Switching to Office 365’s Outlook Web App

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

As part of an IT roll-out in the office the entire PC Pro team was moved over to Office 365 last week. For the most part it meant no change at all. After a quick call to IT the morning after the transition to get some some account details adjusted (I’d had no email since 9pm the previous day), I was able to carry on working, using my standard desktop installation of Office 2010, including Outlook, just as normal.

That’s no surprise. After all, Office 365 principally represents a change in the way businesses purchase and manage licenses for Microsoft Office software. From a user perspective, the desktop software – Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook – stays the same.

However, we have received one major upgrade – from our old, clunky webmail service to the swanky new Outlook Web App – and it could be about to change the way I work.

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How to add the Facebook social connector to Office 2010

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Microsoft has just announced that it’s added Facebook and Windows Live to the Outlook Social Connector, but it’s not entirely obvious how you access it. So here’s a quick step-by-step guide that tells you everything you need to know.

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How to add week numbers in Microsoft Outlook 2010

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

I didn’t realise until recently that week numbers are a bit of a European obsession, which is why US-created software such as Microsoft Office tends to ignore them.

You had to jump through three or four hoops in Office 2003 and Office 2007 to add them (clicking Tools | Options | Calendar Options and then tickboxing “Show week numbers in the Month View and Date Navigator”), but fortunately Outlook 2010 makes it much easier.

Or at least, easier to explain. So, here are the three steps you need to add week numbers in Outlook 2010.

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Microsoft Outlook 2010 screenshots

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

There’s little doubt that Outlook is the most physically changed of all the applications: in particular, Outlook 2010 now has the Ribbon properly integrated into its interface. Here, we take a quick-fire tour of the new-look.

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Why Outlook 2010’s conversation view doesn’t work

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Let’s be clear: Outlook 2010 is good. Very good, actually. And, certainly, if you instructed me to write an email client I’d come back to you with a white box with “INBOX” written on the front in biro.

But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been driving me up the wall.

Outlook 2010 tries to be all clever by bundling messages into “Conversations”. This is useful for when someone in the office CC’s everyone in on which pub to go to and you spend Friday afternoon battling a deluge of witty put-downs. In Outlook 2010 everything with the subject line “Let’s go to the pub!” is rolled into one conversation and you have to scroll through your inbox less. (more…)

Microsoft Office Outlook 2010’s new meeting request view

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

Outlook 2010 is undoubtedly the most changed of all the Microsoft Office 2010 applications, benefiting from the much-heralded Ribbon interface. Although my first reaction on seeing it was slight shock, as you’re presented with a mass of options when often all you want to do is Reply or Delete, I’m already seeing advantages.

Primary among these, so far as I’m concerned, is the new meeting request view. Not so much in the organisation phase – there are no major innovations there – but in the view that’s presented to invited members. (more…)