Microsoft Outlook is the most used and famous program in the world to manage e-mail on your computer, even if it is a program included in the Office suite. Outlook is vital in many organizations, not only for its obvious email management capabilities, but also for its calendar, tasks and address book functions.
For companies, the convenience is to connect Outlook to an Exchange server so that everyone can share the same address book and calendars, becoming an excellent tool for collaboration at the corporate level.
For home use Outlook is mainly used to download mail to your PC and store it outside the internet, but although most people certainly don't use an Exchange server at home and probably don't even know what it is traits, Outlook functions make it a powerful activity management tool also for personal and non-professional use, for reading e-mails, following appointments, organizing address books and much more.
In this guide we make a concise and concentrated course on how to use Microsoft Outlook (taking its latest version, Outlook 2013 ) to learn its main functions and configure it with each email account .
Anyone who has Microsoft Office programs (Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc.) also has Outlook on the computer and can open it for a first access.
Being a product of the Office series, you will find a familiar interface, a bit similar to that of Word, even if it serves a completely different thing.
The default view of Outlook is the inbox, at the top there is the ribbon ribbon, hidden to save space on the screen.
To quickly see and hide the ribbon, just press the CTRL - F1 keys.
You can lock the bar by pressing on the thumbtack that serves to fix it and not hide it anymore.
The ribbon ribbon makes it very easy to find the buttons to activate the functions and use the program tools.
The Home tab has different buttons depending on the mode and the screen you are on.
On the main screen, there are options for mail.
Along the left edge of Outlook there are folders, while at the bottom of this panel are the Outlook modes: Inbox, Calendar, People, Tasks and so on.
By clicking on the arrow at the top of the navigation panel, it expands in the pane to see the folder structure of the email account.
Click on the three dots to access additional Outlook modes: Outlook notes, folders and shortcuts.
From the "Navigation options" you can change the order in which the different elements appear and deactivate compact navigation if you are using a large monitor.
The Send / Receive tab specifically concerns the inbox functions, but also appears in other modes (calendar, tasks, etc.), even if they will not have the same functionality.
Depending on the type of mail protocol you are using (IMAP or POP), you may or may not be able to download only the message headers, mark or deselect messages to be downloaded, and other functions (which are available only with the IMAP protocol, always recommended)
The folder tab allows you to manage the folders in your mail account, to create new ones, to choose the rules for automatic archiving of old mails and other properties.
In calendar mode, there are no folders so, from this menu, calendars can be copied or moved.
The structure of the folders is essential to manage the mail and keep it tidy, not to miss important messages and find the mail more easily.
In another article we saw how to create rules and mail filters on Microsoft Outlook to organize mail into folders .
The display options contain the essential functions to hide or show some information and elements of the Outlook interface, among which there are also reminders .
In calendar mode it is possible to change the way you see the days, with monthly, weekly or daily view and the color.
The options in the ribbon ribbon, as mentioned above, change depending on where you are located.
If you are writing a new mail, you will find all the buttons for formatting text, for adding attachments, images, labels etc.
The Insert tab is present in every section of Outlook and allows you to change the content of messages, activities, calendar events.
In the case of e-mails there is a button for the Options where the choice of theme, colors, fonts and effects are found, the CCN (carbon copy hidden to be used to hide the recipients of the e-mail) and the request for confirmation of reading the email.
The Revision tab contains the automatic spelling and grammar correction functions, useful for not making mistakes when writing emails.
You can also translate sent messages into other languages.
Let's now move on to setting up an email account which can be automatic or manual
The first time you start Outlook, you are asked to set up an account, which you can also skip initially and add later.
In fact, you can use Outlook without an account in the calendar, tasks and notes modes.
However, since it is a program designed primarily for the management of Email, it is worth adding an account immediately by trying the automatic configuration where you just need to enter the username and password that you use to access your inbox.
If the automatic configuration does not work (it certainly works with Hotmail and Outlook.com addresses, but is not said to work with other suppliers), you must proceed with the manual configuration .
To add an account to Outlook you need to go to the File tab in the ribbon and follow the manual setting procedure.
In manual configuration, the first choice is to use a POP or IMAP account (or an Exchange account if you set up Outlook in an office)
We have already seen in another article the differences between IMAP and POP which, synthetically, are:
- POP or Post Office Protocol is the oldest protocol used to download mail to the computer.
- IMAP instead allows you to copy the folder structure of the web mail and synchronize the messages without making them disappear from the mail server, with options to download only the message headers, without filling the computer with thousands of emails and attachments.
If possible, always choose IMAP.
You can refer to the guide on how to add a Yahoo Mail account to Outlook by changing the parameters according to your mail provider.
In another article I also explained step by step how to configure Microsoft Outlook with GMail to receive and send mail from the PC.
In Outlook you can add and manage as many email accounts as you want.
If you use multiple email accounts, such as one personal and one for work, an email client such as Outlook can really make a difference and allows you to connect calendar appointments and tasks in order to manage your life in a way business suit.
After adding two accounts, you can choose the account you want to configure from the drop-down selector at the top of the Account Information page on the File tab.
From the " Account Settings " you can create a new account, repair an already added one, remove them, set your favorite one and change other settings.
Address book management and adding contacts in Outlook
To manage your address book contacts, open People mode from the Home tab and add addresses and other details from the main interface.
Almost certainly, however, it will be necessary to import the address book from the Google, Yahoo or any other account you are using.
You will then need to export the contacts from that address book and then import them into Outlook.
Normally this would be an easy job if it weren't for each account using its own formats and there could be complications.
The easiest way is to synchronize your address book between Gmail and Outlook and import your contacts.
Otherwise you have to use vCards, as explained in the guide on how to import vCard (vcf) files into Windows contacts and in Microsoft Outlook.
To explore more advanced features of Microsoft Outlook we have seen, in other articles:
- If you have multiple computers from which to consult e-mail, but you cannot use an Exchange server, in another article we have seen how to synchronize Microsoft Outlook on multiple computers .
- Disable reply to all and forward Email on messages sent with Outlook
- Delay an email for a scheduled sending
- How to delay an email for a scheduled sending
Finally, if you don't have Outlook and you are looking for a similar free program, you can look at the list of the best alternative Email clients to Microsoft Outlook to read mail from your PC
