared to the TaskPad. By default, the task list in the To-Do Bar has two modes of view depending on how wide you make it. Currently I assume your task list looks something like the figures above; one wide column and two narrow ones, and no column titles. But now try this: drag the left edge of the To-Do Bar to the left to widen it and see what happens to this column layout. Here’s how mine looks after I widen it.
See
all the new columns? So what’s happened here? By default, the task
list is configured to show a new Compact mode when the width is less
than 80 characters, and that’s what you see out of the box. Once you
drag it wider, the actual column configuration is displayed. So what
you are seeing while it is narrower is a special simplified compact
configuration. It is an abbreviated view that only shows task
subject, category color, and flag. Try dragging the left edge of the
To-Do Bar to the left and right to see this reconfiguration happen. It is best to do this cleanup before you configure the To-Do Bar for the TWC settings. That's because the clean-up steps rely on the compact mode that we will hide in the TWC settings below. So do this now. Here are the cleanup steps:
These steps group all your old flagged mail converted to tasks to the top of the task list, in its own group with the title: Message. Anything in the Message group is a flagged mail task. Here is how that looks.
Try collapsing that group by clicking the minus symbol, and you will see the Tasks group below it. Clearly these message based tasks in the Message group are not true tasks. In fact, if you double-click any of these items, an e-mail window will open as opposed to a task window... you are looking at a virtual copy of the original e-mail. And to clear these out of the To-Do Bar don't simply delete these because you will delete the corresponding e-mails.
That will clear out your old unwanted flagged mail tasks from the To-Do Bar, but will retain the original e-mail. Some cautions: do not simply delete these items using the delete key, since that will delete the corresponding e-mails. And do not select any of the true tasks during step 6, as those really will be deleted. And finally, remember, if you have been purposely creating flagged mail tasks for a while in 2007 before reading this article, do not clear those out.
Configuring the To-Do Bar for
the TWC system As mentioned above, the first step of configuration is to remove the compact mode of the To-Do Bar. To do this, right-click the header above the task list portion of the To-Do Bar, and from the context menu choose Custom… (or it might say Customize Current View… depending on how wide you dragged the To-Do Bar). You’ll see the following familiar dialog box.
Click the Other Settings… button. You’ll see this dialog. Down at the bottom of the Other Settings dialog, note the checkbox labeled Use Compact Layout in Widths Smaller Than 80 Characters. Clear that checkbox, and leave the revealed setting called Always Use Single-Line Layout selected, as shown below. Now when you click OK and OK again, you’ll see a To-Do Bar that, no matter how narrow you drag it, displays all the current column settings. These columns are of course not right for TWC, so at this point, to complete the To-Do Bar settings, follow the Configure the TaskPad steps starting on page 67 of the book. Work those as-is until you get to section C step 2 on page 69. At that point you are going to see the conditions in the figure below. These are new compared to the book settings, and be sure to retain both of those conditions; they prevent a strange behavior in Outlook 2007 task displays with old flagged mail marked as Flag Complete.
Now
proceed with step 3 in the book on that same page (page 67), all the way
through to section E, step 5 on page 72, and then click Add to List
and click OK. But don’t close the Customize View dialog yet, because
there is one last thing to do that is not in the book, as follows. Now you can close the Customize View dialog. Below is how the new To-Do Bar looks. This should look quite close to your TWC configured TaskPad in previous versions of Outlook. You can now start using the To-Do Bar for the TWC system just as you used the TaskPad in previous versions of Outlook. By the way, note that using the new Priority groupings, you can drag tasks from one Priority group to another to reprioritize them. One other change in the new To-Do Bar is that new tasks, when they are created, default to having today's date in the date fields. In older versions date fields of "none" were the default. This is a highly needed change and one I applaud. It makes creating new daily tasks much more smooth. By the way this new default is also true in the Tasks folder. One side effect of this is that if you create new Master Tasks directly in the Master Tasks folder, they are created with dates. So if you use the "Click here to add a task..." row to create a new master task and hit Enter, your task will immediately move out of the Master Tasks view. The lesson is that in Outlook 2007 you probably should create master tasks in that view only by double-clicking in the "Click here to add a task..." row, which opens the task dialog box where you can remove the default dates.
Understanding Flagged E-Mail and How they are Treated in the
To-Do Bar But don’t celebrate yet, because this feature will initially introduce some confusion for experienced TWC system users; enough so that I recommend limiting the use of Flagged-Mail Tasks. Why? Because these flagged items, even though they show up in the To-Do Bar task list, are not true Outlook tasks, and therefore behave differently. For example, once flagged, if you open a Flagged-Mail Task from your To-Do Bar, you won’t see date fields, a priority field, or the reminder field, like you would in a task; it’s still an e-mail. You can find equivalents of those in various places (in the e-mail ribbon menus and the flag context menu), but it is a bit inconvenient compared to a true task window. And other limitations (see list in inset below) have led me to conclude a more limited use of this feature is in order for TWC users. That said, it will play an important role, described next. Why Flagged-Mail Tasks may not be Right for E-mail Tasks in TWC Here are the major limitations of using Flagged-Mail Tasks as a comprehensive way of converting action e-mails to tasks for TWC users:
Flagging an e-mail item works quite well for deferred replies since it
is quick, it leaves the e-mail intact as an e-mail, and it is very
easy to reply to. See the inset box below for a complete list of
reasons why this is such a good use for Flagged-Mail Tasks . Why Flagged-Mail Tasks are Excellent for Tagging Deferred Replies Here is a complete list of reasons why Flagged-Mail Tasks are especially well suited for deferred reply use:
However, limiting Flagged-Mail Tasks to just these uses is only a recommendation. If you can keep the limitations listed above in mind, feel free to start using them more widely. But my heartfelt thoughts on this are why bother dancing around the limitations? It is so easy to convert e-mails to true Outlook tasks you might as well do that and take advantage of the full Outlook task feature set. Still, using these for the above purposes is useful, so the feature is greatly welcomed. And for the millions of Outlook users who have never read my book, this new feature may for the first time encourage them to start converting e-mails to tasks, and that is nothing but a good thing. Other features of Flagged-Mail Tasks:
New to the Tasks Folder: the Mysterious
To-Do List folder
The
Tasks Folder (reached by clicking the Tasks item in the Navigation
Pane) looks the same as in previous Outlook versions and is
used the same way, with one important exception: Flagged-Mail Tasks
are not always shown there. If you start using Flagged-Mail Tasks
and you want to see them in the Tasks Folder, you need to start
using the mysterious To-Do List folder. Why do I call it "mysterious"?
Because its presence in the My Tasks portion of the Navigation Pane
seems out of place; that sub-pane is suppose to list task folders,
but where is this task folder? And why is it there in
addition to the Tasks folder?
By
clicking that you’ll see your Flagged-Mail Tasks appear in the task list
(along with all your "normal" tasks).
Hopefully you’ve created a few Flagged-Mail Tasks so you can see this.
If not go do that now from the Mail folder, then return to the Tasks
Banner Button view, and view Flagged-Mail Tasks in the Simple List view
sorted by date. Try switching back and forth between the Tasks folder
and the To-Do List folder, within the My Tasks sub-pane, to see how
Flagged-Mail Tasks are shown and not shown. So what’s going on here? The underlying story is a little complicated but here goes. In order to add Flagged-Mail Tasks to the To-Do Bar, the tasks list there is implemented using Search Folder technology. This means that it is a virtual folder view of items resulting from defined search criteria. Since the task nature of Flagged-Mail Tasks is accomplished virtually this way, Outlook 2007 needs to use a Search Folder approach in the Tasks Folder as well to see those "tasks." So the To-Do List folder in the My Tasks pane is a special folder implemented using Search Folder technology and that's why it does not show up in your folder tree. See my book page 178 for more information on Search Folders. Also see this blog post from Microsoft manager Melissa MacBeth specifically about this To-Do List search folder: http://blogs.msdn.com/melissamacbeth/archive/2006/02/24/538989.aspx. So why didn't Microsoft just replace the Tasks folder icon with this To-Do List search folder? After all, it shows all the normal tasks too. The answer is this: Search Folders are very limited tools. They do not have all the features of a true folder: you cannot share them, you cannot drag and drop items into them, and you cannot create subfolders in them. So if you want these functionalities in your Tasks folder, you need to use the original task folder (and lose access to the Flagged-Mail Tasks). That's why Microsoft is showing both these folders in the My Tasks pane of the Navigation Pane. A couple more points on this:
Adding Back Custom Tasks Folder Views that may have Disappeared During the install of Outlook 2007, your custom Task folder and e-mail views should have been picked up and installed in the new 2007 instance of Outlook. However The To-Do List search folder, while it should show all standard views, may not show your custom ones. Try
this now. Go look in the list of views available in the Tasks folder
(either by looking in the middle of the Navigation Pane above under
Current View, or by looking in the Advanced toolbar). Do this in the
Tasks folder (not the To-Do List). You should be able to see any custom
views you defined earlier. However once you click on the To-Do List item
in My Tasks your custom task views may disappear from that list. My
Master Tasks view was gone once I clicked on To-Do List. But if I
clicked on Tasks folder item, just below it, it reappeared.
Microsoft defines “daily tasks” the way we do: tasks with dates. So they have created another place to view such tasks, and that is underneath the calendar column in the Calendar folder view (week and day views only). And the formal name for this task display is in fact “Daily Tasks.” Unfortunately though, this list is not designed very well to support the TWC system's use of daily tasks. But there is still some usefulness here. Let me explain. First
of all, here is how this task display works. If you focus on today’s
date (in the figure above, it is Tuesday December 12), the list below
the calendar for that date shows all tasks with a due date of today or
earlier. This is much like our TaskPad/To-Do Bar filter, which does the
same. So you might think this is another way to view your TWC Daily
Tasks. Unfortunately though, this view always sorts the older tasks to
the top of the list (opposite from the TWC system), and that sort order is not configurable, including
no way to sort on priority. So assuming you are allowing ten or fifteen
near-term tasks to move forward from day to day, as I teach in the TWC
system, the least important of those tasks may be at the top of
today’s list in this display, and the most important scrolled off the
bottom. In TWC we want high priority tasks always
at the very top, and the newest tasks just under those. So the
configuration of this new task display makes the today’s list portion of
the new Daily Tasks List not very
useful for TWC users. And by the way,
this display also has a nice feature of showing which tasks you
completed in past days of the week (see Monday in the figure above). Unfortunately, these are the only configurations you can make on this display. So again, it is of limited usefulness for TWC system users. E-mail News: New Emphasis on Categories in 2007 My final discussion on Outlook 2007 is about the few changes to e-mail that affect our system. By far the one you should care most about is that you will now find a major new emphasis on Outlook Categories in this version. This is true in both tasks and e-mail, (as well as appointments and contacts). As you know I am not a fan of using categories on tasks in Outlook, but if you have read my book you know I am a very strong advocate of using Outlook Categories as a core method for filing e-mail by topic. So I am delighted to see this new emphasis on categories in Outlook 2007. If you use categories for filing mail by topic, I think you'll find the enhancements very useful. Specifically, what are the new category enhancements in Outlook 2007 mail? First of all, Microsoft has added a Categories column to the default e-mail Messages view in Outlook (see right side of figure below) You may recall that adding that column manually was one of the first e-mail configuration recommendations in my book, so Microsoft is catching on. But they've gone even further and added a color coding scheme that associates a color with each category in the category list. This does two things for you. It makes it easier to delineate categories at a glance. On small screens you may even be able to set the column width narrow in the list view and still make sense of the categories. It also make it easier to display multiple category assignments, since a colored square take much less space than written text. They've also added a quicker way to choose categories. It used to take four steps to assign a category to an e-mail. In Outlook 2007 it now takes only two steps: right click within the category column and then select the category from the in-context menu (see figure below). And it can take as little as one step (just one click) for the default category. More on that in a moment. One caveat with using the drop down menu is that it shows only the top 15 categories; if you have more you'll still need to open the Categories dialog and scroll to the other categories. The way to do that is to choose the All Categories... choice at the bottom of the context menu (see figure above). When you do you see a Categories dialog very much like the one in earlier versions of Outlook (see below). But there are some important differences. First, the concept of a separate Master Category List is not as apparent. You add categories to this list and they are added to your choice list; no need to go to a second list. I welcome that, as the master category concept of earlier versions was confusing to navigate. Next, you'll see the emphasis on colors in this dialog as well. Once installed, nearly all categories (whether pre-delivered, or converted from your previous custom categories) have colors assigned to them. And a number of new categories are created that are purely color based (with names like Red Category, Green Category, and so on). These are the six colors from the Outlook 2003 colored flags and by the way are picked up as categories on Flagged-Mail Tasks that appear from the flags in existing mail when you first install Outlook 2007. If you start using these new predefined color categories for new assignments, the first time you assign one of them, Outlook will ask you if you want to rename it to something else more meaningful, as shown below.
In that dialog, note that you can change the color assignment. You can also do that for any category in the main category selection window we looked at above; you click the category and use the Color: drop down mid right to change the color assignment. I mentioned there are now a few ways to assign categories to mail in your list view. I already mentioned right clicking within the categories column. Note when using the right-click method, if you repeat the process on the same e-mail item, each newly assigned category is additive; it is added next to any existing category rather than overwriting it. So what if you do want to replace it? You need to choose the existing category again from the drop down, which removes it. Then go back and assign the new category. Or just use the All Categories... choice and manipulate the checkboxes in the main category dialog at will. I also mentioned before that if you single click in the Categories column of an e-mail, a default category is assigned for you. Out of the box mine was set to the new Red Category. I found this confusing at first as I accidentally was setting categories every time I clicked. This default is called the "Quick Click" assignment and can be changed by right clicking any e-mail and choosing Set Quick Click... from the bottom of the context menu which was shown above. This opens the dialog shown below. If you have one category you tend to use a lot, this is a nice feature. If like me you do not have a favorite category, you may want to turn Quick Click off. Do this using that same control shown above and choose No Category from the drop down list. And finally, there are keyboard shortcuts for instantly assigning categories (can be set for up to 10 categories). Note in the figures above how you can set those shortcuts. New Outlook Search Capability One more thing. With all this talk of using categories to file e-mails, what if you are like me these days and prefer to use bulk full-text searches rather than filing mail by topic? Well there is good news because Microsoft has added a true fast search engine that makes bulk searching for e-mails within Outlook truly practical. The search box is located just to the right of the folder name, at the top of the folder list display (see the faint Search Inbox label below for one example). As you may recall the search engine in older versions of Outlook was almost useless. It was painfully slow, and it could search only one data store at a time. The new one is based on Windows Desktop Search technology, which indexes all data in the background. Because of that, its search results are nearly instantaneous. And you can tell it to search all mail data stores (use the dropdown arrow at right to control this and other options). Overall this is a fantastic improvement. I leave it to you to explore this new feature. By the way, with my Outlook 2007 install I had to install this search capability separately after the first, main install. You may need to do that as well. Wrapping Up So I hope you have found the new Outlook 2007 features as useful as I have. The richness of this software keeps getting better and better. As usual, the advanced task management best practices that the TWC system teaches require special configurations in Outlook to achieve. I hope this article has helped you learn how to apply those in Outlook 2007.
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