Office 2011 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

Chapter 9. Outlook: Email and Life Management 101

It takes careful planning and powerful computer tools to keep up with the details of modern life. That seems to be the philosophy behind Outlook. Each person you know may have a home address, a business address, a home phone, a business phone, and a cell phone. You send emails, have meetings and work on projects with deadlines. Life is full of numbers, addresses, dates, and tasks. Multiply that by a few hundred or a couple thousand and you’ve got a job fit for a sophisticated database. And that’s exactly what Outlook is. It’s a database that keeps track of your contacts, your emails, your meetings, and your to-do list. Outlook gives you a way to remember them all (Figure 9-1).

This chapter introduces Outlook by giving you a quick tour of the grounds. Then, it zeroes in on Email. You’ll learn how to set up Outlook with all your email accounts. Then you’ll learn how to get the most out of Outlook’s state of the art email tools.

Starting Outlook the First Time

After you install Office, there’s a big “O” for Outlook sitting in the dock. One click and you get a view of Outlook’s somewhat busy window. The first thing Outlook encourages you to do is to set up an email account. If you had issues setting up an email account in the past, you’re in for a pleasant surprise. In the new Outlook, the process is fairly simple, especially if your email is handled through one of the major providers such as MobileMe, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail. In ...