Microsoft Outlook 2007 Review

When I started my job a few years ago, I had to learn how to use Lotus Notes. It's hard to explain exactly what I hated about Lotus Notes, but I definitely HATED Lotus Notes.  At a past job I used Outlook 2003, however in past jobs I never relied so much on email and calendars and such.  At my current job, we live via email, we live by the calendar, and we live by many of the other features.  Our email is open ALL DAY LONG.  So after a few years of having Lotus, I was so excited to hear we would be moving to Outlook 2007.

Outlook 2007 is Stylish!  I admit, I'm attracted to programs that look pretty.  Usually pretty programs work relatively well because the creators know their user and knows how to attract their users attention.  Outlook 2007 looks a lot like all the new Office 2007 products, except they don't have ribbons on all screens.  Many people are happy they don't have a lot of ribbons, but personally I like it either way.

Outlook 2007 is QUICK!  When I searched my inbox in Lotus, I would literally take a walk and come back and it would still be searching.  Outlook 2007 searches so fast that it actually starts bringing up results AS I TYPE!  My results come up so quick sometimes I don't know what to do with myself :)  I can switch between screens in Outlook without a delay, it is so fast.  I have a feeling Lotus was a very heavy program with lots of things going on in the background.  Outlook appears to be very lightweight.

Outlook 2007 has cool features!  After using Gmail for awhile, I got used to being able to assign a category to my emails.  Now with Outlook, I can also assign categories of my choosing to ANY email, ANY calendar item, ANY to-do item and ANY note!  Because of this, I've actually stopped using folders to organize my mail.  I only have 3 folders now to worry about: Inbox (for open stuff), Completed (for done stuff) and Save (for important stuff).  The color coding makes it easy for me to find messages as well as helps me remember what my calendar/to-do list items are about.  You can apply categories to an item on the fly, or set up rules to automatically categorize the item.

Outlook 2007 is more adjustable!  Lotus always felt so annoying to me and in my way.  The first thing I loved about outlook was that there is an option that makes the program disappear from my task bar when I minimize Outlook.  This frees up space on my task bar for the million other things I'm usually doing :)  Besides that, I can also adjust various things about the outlook screen so that everything fits just like I want it.  I enjoy seeing my calendar and to-do items on the right while still being able to see enough of my email to read it.

Outlook 2007 items open in a new window!  At first, this feature annoyed the heck out of me, but now I actually prefer it.  When I'm composing a mail item or a calendar item, or even writing a note, the item pops up in a new window.  I realize now how convenient this is!  With lotus everything opened in new tabs but the program still took up the whole screen so it was hard to go back and forth between a few items.  With Outlook, it's very easy to go back and forth between open items or even arrange them so I can see both at once.  This really helps when I'm trying to explain a program (for example) in an email to someone and I can easily see the program at the same time.

Overall, Outlook 2007 is just plain slick!  Everything seems to integrate with everything else much better since I came over to outlook.  I can open word and excel documents right in my outlook browser if I just want to preview them.  Meeting scheduling is easier with Outlook too!  We are also using Outlook Communicator and I like that I can see right in the email who is online and their availability.  Finally, we use Sharepoint 2007 for our internal portal sites and Outlook has a lot of features to link to that as well.  If you are already using Office 2007, you can't go wrong with Outlook.  If you aren't using Office 2007, read my review to find out why you should upgrade!

PS: Did I forget to mention the pop up alerts?  That's one of my fav features!  It's a quick little pop up in the lower right that shows a snapshot of new emails that come in and alerts you have scheduled.  It can be clicked on to read, flag or even delete the email right there!  I love it!