Introduction to Microsoft Outlook 2010

About This Course

Are you overwhelmed by emails, meetings, and to-do lists? Harness the power of Microsoft Outlook 2010, and you'll instantly enhance your efficiency and productivity.

In this course, you'll learn your way around the new ribbon-based interface and get up and running quickly. Then you'll focus on the core skills you really need in order to work smarter and faster.

First, you'll learn how to manage the flood of emails you receive, creating folders and archives so you can always find what you need. Then you'll discover how to keep track of your contacts and how to use Outlook's Calendar and Alert features. You'll also find out how to customize Outlook so it perfectly meets your needs, and you'll discover how to automate your work with rules.

As a bonus, you'll get insider tips that will make you the Outlook guru in your office. For example, did you know that you can create, send, and receive email messages without ever touching the mouse? You'll find out how, and learn lots of other tricks for getting the most out of Outlook's versatile tools.

Whether you're new to Outlook or you've been using it for years, you're sure to learn something useful in every lesson. In just a few weeks, you'll be a skilled and confident user of this time-saving tool—and you'll never have to worry about missing a meeting, losing an email, or forgetting an important task again!

About The Instructor

This course includes a knowledgeable and caring instructor who will guide you through your lessons, facilitate discussions, and answer your questions. The instructor for this course will be Bill Mann.

Bill Mann has been writing about software and the Internet for over 15 years and has relied on Microsoft Outlook to keep him organized and on track since it first became available. He is the author of more than 15 books, including two about Outlook: How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 and How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Outlook 2007. He has led online courses on Outlook 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2007, and he is a contributing editor to OutlookPower magazine. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rochester.

Syllabus

A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

Week 1

Wednesday - Lesson 01

In this lesson, you’ll pick up some of the fundamentals of this big, powerful program. You’ll jump right in and get your hands dirty by playing with the user interface and learning a couple of different ways to navigate between the major sections that we’ll be covering over the next six weeks. And just in case something comes up where you need immediate help, we’ll go over how you can activate Outlook’s help systems and get answers in seconds.

Friday - Lesson 02

Today we're going to dig into the section of Outlook 2010 where most people spend most of their time: Mail view. Not surprisingly, Mail view is the place where you work with e-mail messages, and once we go over some of the mechanics of the view itself, we'll spend the rest of our time on the basics of e-mail. We'll cover sending, receiving, and replying to messages, as well as how you can use the spell-checker and signatures to give your messages some class.

Week 2

Wednesday - Lesson 03

In this lesson, we're going to address a few more aspects of working in Mail view and with e-mail messages. First we'll look at desktop alerts, flags, and categories. The desktop alerts notify you when new messages arrive, while the flags and categories will help you stay organized and make sure you don't forget to do something important with your messages. We'll also look at how messages are used to transport files around the Internet, and wrap up the lesson with something that most people never figure out about messages.

Friday - Lesson 04

It's time to move our attention from e-mail over to the related subject of contacts. By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to find your way around Outlook's Contacts views. More importantly, you'll know what contacts can do, and how to use them to keep track of all sorts of information. From there we'll look at Contact Groups, Outlook 2010's replacement for Distribution Lists. To wrap things up, we'll talk a bit about Address Books, an approach to contacting people by e-mail that you'll likely encounter (even if you don't realize it) when using Outlook in a corporate environment.

Week 3

Wednesday - Lesson 05

So far in the course, we've dealt with communication-related topics like e-mail and contacts. Now we're going off in another direction. Outlook 2010 has a flexible and easy-to-use Calendar that helps you track and manage all the stuff you need to get done. In this lesson we focus on the basics of using the Calendar, scheduling appointments and meetings, and tracking events. We'll also look at two powerful tools that make working with the Calendar more efficient: the Date Navigator and the Daily Task List. By the time we're done today, you will know what you need to know to be able to use your default Outlook Calendar to manage your personal schedule.

Friday - Lesson 06

This lesson is a continuation of our work with Calendar view. Specifically, we cover how to create and work with multiple Calendars at once. This leads us to two new features of Outlook 2010, Calendar Groups and Schedule View. You'll learn why these were created, and how they can help you deal with large numbers of Calendars without going crazy from information overload. Last but not least, we look at sharing Calendars through e-mail and on the Internet. At the end of this lesson you will not only wrap up your study of Calendar view; you will have reached the halfway point in the course.

Week 4

Wednesday - Lesson 07

This lesson is about getting things done. Outlook tasks and to-dos are ways to keep track of what you need to get done. Tasks are pretty much what you would expect—items that you create to keep track of some particular task. To-dos are somewhat more interesting in that they are Outlook's way of tracking things you need to do something about without creating a special task for them. By the time we're done today you will clearly understand the difference between tasks and to-dos, and know how to work with the To-Do Bar, Outlook's way of constantly reminding you of the things you need to get done next.

Friday - Lesson 08

Outlook 2010 is all about communication. But it is all about storing and managing information, too. In this lesson, we look at three aspects of Outlook that help with these essential tasks. Notes give us a way to keep track of all those little random bits of information that otherwise would end up on scraps of paper all over the place. And speaking of random stuff, we have shortcuts and the Shortcuts Pane. With these, you can effectively create your own custom Navigation Pane, one that points to the Outlook items most important to you. Even better, you can use shortcuts to point to stuff that's outside of Outlook, meaning you can organize information that's anywhere on your computer, the company network, even out on the Internet. Finally, we begin learning about folders. Folders let you organize the masses of information that you can accumulate in Outlook, while the Folder List lets you find them all again. This discussion lays the groundwork for Lesson 9, where folders are revealed to be a key part of automating your work in Outlook.

Week 5

Wednesday - Lesson 09

One of the great things about Outlook is that you can use it for so much of your communications and personal information. But with so many messages, contacts, tasks, notes, and other pieces of information in one place, organizing and managing it for easy and efficient access can be a big chore. In this lesson, you'll learn how Outlook 2010's flexible category system and rules can help you manage the flood of information that flows into your Inbox every day. You'll also learn how to print from Outlook for those rare occasions where you just have to have information on paper.

Friday - Lesson 10

As you use Outlook 2010 more and more you'll eventually reach the point where you need to store old items for future reference. You'll also get to the point where it's hard to find the information you need because Outlook contains so much. In this lesson, we'll learn about the tools Outlook gives you to automatically archive your old items as well as three different tools for finding those items you know are in there somewhere.

Week 6

Wednesday - Lesson 11

Outlook 2010 does a lot of things, and it often gives you multiple ways to do each of them. And beyond the basics, it can do many things that we can't possibly cover in a six-week course. But that doesn't mean we can't look at some cool tips that can make working with Outlook 2010 faster, easier, or just more fun. This is exactly what you'll do in this lesson. I think you're going to enjoy it.

Friday - Lesson 12

Outlook 2010 offers several customization options that you can take advantage of without having to learn programming or develop advanced technical skills. This lesson covers several customizations that you may find useful.

Requirements

You will need Microsoft Outlook 2010. (Software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins.) You will also need Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7, as well as Internet access, email, and the Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox Web browser. In addition, you will need the Adobe Flash and PDF plug-ins (two free and simple downloads you obtain at http://www.adobe.com/downloads by clicking Get Adobe Flash Player and Get Adobe Reader). A free 60-day trial version of Office 2010 may be available at http://www2.buyoffice.microsoft.com/usa/?torb=4&WT.mc_id=ODC_ENUS_GenTry_Control.

Note: this course is not suitable for Macintosh users.