Microsoft Outlook 2007 Test Review

Jun 21, 2007 12:09 PM

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First surprised, one discovers that the interface of the software is strictly identical, except for some icons, with that of Outlook 2003. Indeed, the new Office ribbon is not available in the principal window of the application but only in the windows of reading or composition of the messages: the homogeneity of the continuation thus takes a serious blow of it!

Passed the surprise of the interface, Outlook 2007 integrates many improvements all the same to be started with most obvious: the shutter “Bars tasks” which appears now with the right-hand side of the application. Comprising by defect a miniature calendar which will return you on your planning of appointment, this side posting permanently lists the tasks which you must achieve (you can of the remainder see the tasks assigned at the other days).

Among the new functions of Outlook 2007, one of most appreciable for the intensive users of the email is without question the now native integration of a function of research functioning by indexing. To benefit from it, it will be necessary to download Windows Desktop Search 3.0 separately and to install it on its system, the program of installation of Office 2007 not doing it for you. Once Windows Desktop Search 3.0 installed, research is now accessible permanently via a simple field “Search” which materializes just above the box of reception. The interest of this field research comes from the instantaneous answer which it delivers. Whereas it was formerly necessary to have patience of long minutes to find the last email in date of Guillaume, its posting is now immediate, the more so as technology Word Wheel posts results as soon as you start to type: the seizure of “GUI” is enough to post the emails answering this criterion, of which famous missives of our national Guillaume.

The user also profits from rather flexible criteria on the level of research. This one indexes the calendar, the enclosures, the contacts and the tasks with Outlook 2007, since various operators are proposed and documented in the help files, in addition to the principal search criteria available in a drop-down menu which appears by developing the generator of requests.

Outlook 2007 it is also, and for the first time, a manager of RSS. Requiring Internet Explorer 7.0 imperiously, function RSS materializes by a file “RSS” appearing in the list of the Outlook files. Concretely, each time you subscribe with a flow RSS since Internet Explorer 7.0, this one is added to the list of Outlook flows.

Object of many attentions, Outlook 2007 sees its Calendar function improving significantly. The pictorial display of this one was largely modified and it is now possible to consult several different calendars, including the calendars divided on the corporate network by SharePoint, and this while benefitting from a sight coast at coast. The user can thus visually compare his planning with that of his colleagues.

The module Outlook contacts were also vacuum-cleaned with a very new preparing and new sights. Just like in Outlook 2003, it is possible to assign with a contact a photograph the representative whereas the function of instantaneous research is also accessible in the zone reserved for posting from the contacts.

Side of the emails, which remain all the same the heart of Outlook 2007, the software obtains an anti-phishing filter. Already available in the preceding version of Outlook via the last Service Pack, this filter is supplemented by the traditional filter anti-spam that Microsoft announces as improved. Unfortunately, these two protections appear quite as ineffective one as the other within the framework of the famous spams image where the image is concaténée in the body of the message.

Note that Outlook 2007 is always able to decontaminate the majority of the bonds which it considers dangerous in an email. Microsoft benefits from Outlook 2007 for also re-examining the pictorial display of its manager of accounts, manager which makes it possible to define inter alia things the accounts emails, the sites of files or the subscriptions with calendars Internet. If it is not more aesthetic, this new manager is in rather effective truth and very professional.

Another change brought by Microsoft to the level of the emails: the use of Word per defect and like only alternative for the drafting of new messages. It is not indeed possible any more with Outlook 2007 to use an editor “reduced” to write its emails: the creation of a new message thus causes the appearance of a window equipped with the Office ribbon and in any point similar to that with the text processing.

One does not include well why Microsoft does not offer any more to the user freedom to choose between Word and the former editor of Outlook, and one has even more evil to include the following change which holds this time with the engine of returned emails received. With the preceding versions of Outlook, the posting of an email received with format HTML passed by the engine of returned Internet Explorer what offered a great freedom besides to the creators of mailing lists.

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